Thesis (M.A.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-157).

The works of the English poet T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) reveal a thematic and aesthetic interest in the subject of “time” as human experience, whether collective, as history, or subjective, as memory. His first poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1916), is a pioneer experiment on the stream of consciousness technique through which are shown the complex mental processes of its character, Prufrock, in a complex fabric of times and logical chains. The temporal dimension was an object of analysis for many critics of the poem, most of whom relied on interpretations based on philosophical perspectives, dispensing, however, with another fundamental aspect of “The Love Song”: the irony. Thus we sought to reconcile in our study the two main aspects of the poem, time and irony, lessening the philosophical perspective in favor of an aesthetic and stylistic approach. For this purpose we proposed an analysis of the time in “The Love Song”, based on the the rhetorical study of Dubois et. al. (1960), and its interpretation following the insights of Søren Kierkegaard (2010; 2013) and Paul de Man (1986; 1996) concerning the relationship between irony and temporality. As a result, we observed that the kind of time depicted in the poem corresponds to the time that theoriticians define as characteristic of the structure of irony: a time in which the present is felt as tedious or discontinuous; the past, as absent of mystified; and the future, as postponed or as anxiety. / A obra do poeta inglês T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) reflete um interesse temático e estético sobre o “tempo” enquanto experiência humana, seja coletiva, como história, seja subjetiva, como memória. Seu primeiro poema publicado, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1916), é um experimento pioneiro na técnica do fluxo de consciência, através do qual revelam-se processos mentais de seu protagonista, Prufrock, em uma complexa construção de tempos e encadeamentos lógicos. A dimensão temporal foi, de fato, objeto de análise de diversos críticos do poema, os quais, em sua maioria, recorreram a interpretações baseadas em perspectivas filosóficas, prescindindo, todavia, de outro aspecto fundamental do poema: a ironia. Portanto, procuramos conciliar, em nosso estudo, os dois aspectos que consideramos centrais em “The Love Song”, o tempo e a ironia, atenuando a perspectiva filosófica em favor de uma abordagem estética e estilística. Para tanto, propusemos uma análise do tempo em “The Love Song”, baseada no estudo retórico de Dubois et. al. (1960), e sua interpretação a partir das visões de Søren Kierkegaard (2010; 2013) e Paul de Man (1986; 1996) sobre a relação entre ironia e temporalidade. Ao fim, constatamos que o tempo predominante no poema corresponde ao que os teóricos definem como sendo característico da estrutura da ironia: um tempo no qual o presente é sentido como tedioso ou descontínuo; o passado, como inexistente ou ficcionado; e o futuro, como prorrogado ou como angústia.

T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are two of the most prominent figures of Anglo-American modernist poetry, both having played central roles in the development of a distinct poetic style and atmosphere in the early 20th century by means of their publishing and editing the work of other poets as well as publishing their own poetry. However, Eliot and Pound have an interest in the classical world that is not clearly shared with the majority of other modernist poets, and this interest distinguishes the sense of "modernism" that Eliot and Pound promoted from that of other major modernists like William Carlos Williams. The general notion of modernism representing a radical break from tradition is, in the works of Eliot and Pound, not at all obvious despite the two poets' shared status at the forefront of Anglo-American modernist poetry. This thesis explores the aesthetic theories that Eliot and Pound describe in their prose works and compares them with the aesthetic theories of other modernist poets to illustrate how Eliot and Pound appreciate the past, and in particular the classical world, in ways that other modernists simply do not.

