Many prominent critics have considered T. S. Eliot as a serious poet, while ignoring some pivotal elements of nonsense verse in his poetry. On the basis of Eliot's definition of poetry expounded in The Sacred Wood as "a superior amusement" or "some monstrous abuse of words", this paper examines some fundamental aspects of nonsense verse in the tradition of English poetry, and moves on to investigate some nonsensical aspects of Eliot's poetry.

Eliot's quoting of the teaching of Hinduism in The Waste Land could be interpreted as a case of "romantic orientalism" leading to a sort of colonial exploitation or vampirism taking life force from the non-Western. Aware of the easy pitfalls of post-colonialism as a "prejudice" against a prejudice of the West or "resentment" at and vengeance on the West, a post-colonial reading of the Western cannons dealing with non-Western sources should be done not in a tribunal of the non-Western accusers but in a fair and third tribunal. In Eliot's case, a thorough reading of the commands from Hinduism (give, be compassionate and control) in 'What the Thunder Said' will reveal that he is free from any charges of orientalism. "Shantih"(peace) coming at the end of 'What the Thunder Said' will determine the character of the commands from Hinduism. If it is interpreted as a reward, the commands are hypothetical ones―'if you do these, 'peace' will be given as a reward for your act'. But if it is interpreted as a gift, the commands are absolute and categorical ones in the Kantian sense―'just act, 'peace' may come as a gift, but not necessarily.' As ethical commands, they are absolute and categorical ones. And different interpretations of 'the Thunder' by its addressees demonstrate that the ethical command addresses each individual singularly. Absoluteness and singularity characterize the the ethical commands of 'the Thunder.' The ethical commands of Hinduism are applied to everybody in contrast to the command of the vegetation ceremonies applying to kings alone. In a time of vegetation ceremonies and the Grail quest, kings and knights are supposed to take all the responsibility on situations on behalf of people, who can sit back to watch the development and demand the sacrifice of kings if things go wrong. It is a time of heroes. But in the present when all heroes disappear, everybody can be a hero taking in charge of whatever happens. Nobody is exempted from the ethical command addressing not only inert and inactive people in 'the Waste Land' but Eliot and Tiresias, the seer of 'the Waste Land' and the readers. Whatever rebirth in the West or elsewhere will depend on faithful embodiments of the ethical command.

T. S. Eliot has woven into the fabric of Four Quartets themes and symbols from a variety of Christian and non-Christian mystical sources. One of the powerful mystical elements is derived from the 16th century Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, whose spiritual exercises stand for the Negative Way. In the Western theology, there are two distinctive ways in which Christian saints or poets can perceive the Divine Reality. They are the Affirmative Way and the Negative Way. The Affirmative Way is the same idea with the doctrine or poetry of immanence, and the Negative Way with the doctrine or poetry of transcendence. T. S. Eliot's poetry is influenced by the tradition of the Negative Way or the poetry of transcendence. This thesis intends to study what characteristics the Affirmative Way or the Negative Way respectively has, and what is the theory of St. John's dark night of the soul. Also it wishes to trace which elements Eliot took from St. John and which elements he refused to take. Finally, in his masterpiece Four Quartets, this study will observe how St. John's negative theology is crystallized into the inner structure of the poem. Also this thesis wishes to reveal in what sense Eliot's poetry can be named the poetry of transcendence. Hopkins perceives the unity of nature, a poet and God, therefore he depicts the nature like "The world is charged with the grandeur of God." But Eliot is not eager to perceive the immanent presence of God in the power and beauty of nature. Instead, the poet is evoked with partial ecstasy and partial dread and goes through purgation process and afterwards reaches self-oblivion or union with God. In Eliot's idiom, he wishes to "go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy." In "Burnt Norton" III and "East Coker" III Eliot gives powerful expression to St. John's Negative Way. In these parts Eliot tries to apply St. John's theory, which was, originally, individual way of spiritual exercises, to diagnosing the collective spiritual darkness of modern London. Eliot seems to declare such a modern society must pass through the painful self-negation and complete deprivation, as shown in St. John's Negative Way. According to John X. Cooper, such idea of Eliot's is possibly true, because if the individual purification cannot bring us back from the abyss, the mere social world can hold absolutely no hope. We can hear Eliot's prophetic voice saying that after descending to the bottom and confronting the absolute solitude and abyss, the soul can arise from the dark night of purgation towards the world of light. Four Quartets, however, remains first and foremost a poem not a poetic version of mystical theology. Although Eliot alludes to and even paraphrases St. John's dark night of the soul, St. John's negative theology can be only one of the powerful threads in Eliot's poetical fabric.

