『재의 수요일』이전의 전기시에서 엘리엇은 시적 화자의 자아를 표현하는 방법을 찾아내지 못하였다. 그래서 그것은 자아를 발견하려는 또는 자아 없이 행하려는 투쟁의 과정이었다. 프루프록과 다른 관찰들 의 제사(題詞)의 마지막 2행은 시적 화자로서 자아인 ‘나’의 주체가 그림자같이 텅 빈 상태에 있으며, 이것이 ‘나’ 혼자만의 문제가 아니라 ‘우리’의 문제라는 점을 요약하고 있다. 이러한 견고하고자 하지만 견고할 수 없는 프루프록과 다른 관찰들의 주체를 ‘주체적인 것’이라보면 이러한 ‘주체적인 것’이 이 시집의 시적 화자들의 주체의 공통된 특징이다. 1917년의 프루프록과 다른 관찰들에서 계속 의문시되었던 주체의 위상에 대해서 1920년의 시집은 질문하지 않는다. 시적 화자의 주체에 대한 내면적인 회의가 해소되지는 않았지만 『시집』의 시적 화자의 주체는 ‘주체성’이라고 정의할 수 있을 것이다.

본 논문의 목적은 엘리엇의 『황무지』에 나타난 죽음을 주로 전기적 접근과 부도덕한 성애가 죽음이라는 테이레시아스의 실체적 관점에서 조명하는 것이다. 히아신스 정원, 마게이트 백사장, 선술집에서 릴의 대화, 위험 성당, 밀레 해전 등의 장면과, 바다, 템즈강, 런던교, 시티와 런던, 예루살렘, 아테네, 알렉산드리아, 비엔나 등에서 성폭행, 죽음 또는 멸망이 병치‧직조되어 죽음의 함의와 상징성을 강화시키고 있다. 요컨대, 엘리엇은 황무지에서 제 1차 세계대전 중 에게 해에 익사한 친구들인 루퍼트 브루크와 다다넬즈 해협에서 익사한 장 베르드날 뿐만 아니라 죽음의 기원을 하는 꾸마에의 무녀, 슈타른베르크 호수에 미쳐서 익사한 루트비히 2세, 익사한 페니키아 선원의 타로 카드, 즉 플레바스, 밀레 해전에서 익사한 스텟슨, 미쳐서 연못에 빠져 죽은 오필리아, 궁전이 파괴되어 흙속에 파묻힌 첨탑에 유폐되어 몰락한 아뀌뗀느 왕자, 다시 미치고 자살하는 이에로니모 등과 같이 미쳐서 물에 빠져 죽고 싶은 죽음에의 염원을 암시적‧상징적으로 표백함으로써 죽지 않고 재생의 방법을 찾게 된 것이다

T. S. 엘리엇에 대한 연구는 셀 수 없이 많이 이루어졌지만, 엘리엇이『하버드 애드보킷』(Harvard Advocate)에서 발표했던 시편에 대한 연구는 거의 행해지지 않았다. 이 시들은 1904년에서 1910년 사이에 쓰여진 것 들이다. 엘리엇 연구에서 초기시라는 용어가 사용되고 있기는 하지만, 이러한 초기시라는 명칭은 대부분 이 시기의 시를 지칭하는데 사용되고 있지는 않다. 엘리엇의 작품 전반에 걸쳐 나타나는 지속적인 주제의식과 시학을 고려해볼 때,『하버드 애드보킷』에 실린 10대 후반 20대 초의 이들은 충분히 연구해볼 만한 가치가 있는 것으로 판단된다. 여전히 이 작품들 속에도 맹아적 형태의 엘리엇의 철학과 “몰개성이론” “객관적 상관물” 과 같은 후기 시학이 초보적인 형태로 보이고 있기 때문이다. 비록 불완전하고 미성숙한 형태로 제시되고 있기는 하지만, 이러한 불완전한 시학과 미성숙의 요소들이 나중에 훨씬 더 성숙하고 완전한 시편으로 탄생하게 되는 과정을 생각해 볼 때, 그 근원적인 의미로서 『이른 청년기 시절의 시편들』은 그 의미가 충분하다고 할 수 있을 것이 다. 비록 이 작품들이 그의 후기시가 이룬 것만큼의 문학적 성취는 이룰 수 없었을지 모르지만, 그의 시학과 철학이 어떤 맹아적 형태에서 비롯된 것인지 추정할 수 있게 해주는 훌륭한 자료로서 가치가 있다고 하겠다.

