Dissociation of sensibility Dissociation of sensibility Dissociation of sensibility is a literary term first used by T. S. Eliot in his essay “The Metaphysical Poets”. It refers to the way in which intellectual thought was separated from the experience of feeling in seventeenth century poetry. Eliot used the term to describe the manner by which the nature and substance of English poetry changed “between the time of Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and Browning.” In this essay, Eliot attempts to define the metaphysical poet and in doing so to determine the metaphysical poet’s era as well as
T. S. Eliot at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, who was 30. In contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. They kept their wedding secret; the ceremony was held in a church at 6:15 am with virtually no one in attendance other than his wife's parents. Eliot had no children with either of his wives. In the early 1960s, by then in failing health, Eliot worked as an editor for the Wesleyan University Press, seeking new poets in Europe for publication. After Eliot's death,