Shared Cynicism And Suggestiveness Across Time

T. S. Eliot and John Donne are both eminent figures in the history of English literature. Their poetry is noted for its oddness in terms of both language style and point of view. Based on a comparative study, this thesis centers the analysis of their poetry round two inferences: the pervasive skepticism and the suggestive poetic treatment of subject matter.As far as the former is concerned, it is found that they took skeptical attitudes towards almost every subject they treat, ranging from such religious concepts as the existence of God, sin, salvation, and eternity to such secular themes as sexual love. Skepticism is a poetic advantage to them, because it made all facts infinitely flexible and thus emancipated the imagination. As a way to know God, the Absolute, skepticism paradoxically offers greater opportunities for them to see both sides of life and thus gain a more profound insight. Paradoxes, ironies, ambivalences and open-endedness are all their preferred ways to show, in poetry, their skeptical attitudes.With regard to the latter point, that is, suggestiveness, Eliot and Donne are both seen as examples to illustrate Eliot's poetic principles known as unification of sensibilities and objective correlatives. In Donne and Eliot's poems we can sense the integrity of sensibilities. In other words, thought is perfectly interwoven with feeling. Unification of sensibilities is viewed by Eliot as the highest goal in poetry writing, and to him the only way to achieve this is through use of objective correlatives, which is a highly symbolic approach. Instrumental to the end and the means here is an extraordinary figure of speech known as conceit, which was brought to an unprecedented height by Donne and carried further by T. S. Eliot throughout his poetic career.