Pentadic Criticism of T.S. Eliot’s Plays

Pentadic Criticism of T.S. Eliot’s Plays

This study applies Burke’s Pentadic Criticism on the study of selected plays (the Family Reunion and the Cocktail Party by T.S. Eliot) to explore the pentadic elements inherent in each of them. From the perspective of pentadic criticism, the five elements of act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose in the plays, as well as the ten pairs of ratios between them are probed into to figure out the rhetors’ motives individually. Through the analyses of both pentadic criticism, the researcher finds out that the rhetors’ motives can be discerned by analyzing their choices in shaping the acts, scenes, agents, agencies, and purposes within the play.