Consciousness Of Myth In T.S.Eliot's Major Poetry

In the first half of the twentieth century, the masters who opened the path to Modernism attempted to find the new devices by which they could re-constitute the literature and re-present the complex modern reality. The poets strove to distinguish their poems from the conventional ones. However, they cannot escape from the influence of the basic literary tradition. In the process of the modernist poets seeking for the adequate devices to fuse tradition and evolution together, myth, with the extensive historical dimensions and more flexible form, comes to appear as a powerful approach to creating the continuity between the ancient and the present.T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), a prominent figure among modernists, wrote his poems in such a revolutionary and inheritance-needed literary environment. In his major poetry, such as, The Waste Land, Four Quartets, "Ash Wednesday", "The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock", and "Journey of the Magi", the poet shows his strong consciousness of myth. This thesis analyzes the consciousness of myth in Eliot's poetry; introduces the social background of the poet in forming his consciousness of myth and the theories of myth; it also attempts to find out the system of varieties of the mythic references and the system of origins of myths in his major poetry; and it then shows further the harmonious effects produced by harmonizing ancient myths in his poetry; and finally reveals his underlying beliefs by analyzing the utilization of myths in his poetry.