Literature cannot be discussed in a social and cultural vacuum, because it is a culture-bound political construct. This paper investigates the Iimits of the modernist canon, focusing on the relationship between T. S. Eliot and women. Previous formalistic readings of Eliot is이ated the critics and readers from social and biographical concerns, which made it impossible to evaluate him in a balanced viewpoint. In recent decades, as Gibert indicates, "the criteria used to evaluate writers and to understand literary history have shifted from an emphasis on formal elements to an emphasis on ethical and moral ones. The poetics of Eliot, who is considered one of the most influential leading modernists, is closely related to his politics implied in his poetics.’'(191). Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in their essay entitled "Tradition and Female Talent" in No Man ’'s Land, attacks the mas띠Iinity of the modernists, especially Eliot, identifying modernism as masculinism. This paper reviews the re-evaluation of Eliot and of Iiterary modernism by such feminist critics. There can be found some problems and limits in the process of the formation of the modernist canon, which is delicately related with masculinism as indicated by Gilbert and Gubar. However, their presumption that modernism is a product of sexual battle also reveals its Iimits, because it is developed by the use of extreme binary logic. Consequently, this paper, trying to pin down the position of Eliot in the modernist canon, aims to extend the horizon of the understanding of Eliot and modernism as well, by indicating the problems and Iimits in the formation of the modernist canon and also those of the feminist criticism. Its clue lies in Eliot’s essay "Tradition and the lndividual Talent." ’Tradition’ by which Eliot means involves in it the possibility of the revision and innovation as well as the reservation. It is because "The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them." as Eliot emphasized in his essay. When the dynamism implied in the concept of "tradition" is properly understood, the new (the really new) work of art by women writers will be included in tradition, and the feminist criticism will be properly evaluated beyond its misunderstandings and distortions revealed in the blind attack on modemist writers and the modemist canon as well.

The purpose of this study is to link Eliot’s exploration of “silence” and “negation” in Four Quartets with Derridean deconstruction, especially his essay, “How to Avoid Speaking.” The Eliot/Derrida parallel of this paper deals with a real question that one work can illuminate the other, rather than pursuing the similarities of their thoughts and revealing the interactions or influences. Eliot and Derrida share a common distrust of language. Eliot’s exploration of the void seems to be close to Derrida’s assertion, and Eliot’s “still point” is like an approach to the idea of différance. Throughout his career, the sense of the void never really leaves Eliot. Derrida also mentions about his implicit relation to negative theology. In Four Quartets, however, we can locate his turn toward the value of humility as an important difference between Eliot and Derrida. Eliot raises a question whether silence, in surpassing language, indeed fulfills the vision of unity and eternity; or only by negation can we indicate what remains forever beyond the conditions of representation. Thus one of his greatest concerns is the spiritual vicissitudes of finding and keeping a viable way.

Centering around with the marriage in 1915, in the poems that were written before the year we can find characters who are timid and indecisive. It is because Eliot grew up in the puritan family and so he controlled his passions in everything. In the poems that were written after the marriage we can find Eliot's negative views about women. It is because Eliot was influenced on his father and daughters thinking that “Sex and sin were the same thing” (Matthews 22) and on Vivienne's having a chronic nervous disease, a headache, and stomach cramps and on Vivienne's having been involved with not her husband but other men. In conclusion, Eliot transformed all the situations caused from Eliot's unhappy marriage with Vivienne into the materials for the poems. Especially we can find the negative views about women in his poetry written after the marriage.

