AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

Although literary scholars have investigated minutely the multiple sources or T. S. Eliot, they have examined only cursorily the influence of St. John of the Cross. The first reference ot Eliot to St. John of the Cross is the second epigraph or "Fragment of a Prologue" written tor The Criterion in 1926 and published with "Fragment or an Agon" under the title, Sweeney Agonistes, in 1932. In the twenty-eight years since this epigraph of Eliot, there have been no consistent studies of st. John ot the Cross, nor have critics ventured beyond the "dark night of the soul." Moreover, they classify as the dark night of the soul all the mystical elements in the poetry and drama of Eliot, despite the fact that the dark night is only one phase of the mystical doctrine of St. John ot the Cross. The aim or this study, then, is the examination of the informing influence of st. John of the Cross in the ideational and symbolic patterns of Eliot. It traces the progress of the life of the soul, as described by St. John of the Cross, through the ascetical, mystical, and unitive ways, and shows this development in the poetry and drama ot T. S. Eliot. [TRUNCATED]