Study On T.S. Eliot’s Salvation Thought In The Waste Land From Traditional Literary Order And Religious View

As one of the most important modernist literature masters in20th century, T.S. Eliot blends his prominent literary talent, unique poetic temperament and intelligent criticism together. He is royalist in politics, Catholic in religion and classical in literature. His long poem The Waste Land deserves to be a milestone work in modern poetry.The Waste Land reflects the general pessimistic emotion in the west world, poverty of spirit and lack of religious beliefs. All of these lead to the decline of western civilization after the WWI. Eliot explores the way of salvation by constructing traditional literary order to converting to religious belief finally, sparing no effort to search for soul refuges for homeless modern people. The whole progress reflects how hard the great artist conquers the chaos and dark situation to get access to the sacred organic whole from the fragmental and critical modern society.This paper is composed of six parts:The first part is a general introduction of the existing researches domestic and aboard on T.S. Eliot and his long poem The Waste Land.The second part mainly introduces the reasons to Eliot’s salvation thought formed from three aspects. From the aspect of social background, Eliot was affected by the situation of alienated people and their religious crisis caused by the unprecedented boost of industrial process and brutal WWI in the modern civilized society. From the view of literature, the expression of crisis awareness in modem poetry becomes the main ideology so searching for a solution is an urgent task for the intelligent. As to Eliot himself, his family with strong religious sense, education at Harvard and other famous writer’s thought have influenced him deeply so under the responsibility as a poet, it is necessary for him to explore the way of salvation.The third part analyzes that his salvation thought starts from his classical literary thought of establishing a kind of order to endow the boring life with meaning. The order can be explained by distinguishing the relationship between tradition and the individual, which forms an updating and organic wholeness. The poem The Waste Land is the practice of this view. The poet wants to point out the significance of traditional value and call modern people to construct the traditional rules and regulations by contrasting the ancient and modern scenes in the poem.The forth part attempts to prove that Eliot’s salvation thought has transformed from traditional literary order to religious belief. The paper tries to prove it by analyzing Eliot’s religious view, the meaning of title, preface and religious images of water, fire and church throughout the whole poem. From Eliot’s point of view, the society is disorderly because people have lost their religious belief and the religious rule is a kind of more complete system than traditional order to restrict human being. In the poem, Eliot describes a large number of eastern and western religious legends to persuade people converting religion, dropping out of the alienated waste land and restoring their inner spirit in order to accomplish his historic mission as a poet.The fifth part is the reflection of positive meaning and limitation of Eliot’s salvation thought nowadays. The continuous development of science and technology makes people kill God finally and walk into the depressing nihilism. If they want to endow life with meaning again they need to seek for their new spiritual home. People have to choose either back to religion again or to be led by human being’s own will.The conclusion part has proved that it is Eliot’s salvation thought that leads the whole poem, which is supported by his critic theory and practiced in the poem The Waste Land from the aspects of traditional literary order and religious belief. Eliot’s salvation thought has positive meaning for modem people but its practical value is still worth concerning.Under the guidance of Eliot’s original note in the poem and his critical essays, the paper has combed the progress of the poet’s salvation thought clearly from the relationship between the past and present and the complex and obscure images implied in the poem. This paper tries best to avoid analyzing the images separately but make a comprehensive and objective evaluation on the development of salvation thought and the poet’s intention.