Publication Date

7-1987

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

William McMahon, Frank Steele, Dorothy McMahon

Degree Program

Department of English

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

In T. S. Eliot's The Idea of a Christian Society, the poet questions the nature of our society's foundations; he believes that Western culture is moving dangerously closer to the liberal and secular and that this shift could be disastrous. Instead, Eliot suggests that we return to what is at the very roots of Western tradition: Christianity. To facilitate this change in direction, Eliot stresses the importance of an educational system which takes a Christian perspective. Also important in his thinking is a Community of Christians, who would act as leaders, and the Christian community (encompassing most of the population), which would restore unity to what has become a depersonalized existence. The philosophical validity of Christianity is integral to Eliot's scheme, and is explained well by author C. S. Lewis. Historian Christopher Dawson outlines the intertwining of religion and culture and the debt Western civilization owes the Christian faith. Eliot's poem The Waste Land is a picture of a society whose barrenness is ironic in light of the promise of life which surrounds it. Both the individuals and their society are blind to their own spiritual deaths. Also echoing Eliot's ideas concerning a Christian society, The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party are plays of rejuvenation, in which a sacrificial death--whether literal or figurative--brings new life, both to the individual characters and their broken relationships. As allegories of the family of man, Eliot uses the families in these plays to illustrate the change that could turn a waste land into a promised land.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing | English Language and Literature | Literature in English, North America | Poetry

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