Among twentieth-century Korean writings in English, those of Professor Insoo Lee are singularly impressive for their particular combination of wit, well-reasoned argument, and mastery of subtitles of English idiom at all levels. The importance of T. S. Eliot as perhaps the most influential English or American poet of the twentieth century is established. Professor Lee is, of course, well known as the translator of Eliot’s The Waste Land into Korean. His rendering of the defining poem of the first half of the twentieth century stands today as a monument in the history of Korean translation. Eliot had influenced the works contained in the volume Inside Cloud Cuckoo Land: The Voice of Korea, containing the collected essays, translations, and journalistic articles produced by Professor Lee. Each also was a force for assuming personal moral responsibility in an age defined by warfare, by the trauma resulting from warfare and destruction: the period of World War I and II and the challenges of the subsequent so-called Cold War, and by a general moral lassitude in the era. The English language writings of Professor Lee attest not only the general influence of the era in which Eliot wrote, they also reveal some of the themes and turns of phrase that characterize the writings of Eliot.

T. S. 엘리엇의 게론티온 은 ‘왜소한 늙은이’라는 의미를 지닌 게론티온의 눈으로 바라본 종교, 문화, 도덕, 인간관계의 영역에서의 근대성의 위기를 문제화하고 있다. 게론티온은 기본적으로 알레고리적인 인물로서 그의 이름은 늙은 유럽에 대한 하나의 알레고리적인 기호이며, 유대인이 소유하고 있는 그의 퇴락한 집은 세계대전이후의 유럽의 위태로운 사회·경제적 상황에 대한 하나의 생생한 삽화에 해당된다. 자신의 시대의 위기에 충격 받은 게론티온은 기독교의 성육신교리의 문제까지 추적하여 그 기원을 찾는다. ‘역사의 미로’에 갇힌 게론티온은 이 시에서 실베로씨, 하카가와, 드 토른키스트 부인, 쿨프 양을 서구의 문화적, 정신적 타락을 영속화하는 대표적인 타자들로 기재한다. 게론티온 에서 서구 문명의 위기와 뗄 수없이 결합된 것은 주체의 위기이다. 게론티온의 인간과 사회에 대한 관점은 본질적으로 니체―들뢰즈가 비판하는 반응적 허무주의와 친근성이 있다. 이 시의 마지막 대목에서 거미줄이라는 미세한 공간에서부터 큰곰자리와 같은 우주적 공간에서 게론티온이 바라다본 것은 존재들의 ‘무의 춤’이다.

『에어리얼 시집』에서 첫 시 동방박사의 여정 에 이어 두 번째 시 시므온을 위한 찬가 는 종교적 성격의 시임이 분명하다. 이 두 시는 아기 예수의 탄생을 축하하러 온 동방박사들과, 첫아들인 예수의 정결의식을 치르러 예루살렘 성전에 들린 부모를 만나는 성서의 시므온을 다루고 있다. 하지만 이 두 시 모두 예수의 죽음과 노년기의 죽음을 동시에 병치시키는 객관적 상관 기법을 사용하고 있다. 송영성구의 하나가 된 성서의 시므온의 찬가 를 죽음에 임하는 시므온의 삶에 비추어 시므온을 위한 찬가 로 번안한 엘리엇의 시는 성공회로 개종한 자신의 삶을 되돌아보고, 시므온의 삶을 스스로 삶의 지표로 세운 점에서 ‘시므온을 찬양’하는 시라 하겠다. 이로써 시므온을 위한 찬가는 엘리엇을 위한 찬가에 해당된다. 결과적으로 성서의 시므온이 예수의 모친 마리아에게 예수의 삶으로 인해 그녀의 삶이 고통스러울 것이라는 예언은 번트 노턴 에서 지적하듯이 사람과 삶에 대한 엘리엇의 진단이기도 하다. 이처럼 시므온을 위한 찬가 는『황무지』 이미지와 텅빈 사람들 의이미지를 통해 삶이 무엇으로 어떻게 만들어져야 하는가에 대한 탐색이고, 동시에 구원을 향한 엘리엇의 종교적 성찰이라 할 수 있겠다.

