This thesis intends to explicate T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets with 배e image of the rose-garden as an important c1ue to it. The mystical experience of rose-garden is the starting point of “Bumt Norton", the first poem of Four Quartets. ln “Bumt Norton", this ecstatic moment of illumination can be said to save the poet from the flux of time, even momentarily. At tbis time Eliot applies the Dantean concept of “tbe still poinl of tuming world" to tbe rose-garden experience. This image of rose-garden repeats ilself in the rest of the poem. However, the meaning of visionary experience is criticized within the work itself. In the concluding section of “Easl Coker", tbe poet altempts 10 revise his altiludes to those mystical experiences. He wishes to put more value on the enlarged consciousness covering the collective community rather than the isolated ecstatic moment of one solitary mystic. ln “The Dry Salvages" he is concemed with giving poetic form to tbeological tbougbts sucb as Annunciation and lncamation. The poet accepts historic lncamation, namely the birtb and life of Jesus Cbrist on earth, as the intersection point of the limeless with time. However, when he poeticizes the Chrislian doctrine, he just takes the method of connecting lncamation with the small experiences of iIIumÎ.nation. Now we can realize the rose-garden experience of “Bumt Norton" as “The hint half guessed" or "the gift balf understood" of Incamation, as it were, a sbadow of lncamation. Finally, at the end of “Little Gidding" the poet reaches the rose-garden once more. At tbis time tbis last rose-garden could be thought to be a more expanded one than that of “Bumt Norton", for we know well tbat it only could be reacbed after various spiritual, p이itical， and historical disciplines.

• 서광원(협성대학교) | Gwang-Won Seo