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艾略特經常被視為高蹈派的現代主義作家,他的主要任務是捍衛精英藝術的純粹性,以對抗大眾文化的入侵。這樣的看法加深現代精英藝術和通俗大眾文化之間的分野。將艾略特歸類於屬於現代精英藝術作家的陣營,簡化了其作品的深刻性。在後現代的年代中, 精英藝術和大眾文化之間的分野逐漸糢糊。採後現代主義的觀點來閱讀艾略特的作品,批評家發現艾略特熱愛大眾文化的一面。跟隨前人研究的腳步,本論文主要工作之一,即是探討艾略特兩部詩劇--史威尼論爭與家園重聚中大眾文化的成份。 巴赫汀是二十世紀重要的文學理論及評論家。對於文學中,尤其是小說這個文類中,對話與嘉年華的現象的研究,論述豐富,為此派理論與批評的大師。採用他的嘉年華理論作為本論文的研究方法,目的在闡釋艾略特的作品,其實遵循了嘉年華的文類傳統。而透過艾略特的努力,此一文類傳統的語言不僅更加豐富,同時也得到新生。在本論文中,史威尼論爭與家園重聚中的多音性與嘉年華的現象為研究的主題所在。 另外,以巴赫汀對怪誕的現實主義的描述為範本,這兩部詩劇當中的市場語言,節慶的形式或醜怪的意象也予以探究。這些研究結果發現,史威尼論爭與家園重聚中大眾文化的成份,以及嘉年華的精神是不容忽視的。 Table of Contents Chinese Abstract English Abstract Abbreviations Introduction------------------------------------------------1 Chapter 1: T. S. Eliot’s Poetic Drama and M. M. Bakhtin’s Theory of Carnivaliztion-----------------------------------18 Chapter 2: Carnivalization in Sweeney Agonistes------------39 Chapter 3: Carnivalization in The Family Reunion-----------66 Conclusion-------------------------------------------------93 Bibliography-----------------------------------------------96 / T. S. Eliot is usually considered by critics as a representative of the high modernist writer whose mission is to protect the purity of high art from the contamination of the popular culture. Such an opinion is to underpin the dichotomy between high modernist art and low popular culture. By taking Eliot on the side of high modernism, critics tend to simplify the profundity of Eliot’s works. In our postmodern age, that the phenomenon of the increasing blurred boundaries between high art and popular culture is quite obvious. David Chinitz applies such a postmodern vantage point to read Eliot’s works and shows us that Eliot is a lover of popular culture. Following Chinitz’s study, I intend to examine the elements of popular culture in Eliot’s two poetic drama – Sweeney Agonistes and The Family Reunion. M. M. Bakhtin is an important theorist and literary critic in the twentieth century. His achievement on the theories of dialogism and carnivalization is significant. Applying his theory of carnivalization to read Sweeney Agonistes and The Family Reunion, I hope to argue that Eliot, be it consciously or unconsciously, follows the genre tradition of carnivalization. Moreover, he enriches and perfects the language of this genre tradition and thus makes this genre tradition reborn and renewed. In this thesis, I argue that Sweeney Agonistes and The Family Reunion are constructed under the principles of polyphony and carnivalization. Besides, based on the material bodily principle of grotesque realism, an analysis of the grotesque elements in these two works, such as marketplace languages, or popular-festive forms and images, or banquet images or images of bodily low stratum, is given in this thesis. To a conclusion, through this Bakhtinian reading, the elements of popular culture and the carnivalistic spirits in Sweeney Agonistes and The Family Reunion are revealed.

‘The poet’, Eliot wrote, ‘is occupied with frontiers of consciousness beyond which words fail, though meanings still exist’. This dissertation is an investigation into the ways in which four poets – Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot – imagine what it might mean to labour in verse towards the ‘frontiers of consciousness’. This is an old question about the value of poetry, about the kinds of understanding, feeling, and participation that become uniquely available as we read (or write) verse. But it is also a question that becomes peculiarly pressing in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. In my introductory chapter, I sketch out some of the philosophical, theological, and aesthetic contexts in which this question about what poetry might do for us becomes particularly acute: each of these four poets, I suggest, invests in verse as a means of sustaining belief in those things that seem excluded, imperilled, or forfeited by what is felt to be a peculiarly modern or (to use a contested term) ‘secularized’ understanding of the world. To write poetry becomes a labour towards enabling or ratifying otherwise untenable experiences of belief. But while my broader concern is with what is at stake philosophically, theologically, and even aesthetically in this labour towards the frontiers of consciousness, my more particular concern is with the ways in which these poets think in verse about how the poetic organisation of language brings us to momentary consciousness of otherwise unavailable ‘meanings’. For each of these poets, it is as we begin to listen in to the paralinguistic sounds of verse that we become conscious of that which lies beyond the realms of the linguistic imagination. These poets develop figures within their verse in order to theorize the ways in which this peculiarly poetic ‘music’ brings us to consciousness of that which exceeds or transcends the limits of the world in which we think we live. These figures begin as images of the half-seen (glimmering, haunting, dappling, crossing) but become a way of imagining that which we might only half-hear or half-know. Chapter 2 deals with Tennyson’s figure of glimmering light that signals the presence, activity, or territory of the ‘higher poetic imagination’; In Memoriam, I argue, represents the development of this figure into a poetics of the ‘glimpse’, a poetry that repeatedly approaches the horizon of what might be seen or heard. Chapter 3 is concerned with Hardy’s figuring of the ‘hereto’ of verse as a haunted region, his ghostly figures and spectral presences becoming a way of thinking about the strange experiences of listening and encounter that verse affords. Chapter 4 attends to the dappled skins and skies of Hopkins’ verse and the ways in which ‘dapple’ becomes a theoretical framework for thinking about the nature and theological significance of prosodic experience. And Chapter 5 considers the visual and acoustic crossings of Eliot’s verse as a series of attempts to imagine and interrogate the proposition that the poetic organisation of language offers ‘hints and guesses’ of a reality that is both larger and more significant than our own.