이 논문은 공간의 관점에서 W. B. 예이츠가 묘사한 쿨 장원과 일곱 숲 그리고 T. S. 엘리엇이 명상한 번트 노턴과 장미원을 고찰함으로써 두 시인을 비교하는 것이다. 조명한 작품들은 예이츠의『환영의 바다 』(1906)의 서시 (1900)와 일곱 숲에서 (1902) 및 쿨 호수의 야생 백조 (1919) 그리고 엘리엇의 장시『네 사중주』(1943)의 첫 번째 사중주인 번트 노턴 (1935)이다. 천국 같은 쿨 장원과 낙원 같은 번트 노턴은 에덴동산에 비유될 정도로 아주 흡사하다. 예이츠가 여러 차례 체류한 그레고리 여사의 쿨 장원은 그의 평생의 시신인 모드 곤과 이루지 못한 결혼으로 고통 받던 그의 마음의 치유 공간이었다. 한편, 엘리엇이 첫 연인 에밀리와 함께 방문한 번트 노턴 역시 그의 첫 번째 아내 비비엔과의 별거로 괴로워하던 그의 마음의 치유 장소였다. 예이츠는 숲과 백조의 상징성을 통해 일곱 숲과 쿨 호수를 포함한 쿨 장원을 사실주의화가 및 낭만주의와 상징주의 시인의 기교로 섬세하게 묘사하고 있고, 엘리엇은 장미의 상징성과 시간에 대한 철학적 명상으로 장미원과 풀장이 있는 번트 노턴을 입체파 화가 및 철학 시인과 모더니즘 시인의 눈으로 신비적으로 묘파하고 있다.

본 논문은 T. S. 엘리엇의 초기 산문에 나타난 윤리관을 아리스토텔레스, 브래들리, 불교 철학자들에게 보인 그의 관심과 연결하여 논의한다. 이러한 연구는 “윤리” 혹은 “윤리적”이라는 개념을 새롭게 고찰하려는 시대의 흐름에 부응하는 것이면서, 동시에 엘리엇에 대한 전형적인 비평과 달리 그를 좀 더 균형 잡힌 시각으로 재조명해 보려는 시도이다. 즉 엘리엇을 보수적인 엘리트 시인, 편협한 사회비평가 등으로 간주하는 비판적 시각이 있다면, 본고에서는 엘리엇의 산문 중 주목을 덜 받은 글을 발굴하여 그의 윤리관을 논의하면서, 오히려 겸손한 태도, 구체적 일상에 유용한 지혜, 극단에서 벗어난 중용의 방식 등을 그의 윤리적 관점의 핵심으로 부각시킨다. 엘리엇은 브래들리의 “겸손,” 아리스토텔레스의 “실천적 지혜,” 불교 철학자의 “중도”의 방식을 높이 평가하면서, 자신의 윤리적 관점을 상대적인 진리와, 우리의 구체적이고 복잡하고 다양하며 변화하는 현실에 열려있는 것으로 제시한다. 미발표 원고를 포함한 초기 산문에서 엘리엇은 무조건적이고 절대적인 진리, 도덕적․기계적인 법칙과는 분명 다른 상대주의적 윤리관을 표명한다.

