M.A. (English) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Thesis (doctoral)--Lund University, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-238) and index.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Lingüística. / La tesis propone que el poema La Tierra Baldía es la dolorosa expresión del colapso de una época y la síntesis del derrumbe de la mujer; que T.S. Eliot, apoyándose en la inversión de las leyendas del Grial, logró fusionar con su propia tragedia personal. El poema sería la evidencia de la esterilidad y el fracaso del amor entre un hombre y una mujer, configurada poéticamente teniendo a la base una riquísima simbología sobre la infertilidad, el vacío y la muerte; en la que el sexo, por su radical función generativa y amorosa, ocupa un lugar eminente aunque no exclusivo.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1965 S634 / Master of Science

T.S. Eliot's use of allusion is crucial to the structure and themes of his early poetry. It may be viewed as a compulsion, evident in even the earliest poems, rather than just affectation or elitism. His allusions often involve the reversal or re-ordering of constructions of gender in other literature, especially in other literary treatments of myth. Eliot's "classical" anti-Romanticism may be understood according to this dual concern with myth and gender, in that his poetry simultaneously derives from and attacks a perceived "feminised" Romantic tradition, one which focuses on female characters and which fetishises, particularly, a sympathetic portrayal of femmes fatales of classical myth, such as Circe, Lamia and Venus. Eliot is thus subverting, or "correcting", what are themselves often subversive genderings of myth. Another aspect of myth, that of the quest, is set in opposition to the predatory female by Eliot. A number of early poems place flâneur figures in the role of questers in a context of constraining feminine influence. These questers attempt, via mysticism, to escape from or blur gender and sexuality, or may be ensnared by such things in fertility rituals. A sadomasochistic motivation towards martyrdom is present in poems between 1911 and 1920. With its dual characteristics of disguise and exposure, Eliotic allusion to ritual and myth is itself a ritual (of literary re-enactment) based on a myth (of literature), namely Eliot's "Tradition". Allusive reconfiguration being a two-way process, Eliot's poetry is often implicitly subverted or "corrected" by its own allusions. Thus we are offered more complex representations of gender than may first appear; female characters may be viewed as sympathetic as well as predatory, male ones as being constructed often from representations of femininity rather than masculinity. The poems themselves demonstrate intense awareness of this fluctuation of gender, which appears in earlier poems as a threat, but in The Waste Land as the potential for a rapprochement between genders. This poem comprises multiple layers of re-enactments and reconfigurations of gender-in-myth, centring upon Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. The Waste Land's treatment of myth should not be seen as merely reflecting a passing interest in anthropology, but as the culmination of concerns with myth and gender dating back to the earliest poetry. The complex interrelation of the two aspects leaves it unclear whether Eliot's allusive compulsion derives principally from a concern with mythologies of literature or from a concern with mythologies of gender.

This study attempts to establish a connection between the moral philosophy of F. H. Bradley, particularly as expressed in his Ethical Studies and modified in the teaching of Josiah Royce, and the moral thought of Eliot's poetic writings, beginning with "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," culminating in Four Quartets, and finding a new mode of expression in the dramas. By tracing Eliot's moral thought to the nineteenth century anti-utilitarian moral controversies out of which Bradley's Ethical Studies grew, this study clarifies Eliot's position in the history of moral philosophy. For Bradley, the end of morality is not self-gratification; it is the realization of the universal will in the will of the individual. Hence the aim of moral action must be away from self-concern and toward the duties that society imposes on the individual. The Absolute, in which all individuals and societies culminate, invites us to true self-realization, while the egotistic self solicits us to physical and spiritual self-indulgence. Royce modifies Bradley's Absolute by making it a redemptive community in which the selfish actions of the past are given new meaning by heroic sacrifices in the present and future. The moral thought of Eliot's poetry and drama closely parallels this ethical system. In these works, Eliot dramatizes situations in which selfless motives are scarcely distinguishable from egotistic needs, merited suffering from heroic martyrdom. In Murder in the Cathedral, for instance, Thomas the Archbishop cannot will his martyrdom for the good of God's kingdom without also willing the gratification of his personal vanity. Four Quartets presents the same moral dilemma working itself out in Eliot's thoughts about his own life. He wonders if he has chosen his life as poet and critic as an unselfish response to duty--and hence as a path to God--or if he has chosen it out of personal vanity. In his considerations of time and eternity he comes to the conclusion that it is possible to redeem past mistakes by the present right intention.

No description available.

This comprehensive analysis of T. S. Eliot's literary-critical corpus provides both a long-overdue reassessment of the nature and extent of his commitment to notions of aesthetic autonomy, and an Eliotic critique of the hypostatization of art that characterizes both philosophical postmodernism and its literary-theoretical derivatives. / The broader context for these two primary objectives is the "ancient quarrel" between the poets and the philosophers and its various manifestations in the work of a number of prominent post- and anti-Enlightenment thinkers. Accordingly, I begin by highlighting several fundamental but much-neglected (or misunderstood) features of Eliot's critical canon that testify to his life-long preoccupation with this still resonant issue. Specifically, I demonstrate that there is a logical connection between his sustained opposition to those who seek in literature a substitute for religious faith or at least philosophic belief, his critique of various more or less sophisticated forms of generic confusion, and his robust defence of the integrity of different discursive forms, social practices, and disciplinary domains. In anticipation of my Eliotic critique of philosophical and literary-theoretical postmodernism, I then locate Eliot's account of these characteristic features of "the modern mind" within the context of Jurgen Habermas remarkably congenial The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. / In successive chapters, I next provide detailed analyses of Eliot's account of the discursive and functional integrity of art, literature, poetry, and criticism. By way of providing additional support for the concept of "integrity," and indicating its relevance to contemporary debates about the relationship between literature, criticism, and philosophy, I advert to the work of a number of other contemporary philosophers, John Searle, Goran Hermeren, Monroe Beardsley, Peter Lamarque, Paisley Livingston, and Richard Shusterman chief among them. I then demonstrate that Eliot's critique of the hypostatizing and levelling tendencies of many of his predecessors and contemporaries can itself legitimately be brought to bear on the similar practices of contemporary postmoderns such as Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. / I conclude by suggesting that a return to Eliot's literary critical corpus is both timely and instructive, for it provides a much-needed corrective to some late twentieth-century trends in literary studies, and, in particular, to the influence of philosophical postmodernism upon it.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - James Cook University, 2005. / Typescript (photocopy) Bibliography: leaves 542-561.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 403 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 388-403). Abstract available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2009 Jun. 18.