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.

This thesis is a diachronic account of T. S. Eliot’s speaking voice, which, over fifty years, developed into the meticulously crafted tool of the twentieth-century author and critic and the politically and socially powerful instrument of the public intellectual. Eliot’s voice, although certainly the offspring of the nineteenth-century marriage of authorship as a bona fide profession and oral performance, was, however, unique in its responsiveness to twentieth-century legal and political debates on national identity and stability, copyright, and the powerful potential of recording technologies to both disseminate an author’s words almost exponentially whilst simultaneously encroaching on the traditional material of authorship: print. Indeed, what underpins this thesis is the argument that he was both fascinated by and actively involved in shaping those very discourses on the authority of the spoken voice in the belief that the power of the spoken word, and ultimately of his own voice, held an unrivalled ability to impact on social behaviour and national stability.

Ng, Chak Kwan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-136). / Abstract also in Chinese. / INTRODUCTION / The Necessity of Being Performative: / the Cases of William Wordsworth and T. S. Eliot --- p.1 / Chapter CHAPTER ONE --- "Context, Literary Events and the Institution of Literature" --- p.12 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO --- Individualism: the Invention of Romantic Subjectivity in William Wordsworth --- p.50 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- Subjectivity in Crisis: the Invention of Modern Subjectivity in T. S. Eliot --- p.90 / "Conclusion ""Change More Than Language"": The Acts of Poetry" --- p.127 / WORKS CITED AND BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.132

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大部份的批評家都同意時間在艾略特的《四首四童奏》中是個重覆出現的主題。在每首四重奏中都有詩篇處理時間的主題。然而，雖然時間在《四首四重奏》中是個重要的主題，卻鮮少有批評家願意下功夫有系統地研究此一主題。因比，我認為在《四首四重奏》中，時間此一主題仍有許多批判的空間。而這就是我決定要有系統地研究《四首四重奏》中時間主題的原因。 時間在《四首四重奏》中展現許多不同的面貌。如同每首四重奏所顯現的，時間可以是哲理的、神祕的、以及先驗的。因比要將時間的概念簡化為單一的意念是困難的。然而，雖然要定義時間是困難的，我仍將在論文中探討《四首四重奏》中所呈現的時間之不同面相以及追溯時間朝向永恆時刻發展的形態。在本論文，我採取全方位的觀點，俾使我能夠探索時間的多重面貌。最重要的是，我能夠證明永恆的時刻為時間的中心概念。而此一中心概念就是時間形態的基礎所在。 除了導論和結論外，我將論文分為四章，依照四首四重奏的的順序。每首四重奏都體現了一種獨特的永恆時間觀。 「焚毀諾頓」將討論玫瑰花園中深刻的時刻以及模稜兩可的時間中心。 「東科村」將探討不斷循環的時間形態。 「海難岩」將著重在時間和永恆的交叉點。 「小吉丁」將重心放在當下以及由火和玫瑰結合所帶來的永恆時刻。最後的總結是永恆的時刻是艾略特於《四首四重奏》所追求時間形態最終的目標。 / Most critics would agree that time is a recurrent theme in Four Quartets. In each quartet, we have passages which deal with the theme of time. However, in spite of the significance of time as a major theme in Four Quartets. there are none the less few critics who take pains to study the theme of time systematically. Therefore, it still leaves, I think, much room for critical re-evaluation of the importance of time as a theme in Four Quartets. And this is the reason why I decide to do research on the concept of time in Four Quartets both thematically and systematically. Times assumes multifarious guises in Four Quartets. It may be philosophical, mystical, or even transcendental, as each quartet will demonstrate. Thus, it is difficult to simplify the concept of time as a single idea. However, despite the difficulty of defining time in specific terms, I neverthless intend, in my thesis, not only to explore the various aspects of time exemplified in Four Quartets but also to trace the pattern of time as a kind of development leading toward timeless moments. The methodology I adopt in this thesis is an all-embracing perspective which is both larhe and broad enough for me to probe into the different aspects of time and, most important of all, to seek a central, unifying concept of time-the timeless moment-on which the pattern of time is based. Besides, I intend to divide the body of my thesis into four chapters, following the sequence of the four quartets. Each quartet embodies a unique version of timeless moments. “Burnt Norton”will focus on the intensified moment in the rose-garden and the ambivalent center of time-the still point. “East Coker”will focus on the pattern of time as succession of the begining and the end. “The Dry Salvages”will focus on the point of intersection of the timeless with time. “Little Gidding”will focus on the immediate present and the timeless moment which culminates in the union of the fire and the rose. And finally I will conclude with the proposition that the timeless moment is the ultimate goal Eliot would like to achieve in pursuing the pattern of time in Four Quartets.

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.