By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Little Gidding’ is the last of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, but it is also his last significant poem. What’s more, there is a sense in this poem of Eliot seeking to join the threads of his work together, to ‘set a crown upon a lifetime’s effort’, as he puts it in ‘Little Gidding’ itself. But this remains a puzzlingly abstract poem in some ways, resisting any straightforward explication or analysis. There is nothing little about ‘Little Gidding’. You can read the poem here.