Into Cleanness Leaping: Brooke, Eliot, and the Decadent Body

This paper seeks to refine readings of Rupert Brooke and T.S. Eliot by highlighting their shared anxieties and contrary solutions to the problem of decay as it manifests itself in the individual body and the body politic. In addition to drawing new thematic connections between Brooke, Eliot, and the decadent movement of the late nineteenth century, the paper aims to complicate the oft-repeated caricature of Eliot as an artist who favors idealized intellect over perverse physicality by examining his transformation of the decadent trope of bodily self-destruction.