본 논문은 예이츠와 엘리엇의 시에 각각 사용된 성경적 인유를 고찰하여 그 차이를 밝힌다. 예이츠의 비잔티움으로의 항해 는 초고를 쓸 당시 구약 창세기에서 시작하여 요한계시록에 이르는 구조 즉 창조에서 부활에 이르는 시로서 구상되었으나 결국 창조에서 시작한 예이츠의 상상력은 부활이 아닌 불완전한 변형에 그침으로써 예이츠의 초월적 상상력에는 최종적으로 변형이라는 목표에 이르지 못하는 비극적 환희가 있는 데 이는 신적 상상력이 아닌 문학적 상상력이 지난 원초적 한계로 볼 수 밖에 없다. 한편 엘리엇은 게론티온 에서 기독교 신앙을 폐기한 유럽사회에 성령님의 부재를 부각시키는 강력한 부정적 바람이 휘몰아치고 있음을 기술하고 생명력을 상실한 유럽사회의 무질서와 비인간성의 현장에 호랑이 그리스도의 출현이라는 탁월한 수사학적 인유를 통하여 시인은 독자의 반응을 요청하는 데 이런 시적 장치는 결국 성경이 독자로 하여금 텍스트에 반응하도록 강요하는 것과 일치함으로써 엘리엇의 시에는 성경적 메아리가 그대로 보존되어 엘리엇은 텍스트의 최종적 의미를 독자에게 맡겨 독자의 해석에 따라 시가 완성되도록 만들고 있다.

In his creative activities, T. S. Eliot used a systematic mysticism as the basis for the aesthetic principles of modern poetry and criticism. Seemingly, Eliot’s aestheticism resembles much of Romanticist organic unity in mind, poetry, and criticism; but Eliot disliked the personal tastes of poetic romanticism, which were largely an extension of Western romantic idealism. Eliot’s impersonal theory of poetry was, in fact, involved in many aspects of his understanding of Chinese poetry and tradition, as well as F. H. Bradley’s philosophical ideas. Briefly, as we see from Ezra Pound, Eliot is at once Confucian in form and Taoist or Buddhist in spirit. Such enlightened mysticism in Chinese thought has much to do with Eliot’s poetics, especially Bradleyan philosophy, in which philosophy and religion are considered neither academic nor dogmatic, but practical and felt, such that we experience it daily. This is called religio-philosophical experience as found in Eliot’s poetry Four Quartets and also is commonly found in Chinese ideas, especially the middle point (chung-mean) of the temporal (ch’i-spirit) and the timeless (li-principle), and thinking and behaving.

The main aim of this paper is double-folded: it aims to examine the significance of Eliot’s re/reading of Baudelaire’s urban poetry in the formation of his modernist poetics and, thereby, to uncover the lasting presence of allegory in the modernist poetry of Eliot. Important texts for the exploration of Baudelaire’s impact on Eliot are his own later essays on the French poet. The poet of The Flower of Evil, according to Eliot, revolutionizes modern poetry not just by selecting the metropolitan life as the main subject matter of poetry but by penetrating into its shocking reality deeply and accurately. Eliot highlights the fusion of reality and fantasy as the essence of Baudelaire’s urban poetics and, at the same time, as the most important factor that he has learned from the French poet. However, Eliot’s later essays on Baudelaire are not fully helpful in explicating the French poet’s influence on his own urban poems in that Eliot’s critical writings on Baudelaire, mostly written after his 1927 conversion, are not so much concerned with the urban aesthetics of his poetry as with the ethical and religious agendas. Eliot’s early poems reveal that he develops his modernist sensibilities under the strong influence of Laforgue and Baudelaire. Viewed in the context of the poetic discourse of the French poets, Eliot’s early poems gradually move from Laforguian ironic voice and his detached attitude to Baudelairean aesthetics of allegory and shock. At the center of the impact of Baudelaire on Eliot lies the French poet’s deployment of the souvenir as an allegorical sign of the barrenness and the self-alienation of modern experience. In Eliot’s urban poetry, the souvenir is transfigured into debris and there exists a certain “genealogy” of debris. This genealogy begins with “Second Caprice in North Cambridge,” in which “the debris of a city” is a realistic sign of its ruined cityscape, and makes a radical turn in “Goldfish,” where “the debris of the year” is internalized as allegory of the inner death of modern experience. “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” unifies these opposing sides of debris in that “A crowd of twisted things” are mobilized to describe both the external urban space and the protagonist’s memory or “inner-scape.” Eliot’s deployment of debris as allegory of modern experience reach a peak in The Waste Land. As the title bespeaks, the poem is about the land of waste or debris. In this allegorical city of modernity, ghosts of the ancient period return as modernity’s others and their return transfigures the desert-like city into a ghostly land. In the secular Hell of The Waste Land, ruins/debris of cities, an allegorical sign of modern experience, become fused with ghosts, an allegorical sign of modernity’s others.

