Written in a fine and lucid prose style, T. S. Eliot and American Poetry presents a critical study of Eliot's major poetry, as well as an examination of what America means to its poets.Investigating Eliot's literary inheritance through his familial traditions, represented particularly by his mother, Charlotte Eliot, and in terms of the American Renaissance, Lee Oser addresses all phases of Eliot's career as a poet. Through his dialectical view of American literary and intellectual history, Oser further constructs a practical methodology for comparing Eliot with other American poets. Juxtaposing Eliot's poems, lectures, and essays with landmark texts by Emerson, Poe, Whitman, and many others, Oser engages in a deeper analysis of Eliot's Americanness than has hitherto been possible.