ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the main themes of T S Eliot's social and cultural criticism. Eliot seems to have been first introduced to the thought of the French reactionary Charles Maurras at Harvard by Irving Babbitt, professor of French and comparative literature. Maurras was a royalist keen on the restoration in France of a Bourbon monarchy, supported by a strong Roman Catholic Church. At the heart of Eliot's social criticism was distaste for liberalism. It is a distaste linked to a dislike of mass society and a negative view of democracy. The emphases in Eliot's social and cultural criticism changed over time. Following his conversion in 1927 and up to the Second World War his preoccupation was with the conditions necessary for a Christian society. Notes towards the Definition of Culture are the work of social and cultural criticism by Eliot that has been most widely read and commented on.
