Notes Toward a Definition of Culture
T.S. Eliot · 1948
Eliot's most sustained piece of cultural criticism. Conservative, precise, sometimes infuriating, always serious. Defined a certain kind of Anglo-American cultural debate for decades.
The case against
Eliot argues, with donnish hedging on every page, that real culture requires hereditary class and a shared Christianity, positions that now read less like provocation than a eulogy for an order he preferred. The 'Notes Toward' of the title is honest: definitions keep deferring, qualifications multiply, and the list of English culture (boiled cabbage, Wensleydale cheese, the dog races) is the liveliest writing in it.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
