A Proposal for a Modest Modernism: A Review of Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism by Rick de Villiers

Abstract

Abstract: Rick de Villiers combines close textual readings and theoretical contextualization to argue that T.S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett replace "high modernism" with a "low modernism" predicated on the dialectics of humility and humiliation. Moving between theological issues like Christ's kenosis, and the philosophy of self-effacement found in Arnold Geulincx, this subtle and informed book proves that the two writers gain by being read together, while modifying our sense of modernism as a whole.