SOURCE: McClelland, John. “The Place of Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power in the History of Western Social and Political Thought.” Thesis Eleven, no. 45 (1996): 16-27.

In the following essay, McClelland examines sources and influences for Canetti's Crowds and Power to determine the book's place in the twentieth-century Western cultural landscape.

This somewhat ponderously Leavisite title is meant to suggest that, in the English-speaking world at least, the problem of Canetti's Crowds and Power is to find its place in our cultural landscape. Those of us who first read Crowds and Power in the early sixties will never forget the sense of bewilderment that the book caused us. We had no doubt that we had something important in our hands. It sounded a bit oracular at times, but we easily forgave this, because Canetti was offering some kind of original explanation of the great horrifying events of the twentieth century...