Viewing the contemporary West as the world that experienced the total crisis of civilization, Eliot, a representative poet of modernism, sought to uncover the deep-seated problems of modernity. For Eliot, the full chaos of the early twentieth century Europe arose not only from the socio-economical problems but, more significantly, from the crisis of sensibility and morality. Keenly penetrating into the crisis of modernity and modern subjectivity, Eliot re-presented in his early poems the modern city as the time-space of a secular hell and urban residents as ghostly/fragmentary figures. Human bodies were, for him, not merely biological but cultural territories, in which the agenda of subjectivity, otherness, gender, and sexuality was confronted and intertwined. Especially, the "urban eyes" which frequently appeared in his poems profoundly dramatized theses agendas.

T. S. Eliot's "Gerontion" (1919) is so ambiguous that it is almost impossible for the reader to escape the labyrinth of interpretations constructed by critics and scholars with regard to various allusions, obscure poetic dictions and phrases, and contentious images and symbols. The purpose of this paper is to pave a clear path through the labyrinth of conflicting theories and interpretations by contrasting and analyzing the labyrinthine ones on Gerontion's phantasmagoric dramatic monologue. The complicated and controversial interpretations of the battle symbolism, "the jew," "house," "Christ the tiger," characters, "knowledge," "History," "tree," "you," "gull," "the Trades," etc., are traced without bias or ambiguity. Gerontion meditates on depraved transubstantiation, the devouring Christ the tiger, History compared to Satan or a prostitute, and humanity annihilated into atomic fragments. Gerontion also evokes a variety of symbols of the collapse of Western Civilization. He, as a character, embodies the concept of "dissociation of sensibility," for by the end of the poem, his infirm body disappears and thought alone remains. All these things can be revealed to the reader who passes through the labyrinth of interpretations.

Since the Bible and T. S. Eliot's poetry are highly verbal texts, both manifest the intertextual effects of rhetoric which unify sound and sense. The various rhetorical patterns and devices of the Bible play the crucial role of creating mystic experience in Eliot's poetry. While the Bible used authentic oration of primary rhetoric and secondary rhetoric to create divine experience, Eliot poeticized mainly secondary rhetoric to recreate mystic experience. As Greek oratory rhetoricians deliberately used art as an argument from probability to maximize aesthetic experience beyond human reason since the 5th century BC, Eliot employed synthetic rhetoric which he was preconceptualized by the Bible for artistic experience. In this sense, C. S. Lewis and Eliot resisted the rational literary study of the Bible because the Bible required the religious experience. Therefore, just as the Bible needs creative readers, Eliot's poetry requires creative readers because his poetry is an expressive tool. Rhetorical and figurative devices of the Bible influenced the poetics of Eliot in that biblical allusion, symmetry, parallelism, antithesis, chiasmus, authority, mysticism, homily exegesis, typology, and paradox were consistently used by the poet from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" through Four Quartets. In particular, Eliot's "Four Quartets" is full of these rhetorical patterns and devices of the Bible which include redemption, atonement, and incarnation. In the poem, Eliot used this biblical pattern of Christ's incarnation which united antithetical forces of the physical and the spiritual, in time and out of time, possibility and impossibility, mortality and immortality, death and life, moment and eternity, coldness and hotness, and stillness and movement. Since Eliot used biblical myth, parable, allusion, and reference in his poems, his poetry became self-consuming, timeless, open, and prophetic as the Bible did. He poeticized his text to maximize the mystic experience of multiple meanings by using biblical rhetoric. Therefore, the biblical rhetoric furnishes the important role of promoting the divine novelty in Eliot's artistic poetry and strengthening the assertion of authority for the total mystic experience.