This paper is to show how properly the contagious concepts stemmed from Deleuze can be applied to literary text, even if Deleuzean reading that has flooded as yet home or abroad is hard to practice. However, we always feel it troublesome that the challenge is so hard and even fatuous in the sense that Deleuze’s texts are inclined to decline to be grasped by readers. Moreover, even the poem of T. S. Eliot’s also would get out of reader’ obsessional desire to ‘territorialize’ the poem. In the dilemma, we find a aphorism of Lacan’s as a western high monk: we can’t read all texts of an author and can’t grasp all of his/her identity even if he/she has scoured all of his/her texts thoroughly. Thus what we know is no less than broken knowledge, so someone who argues that he/she is a know-all must be totalitarian or paranoiac. Deleuzean reading can be practiced in view of not ‘systematic reading’ but ‘affective reading.’ The former chases after comprehensive ideas as if readers would be gods in the Olympus mount, but the latter enjoys ‘intensity’ or velocity of each part composing of text as asserted by Spinoza. After passing through this poem, the trend of ‘deterritorialization’ is perceived just like a form of melody, ‘rondo,’ in which main melody is recurring with marginal variations intervened every movement and at last reduced to ultimate themes which can be summarized such as state of thought without image, enlightenment and revision. To reach the poetic truth, Eliot mobilizes a collage of intertextual images such as a gruesome world of Dante’s hell to which ‘line of flight’ or ‘singularity’ as death takes human in which confession makes possible atonement or salvation. “a patient etherized” means lethargic being castrated by the norm or value of community and paralyzed by the conventional images in ‘socius’ such as primitive, despotic and capitalistic state. “yellow fog” seems to veil falsehood of reality, but indicates difficulty of rational judgement and “time” as ‘abstract machine’ of self-contradiction frees oneself from oneself with the same identity made up of present(‘chronos’), past and future(‘aion’) articulated only by human as subject of thought. Ego riding on timetable is determined to be confined in routine of life, which means that we must take off each conventional mask. Thus “ragged claws” cut causation as ‘rigid line’ of world and Apostle John and “Lazarus” as saints undergo metamorphosis of death or rebirth in that the one was martyred and the other returned from across Lethe of oblivion as Zarathustra would face against his fate. “the eternal Footman” functions as self-disciplined subject succeeding to regime or prisoner contained in ‘panopticon.’ “Hamlet” and “the Fool” mean that the former as ‘war machine’ tries to subvert ‘the State apparatus’ or ‘molar aggregates,’ and the latter denies despotic ‘normalization’ or generalization. Contrary to the mundane situation, “mermaids” and “sea-girls” stand for becoming-imperceptible through ‘decoded flow’ happening when the poetic narrator fed up with stuffed images drowns himself as moving ‘phenotext’(the signifying system) to ‘genotext’(not reducible to the language system), and awakes himself in the revision of Things. At last Eliot completes “the love song” with the esoteric tree diagram erasing image by image, and shows us the terrible road to enlightenment.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is one of the most successful early poems of T. S. Eliot. In this poem Eliot expresses the sordid and waste world which shows no possibility of salvation. The method of salvation or the salvation itself is symbolized as the “overwhelming question”. The question of salvation is overwhelming not only because the speaker of this poem cannot deal with it properly but also it cannot be solved in this waste world. The world is sordid, turbulent and waste, and human beings in this world are alienated. Eliot’s sense of alienation has its root in his early life, social activities, leaving America and acquiring British citizenship. This alienation is expressed in this poem as the impossibility of expressing his own thoughts and communicating with the women. The speaker even wishes to lead an animal life. The speaker’s wish to be lower animals indicates that the world is in the lowest level of existence. The speaker’s wish to save the world is expressed as the action of going to the women. What the speaker aspires is the true communication with the women not only on the physical level but also on the spiritual level. The communication will put an end to the alienation and save this world from its sordid and waste situation. Though the speaker’s wish isn’t fulfilled, we understand the “overwhelming question” is connected with the salvation of the world.

This paper purports to read “Portrait of a Lady” in terms of Henry James’ influence. Unlike the influence of French Symbolist poets, H. James’s influence has not drawn many critical attentions. Eliot is greatly indebted to H. James in many ways. First of all, it is James from whom Eliot had learned that poetry ought to be as well written as prose. Also, as Eliot himself said, he was stimulated by the method to make a place real not descriptively but by something happening there and to let a situation, a relation, and an atmosphere give only what the writer wants in James’s stories. Under the inspiration of James, Eliot can cultivate his gift for dramatic verse. So, we can say the dramatic quality of Eliot’s poetry which is no less than in James’s stories, is not irrelevant to the Jamesian method. Considering such influence of James, this paper aims at comparing Eliot’s “Portrait of a Lady” and James’s The Portrait of a Lady and “The Beast in the Jungle”, in the light of the character’s failure and frustration. Especially, Eliot’s “Portrait of a Lady” and James’s “The Beast in the Jungle” portray a man who fails in having relations with a woman in common. In both of works, each man is distinctively selfish. We can investigate more concretely in what ways “the egotism of a man” is expressed and presented as a hindrance in human relations in both works.

T. S. Eliot had a wide-ranging poetic sensibility by incorporating in his poetry not only the best of European culture and American mind but also Indian thought and tradition. He used Indian ideas elaborately in his poems. This study focused on the elements of bhakti yoga depicted in his poem Four Quartets. Bhakti is one of the three major ways to salvation in Hinduism. It refers to the attitude of devotion to God. The bhakta usually devotes himself to a personal God, such as Kṛṣṇa. Eliot introduced this representative personal God Kṛṣṇa in the Four Quartets. Bhakti yoga emphasizes on loving devotion and surrender of the self to the personal God, leading a devotee to inner transformation through grace. Bhakti yoga considers “humility” as an essential tool to seek the love of God. Going through “East Coker ,” one may encounter bhakti yoga’s ideas on humility. “The meditation on the great teacher” who guides a devotee by example is one of the various paths to bhakti. “The meditation on the great teacher” was depicted in “Little Gidding .” “The concentration” on God is also a very important way to approach God. The spiritual condition does not arise spontaneously, so man must take up the practice of concentration. Concentration requires a devotee to abandon egoism and desires. By this practice, the man may gradually make himself fit for the steadfast directing of the spirit of God. The religious idea of concentration was transformed into poetic expression in “Burnt Norton.” In his poem, Eliot has drawn the ideas of bhakti yoga. The use of these ideas confirms Eliot’s assimilation of bhakti yoga. There is no denying the fact that such ideas of bhakti yoga left its marks on the Four Quartets.