he main aim of this essay is to extract similarities between James Thomson’s The City of Dreadful Night of and The Waste Land. The names of the two poets have often been mentioned in connection, but the relation between their poetry has not drawn a serious attention. This essay is meant to track possible exchanges between the poets by examining mainly The City of Dreadful Night and The Waste Land. My focus has been on how Thomson influenced the urban scenes in Eliot’s poems and the images of the “Unreal City,” which are centered on London.Thomson’s poetry shows much influence from Dante. I have tried to present a meaningful number of verbal details showing that Eliot’s reading of Thomson was not confined to The City of Dreadful Night. Thomson seems to have also been a major influence on Eliot’s general thoughts and techniques. Eliot seems to make a good case of how a later-coming and greater-talented poet can make a more universally-appealing work out of the stuffs a locally-confined predecessor presented to the world.

• 손달례(부경대학교) | Dal-Lae Sohn