Boredom has been recognized as an important cultural symptom in the formation of modernism. Charles Baudelaire, who had affected to a remarkable extent upon modernism, was representatively a poet of “spleen” or in other words, “boredom.” It is widely conjectured that T. S. Eliot, who was once under the influence of Baudelaire, was interested in the problem of boredom as a socio-cultural phenomenon. There have been several terms that designate the similar meaning to boredom such as, melancholy, acedia, ennui and so on. As they are various, the individual meanings and usages are slightly different. However, it is widely acknowledged that the concept of boredom first emerged before and after the World Wars to be merged into modernity. Therefore, the problem of boredom shows the slice of human mentality in an industrialized and urbanized society that may expands into the existential problems. In this respect, The Waste Land shows the barren and sterile landscape of human mind after experiencing the World War, in which people had witnessed absurdity, meaninglessness of life, the sense of emptiness, and the overwhelming boredom. Eliot suggests lots of images of boredom in the poem, these images sometimes appear directively and other times by way of providing barren images of natural landscapes that metaphorize the human existential conditions. Most of such images are very much poetic; and also at the same time, they are the life conditions that modernist writers tried to express as the core essence of life in modernism. The Waste Land is one of the most representative texts that show this relationship between boredom and modernism.

s is well known, T. S. Eliot converted to Anglo-Catholicism from Unitarianism. But he had kept a strong interest in Buddhism throughout his life and Buddhism had left a deep impression on his poetry. The poem “East Coker” was first published in 1940, long after his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism. It contains lots of Buddhist thoughts. The poem begins with a citation from Mary Stuart that “in my beginning is my end” and ends with a sentence, “in my end is my beginning.” These two sentences surely show the concept of reincarnation of Buddhism. Though the phenomenal world is vain and the entity is deep in our minds, human beings don’t understand it.Human beings repeat their phenomenal lives and cannot break up the chain of reincarnation. This poem presents two ways of breaking the chain of metempsychosis: one is to abandon the phenomenal world through practice and the other is to take the middle way of Buddhism. The former is the same as the way St. John of the Cross presented. And the latter is what Nagarjuna Boddhisatva proposed. When we break up the chain of reincarnation, the reality will be a rose garden, that is, in Buddhist term, paradise. We ought to exert a great effort to get to the state. One of the successful efforts is to become humble. Humility is emphasized in Christianity and Buddhism. Humility makes us go into the way of darkness, and that is not different from Buddhist’s way of abandoning selfhood.

So obvious are T. S. Eliot’s conservative tendencies that the only valid question about his politics seems to be how conservative he was. He declared his own position so in religious, political and literary sides, and most of his literary works support this position quite positively. But The Waste Land and his other early works carry some elements which suggest the poet’s sympathy to liberal causes. His well-known literary theories and techniques including ‘objective correlative,’ ‘union of sensibility,’ and ‘collage’ also reflect Eliot’s belief in reason. This advocacy of reason is parallel with liberal and democratic tenets against which Eliot showed overt abhorrence. Psychologically Eliot can be seen to be on the stage of alienation around the time of the composition of his early works including The Waste Land. One is necessarily subject to the drive to move away, at a stage of growth, from the mother or the world one used to belong to in one’s initial phase of life. Eliot gives in to the transcendental in Four Quartets and Ash-Wednesday, suggesting he has returned to the dominance of the mother in infancy. It is questionable how Eliot looked at the difficulties of the underprivileged then suffering from the world order he supported with his increasingly conservative outlooks.

