T. S. 엘리엇의 초기시와 영국 르네상스 드라마

T. S. Eliot’s Early Poetry and the English Renaissance Drama

This paper examined how the English Renaissance drama influenced Eliot’s early poetry. Many critics like Hugh Kenner and Grover Smith insisted the relationship between Eliot’s poetry and the English Renaissance drama, but they didn’t tell concretely how Eliot’s poetry was affected by the English Renaissance drama. First, I tried to examine how the English Renaissance drama affected Eliot’s poetry in terms of the form. As some critics indicated Eliot was a poet who tended to improve the traditional English verse forms and use them. So he learned the blank verse form in the English Renaissance drama, improved and used it in his poems, especially “Gerontion.” And he used some techniques like repetition he showed in this poem in his several poems such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and “La Figlia Che Piange.” Besides, Eliot used the English Renaissance drama as the significant source of allusions in his poems. For example, lines 5 and 6 of “Whispers of Immortality” can be associated with Flamineo’s speech of John Webster’s The White Devil V. iv. Thus, Eliot tried to put the concept of the death in life this speech implied in his poem. And he tried to show the speakers’ self-dramatization in his early poems that appeared in main characters’ speech in the English Renaissance drama by using these allusions. Thus, he attempted to show the speakers’ narcissistic mind that he thought the modern men had.