Mythical Fear and Christian Redemption in T. S. Eliot’s Verse DramaThe Family Reunion El miedo mítico y la redención cristiana en el teatro en verso de T. S. Eliot: The Family Reunion

  1. Carbajosa Palmero, Natalia 1
  1. 1 Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena
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    Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena

    Cartagena, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02k5kx966

Revista:
Epos: Revista de filología

ISSN: 0213-201X

Ano de publicación: 2021

Número: 37

Páxinas: 35-47

Tipo: Artigo

DOI: 10.5944/EPOS.37.2021.30612 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Outras publicacións en: Epos: Revista de filología

Resumo

The Family Reunion (1939) is Eliot’s first onstage attempt to apply the mythical method of his poetry in verse drama, and more specifically to a drawing room setting. In this way, twentieth-century fear and anguish are enacted against Aeschylus’s Eumenides, a timeless story of expiation told in the Oresteia trilogy. This paper focuses on Eliot’s modern Orestes, Harry, who (like early poetry characters before him such as Prufrock, Gerontion and Sweeney) faces despair in ways that are exemplary for future plays. Moreover, this article highlights the central role that The Family Reunion holds in Eliot’s dramatic production because of the unexpected way in which the play approaches the contemporary malady, relating it to the Christian motif of sin and expiation. Finally, this paper explores the similarities between Eliot’s verse drama and the poetry of the Four Quartets, a sequence of poems written during his years of production for the stage and, to a great extent, along the same lines.

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