This thesis explores ways in which T. S. Eliot, when he wrote his most autobiographical poetic work<em> Four Quartets</em>, might have been influenced by Thoreaus famously autobiographical prose work <em>Walden</em>, written nearly a century earlier<em>.</em> Much evidence suggests that Eliot knew of the earlier writer and his work. Not only did Eliot assign <em>Walden</em> as suggested reading in a course he taught, but as time went on Eliot also admitted that he was influenced by the New England literary tradition. Reading <em>Four Quartets</em> in light of <em>Walden</em> and its context not only helps a reader understand the connections between the two works, it also gives a reader a better understanding of <em>Four Quartets</em>' fundamental meanings. Although Eliot in <em>Four Quartets</em> adds another layer of his spiritual goals beyond those expressed in <em>Walden</em>, he expresses his religio-philosophical quest for Incarnational "still point[s] of the turning world" (<em>Burnt Norton</em> 62) using autobiographical aspects and poetic tropes that are in many ways strikingly similar to the expressions also present in <em>Walden</em>. </p> <p>The chapters of this thesis unfold these concepts. My Introduction highlights some of the key connections. Chapter One sets the stage for the discussion of the Incarnation by explaining how <em>Four Quartets</em>' spiritual round-trip journey from England to America is grounded in real world places and experiences. This chapter also explains how this guardedly autobiographical re-collection of an almost-real journey includes a response to Eliots personal history and to his literary ancestors, including Thoreau<em>.</em> In Chapter Two, I unpack the similarities and differences between many of the religio-philosophical questions asked in the two works, focusing in on Eliots and Thoreau's complex handlings of such themes as simplicity versus complexity, Incarnation, stillness versus activity, and the difficulty of achieving spiritual goals. Finally, these religio-philosophical questions are incarnated in very similar poetic devices and tropes within both works; in Chapter Three, I describe the most important of these. The "still point of the turning world" (Eliot, <em>Burnt Norton</em> 62) and the "mathematical point" (Thoreau, <em>Walden</em> 1.100) are rich metaphors that form the heart of this chapter.</p>

This thesis explores ways in which T. S. Eliot, when he wrote his most autobiographical poetic work<em> Four Quartets</em>, might have been influenced by Thoreaus famously autobiographical prose work <em>Walden</em>, written nearly a century earlier<em>.</em> Much evidence suggests that Eliot knew of the earlier writer and his work. Not only did Eliot assign <em>Walden</em> as suggested reading in a course he taught, but as time went on Eliot also admitted that he was influenced by the New England literary tradition. Reading <em>Four Quartets</em> in light of <em>Walden</em> and its context not only helps a reader understand the connections between the two works, it also gives a reader a better understanding of <em>Four Quartets</em>' fundamental meanings. Although Eliot in <em>Four Quartets</em> adds another layer of his spiritual goals beyond those expressed in <em>Walden</em>, he expresses his religio-philosophical quest for Incarnational "still point[s] of the turning world" (<em>Burnt Norton</em> 62) using autobiographical aspects and poetic tropes that are in many ways strikingly similar to the expressions also present in <em>Walden</em>. </p> <p>The chapters of this thesis unfold these concepts. My Introduction highlights some of the key connections. Chapter One sets the stage for the discussion of the Incarnation by explaining how <em>Four Quartets</em>' spiritual round-trip journey from England to America is grounded in real world places and experiences. This chapter also explains how this guardedly autobiographical re-collection of an almost-real journey includes a response to Eliots personal history and to his literary ancestors, including Thoreau<em>.</em> In Chapter Two, I unpack the similarities and differences between many of the religio-philosophical questions asked in the two works, focusing in on Eliots and Thoreau's complex handlings of such themes as simplicity versus complexity, Incarnation, stillness versus activity, and the difficulty of achieving spiritual goals. Finally, these religio-philosophical questions are incarnated in very similar poetic devices and tropes within both works; in Chapter Three, I describe the most important of these. The "still point of the turning world" (Eliot, <em>Burnt Norton</em> 62) and the "mathematical point" (Thoreau, <em>Walden</em> 1.100) are rich metaphors that form the heart of this chapter.</p>

The “Unreal City” of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land looms large over the landscape of critical inquiry into the metropolitan character of Anglo-American modernism. Characterized by the disorienting speed and chaos of modern life, the shock of harsh new environments and bewildering technologies, and the isolating and alienating effects of the inhuman urban mob, the city emerges here, so the story goes, as a site of extreme social disintegration and devastating psychic trauma; as a site that generates a textuality of overwhelming dynamism, phantasmagoric distortion, and subjective retreat. This dissertation complicates such conventional understandings of the city in modernism, proposing in place of the “Unreal City” a habitable one—an urban space and literature marked by the salutary everyday practices of city dwellers, the familiar environs of the metropolitan neighborhood, and the variety of literary modes that register such productive and adaptive dwelling processes. Taking seriously Rita Felski’s consideration of the “multiple worlds” of modernity, and thus diverging from the canonical formulations of modern urban experience put forth by the likes of Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, my work explores the richly ambivalent and ambiguous modernist response to the spatial complexities of the metropolis, drawing on the work of Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol in the two volumes of The Practice of Everyday Life to attend to the quotidian valences that signal a healthful engagement with the city. I uncover this metropoetics of habitability in the vexed response to the city’s network of interconnected spaces in T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations and The Waste Land; in the attention to the viable dwelling practices of individual urbanites—in contrast to city itself as dominant and dominating character—in John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer; in the routine daily operations on display in James Joyce’s Ulysses—breakfast, for instance, or running an errand; in the ordinary series of moments that constitute the work of everyday life in the familiar cityscape of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway; and finally in the broad-ranging depictions of urban life in Jean Rhys’s The Left Bank and Other Stories and Quartet.