This paper attempts to trace T. S. Eliot’s thoughts on Lancelot Andrewes. Readers have thought little of Andrewes’s fame until Eliot wrote on him, thinking of him as only a prominent writer or preacher. But surprisingly Eliot in “Andrewes” compares Andrewes’s writing method with Donne’s. The paper suggests many ways Andrewes influenced Eliot. Eliot attributes to Andrewes’s writings three qualities ―1) ordonnance or arrangement and structure, 2) precision in the use of words, 3) relevant intensity.Eliot says that Dante in his Divine Comedy succeeds in harmonizing intelligence with emotion properly. Similarly, Eliot holds that the internal structures correspond to the external ones in Andrewes’s sermons. We can see influences from Andrewes’s sermons in Eliot’s “Gerontion” and Ash-Wednesday. Especially Eliot emphasizes that Andrews uses the phrases easy to remember. Eliot views Donne as continuously seeking for objects suitable for his emotions, and Andrewes as after the ones to express his self, not his own self. Thus Eliot finds Andrewes “wholly absorbed in the object.”

The paper has the aim to search for why humans should feel spiritual emptiness in spite of material fullness. This is the epistemological reality that humans differ from animals loyal to satiety of stomach. Humans are created with reason as the tool to admire and worship the amazing grace of the Creator and get closer to divinity leading humans to heaven. Eliot as a kind of common human pursued through his poems the ultimate themes such as origin of existences, goal of life, and good / evil, while Augustinus that relied on The Absolute God as the donor of reason as a part of divinity told us them in terms of theology. In the sense, Eliot pursuing the ultimate themes like life and death and also Augustinus resorting to the sacred providence of God, mean representing common people’s desire trying to grasp eternity in spite of having transient longevity. The only two things that we humans including Eliot and Augustinus can know are the terrible realities that we are absurdly thrown into the world and necessarily face with death as the unavoidable and gloomy termination. The pious vision from the saint of Hippo on Eliot’s some ultimate themes is aimed for the practice of ‘caritas’ that means sacred love to both the Absolute and ordinary people. In conclusion, R. Descartes depending upon human’s own apparent thought rather than turning to God, F. Nietzsche declaring the death of God, and K. Marx disregarding divinity and reducing human to molecular state would commit errors because they misused reason given by God that they hated, and produced the proposition of ‘Cogito ergo sum’, the Birth of Tragedy, and the Capital, which also can be recognized as a reality of double bind.

This paper intends to reveal Emily Hale’s positive influences to Eliot’s poems and plays. Emily Hale who was 40-year-old lover and friend with T. S. Eliot contributes and influences so much the life and the works of T. S. Eliot as the muse. T. S. Eliot didn’t want to disclose his personal evidences such as letters and recordings, because of the fact that he loved Emil Hale for 40 years as well as his guilty consciousness toward his first wife. T. S. Eliot had a deep religious feeying, so he felt a contrition that is much shameful to the death of his former wife, Vivien Haigh-Wood, because he met Emily Hale while his wife died in mental hospital. That’s why he tried to hide all his personal evidences. Critics who studied Eliot’s biographical influences on his works evinced Hale’s contributions to Eliot’s works. Eliot eventually destroyed her letters sent to him, but Hale bequeathed her collection of over a thousand of his letters to her to Princeton, under the restriction that they will not be opened to the public until January 1, 2020. No one but Hale, and maybe the processing archivist, has ever read them. If the day comes to open the letters, the relations and clues between Eliot’s mysterious works and his life will be clearly revealed. The facts and truths of hidden Eliot’s life in letters and recordings will be the evidences of a new horizon to interpret Eliot’s poetry and poetic drama as symbols and allegory.

