On Reading and Incarnation

Abstract

In his 1928 essay on Lancelot Andrewes, Eliot focuses on the Bishop’s sermons and his intensely verbal and comparative way of both reading and writing, “squeezing and squeezing words until they yield a full juice of meaning.” In his own literary commentary, Eliot employs what he calls the “tools of criticism”: “comparison and analysis.” Comparison especially needs to be related to the central Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, which involves two—God and man—in “impossible union.” Reading in parallel structural fashion always involves (at least) two, consisting of the “intersection” of reader and text.