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While T.S. Eliot's mastery of the literary epigraph has often been noted, few detailed studies of his use of this technique have been attempted. The epigraph is found to be deeply rooted in the poet's fundamental aesthetic and philosophical belief, as revealed by his own critical writings. Similarly, Eliot's use of this poetic device is found to be consistent with the themes and motifs of his pre-Christian poems.Moreover, a close comparative reading of selected poems from the poet's pre-Christian period and the original works from which the epigraphs to these poems are taken demonstrates the internal thematic consistency of this body of work. Reading the poems in this manner reveals the poet's gradual movement from a despairing vision of the human condition toward a vision infused with the hopefulness of the Christian mystery. Such a reading, the study suggests, helps explain Eliot's conversion to Christianity and reconciles apparent conflicts in the poet's life and work.

One of the most unique and striking features of T. S. Eliot's poetry up to and including The Waste Land is its imagery. Far from being mere decoration, the images in these poems play a vital role in the process of poetic communication. This paper attempts to examine in some detail Eliot's image, the important influences which contributed to its development, and its function in these poems. The poems of Prufrock and Other Observations show that Eliot had perfected his own "imagism" before coming into contact with Imagist theories through Ezra Pound in 1914, These poems reveal Eliot's characteristic method of using images—which are mainly precise renderings of an urban scene—as "objective correlatives" for a wide range of thoughts and feelings, in order to dramatize the plight of the poem's speaker. It was through a close study of such figures as Charles Baudelaire, Jules Laforgue, the Jacobean dramatists, the Metaphysical poets and the philosopher Henri Bergson, that Eliot discovered his own poetic voice. Although he knew little before 1914 of the Imagists— notably T. E. Hulme, who was to influence him much later— Eliot's "imagism" shows certain similarities, in theory and practice, with the work of this important poet and theoretician. These similarities are examined in this paper to help define Eliot's own "imagism". After 1914, Ezra Pound played an important part in the development of Eliot's imagery. In general, Pound showed Eliot methods for extending to the limit the impersonality which was already a feature of Eliot's poetry. This led, through a mutual interest in the poems of Théophile Gautier, to Eliot's satirical poems in the Poems 1920 volume. These poems juxtapose concepts in the form of concrete images, many of which are drawn from a wide variety of literary sources. But Eliot was restricted by Gautier's rhyming quatrain: in the satires, dramatic intensity is sacrificed for excessive superficiality and undue complexity. "Gerontion," however, marks a return to the energy of the Prufrock poems by using images to present an awareness of individual and cultural neurosis. Finally, The Waste Land marks a climax in Eliot's development by fusing and harmonizing methods previously acquired, and achieves unity through a complex pattern of images, many of which grow out of the preceding poems. At their best, these images are not only precise sensual experiences but powerful expressions of feelings and thoughts. As such, they give ample proof that the image in Eliot's poetry is the primary means of poetic expression. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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T.S. Eliot's statement that myth is an ordering device in literature 'is constantly belied by his use of myth in his own poems'. This is the belief of the American critic Richard Chase, noted for his work on myths and mythological themes in English and American literature. Whether or not Chase is right must emerge from the chapters which follow. The purpose will be to examine the effects of the use of myths and mythological patterns on Eliot's work in general, rather than to annotate individual mythological allusions. Simply to recognise an allusion is to raise a question, not to answer one: for we have then to decide what the writer hope to achieve by its use, and whether or not he has succeeded. Unless they lead on to such questions, lists of sources contribute little to our understanding of a work. Far more important than incidental allusions are the mythological themes and patterns on the larger scale, which reveal themselves in recurrent allusions and in basic patterns of symbolism. Again, merely to recognise such a pattern is inadequate: in every case a discovery of its function in both the poem's (or play's) structure and the poet's technique should be our main concern. ... Eliot himself has made it clear that in his case the use of myths and mythological patterns has often been a fully conscious, even self-conscious process. Therefore we may apply to his work the questions mention by Norman: what functions the myths fulfil within individual works; and why Eliot uses them in the first place. This last question leads us back to a more fundamental one; why do many writers, especially modern ones, use myths 'in the first place'? The problem involves discussion of the relation between myths and literature and of the nature of myths themselves, this forms the material of the first chapter. The other chapters will deal with some of Eliot's works, attempting to explain and analyse his use of myths in them, and to illustrate its importance in each case.

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

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.