What would we think upon first hearing how Aristotle responded to Plato’s charge that poetry corrupts people by feeding the passions, harming even the good, especially the young? Aristotle’s response concerned with the idea of katharsis, purgation. First of all, we would feel deep sympathy and accord with him. We know that modern people in the 21st century are very attuned to the emotional effect and therapeutic function of poetry, literature, and art.In his book, The Meaning of Health, a collection of essays on existentialism, psychoanalysis, and religion, the philosophical theologian Paul Tillich said “We must replace ‘religion’ by ‘salvation’.” He added that the root of the Greek word ‘soteria,’ meaning salvation, is derived from ‘saos,’ the Latin word ‘salvatio’ from ‘salvus,’ and German word ‘Heiland’ from ‘heil,’ which is akin to the English word “healing.” What we might gather from this is that the most important thing in the realm of religion is basically and essentially “healing.”This essay starts from the idea that the therapeutic function of poetry and poetic drama is not so different from that of religion. Eliot’s later poetry and poetic drama, especially, are filled with healing messages in the religious dimension. This is the reason we expect his poetry and poetic drama to contribute greatly not only to the aesthetic pleasure of poetry but also to the healing of modern reader’s unbalanced emotions.

T. S. Eliot is regarded as one of the greatest critics in the last century. As a critic he tends to have strict canonical standards. However, his attitude toward Tennyson seems rather favorable. Of Tennysonian canonical traits, Eliot thinks abundance, variety, and competence are the essence of Tennysonian excellence as a poet. He further feels that Tennyson is highly competent to express himself aptly whatever intention it is in his poetry and prose. It is probably because Tennyson is a master technician in poetry: his poetic language and its skills are rich and varied. He has absorbed all poetic skills, use of words, rhymes, rhythms, as in Maud and In Memoriam. Tennyson’s poetic excellence has already proved in Poems by Two Brothers co-authored with his brother, Frederick. In his criticism on Tennyson, Eliot often makes use of “great,” “wondrous,” or “master,” which he rarely uses when he studies other poets. Besides, it is rather interesting that Tennyson and Eliot are rather well compared: both use dramatic monologues while they withhold expression of personal feelings or emotion. As a poet and critic, Eliot is characterized by objective correlative, impersonality, unified sensibility, which almost parallel Tennyson’s. As a later poet, Eliot must have learned from Tennyson, a great technician of the last century.

This study is to find out how various number of themes are revealed and then developed progressively in T. S. Eliot’s plays, Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk and The Elder Statesman. The martyrdom, which may be defined as the identification with the will of the God, of Archbishop Thomas Becket is so much emphasized that the aspect of salvation is neglected in Eliot’s first major play, Murder in the Cathedral. Thus in the second play, The Family Reunion, Harry’s salvation becomes the main theme. However, the process of salvation is sought here too vigorously and even violently to induce the death of Harry’s mother as well as that of his wife. In the third play, The Cocktail Party, several ways to salvation are suggested according to the levels of perception. ‘the best life’ of martyrdom is offered to the selected few including Thomas Becket. However, ‘a good life,’ in which a cocktail party is being held sometimes, is more than enough for the salvation of common peple because “human kind cannot bear very much reality.” For the third group of “a living object, but no longer a person,” to be an ordinary person can be the best way of savlation. The Confidential Clerk contains answers to the questions presented in Murder in the Cathedral, as The Cocktail Party has the solutions to the problems presented in The Family Reunion. Lucasta, ‘a living object,’ is changed into ‘an ordinary person,’ while Colby, ‘a good life,’ is changing into the mode of ‘the best life’ in The Confidential Clerk. The Elder Statesman, Eliot’s last play, tries to show that the salvation of Lord Claverton may be achieved by the confession of the past misdeeds.