In T. S. Eliot’s early poetry there is a fascination with sexual behavior, sexual criminality, and even instances of cannibalism. These occur in both his published work and in his unpublished Columbo and Bolo poems. Critical attention on this aspect of Eliot’s early work has focused on the themes of gender and race. His attitudes towards women have been well studied by feminist scholars. The critical focus on the Columbo and Bolo poems has emphasized Eliot’s attitudes towards African Americans and his consciousness of race in the American context. But there is another way of understanding these themes and this has rather more to do with class than gender or race. Eliot’s emblematic figure for the ordinary man from the lower classes, namely his Sweeney persona, has a decidedly Irish character. Eliot’s references to sex crimes and cannibalism emphasize the presence of such savagery, not in what used to be called ‘primitive’ societies, but in the very heart of civilization. For a well-educated, upper middle class young man with a New England background during the period of Irish immigration to America and to the political assertiveness of the Irish in both the United States and Great Britain, there is more to fear from the Sweeneys than from comical characters like King Bolo.

• John Xiros Cooper(Univ. of British Columbia)