일원론적 인식 틀과 “감수성의 통합”－낭만주의 전통에서 본 엘리엇

Abstract

The relation between modernism and postmodernism can not be described exclusively in terms of dualism, continuity or discontinuity. This means that postmodernism cannot be considered either a pure continuation of its predecessor, modernism, or a complete anti-modernist movement. Likewise, romantic poetics and modernist poetics do not form a relation only in terms of dualism, because some major modernist poems include not a few technical elements, including rhetorical devices and descriptive strategies, which make it impossible to discuss them without regard to romantic poetics. Apparently, T. S. Eliot, a major poet and critic of literary modernism, attacked the romantic poets and poetics for several reasons, which led to his being regarded as an anti-romantic writer. But, as shown in recent revisionist studies, his poems and poetics can not be approached satisfactorily without considering the romantic influences on them. Particularly the ‘unification of sensibility,’ Eliot’s own poetic and critical term, reveals that it has some epistemological affinities with the monistic romantic poetic theories of Coleridge and Wordsworth that require the ‘coalescence of subject and object’ and the ‘vital union of thought and feeling.’ Eliot’s ‘unification of sensibility,’ which means unification of thought and feeling, reflects his monistic poetic ideal that poetry has to represent a unified—not divided—experience. In fact, his whole poetic life seems to be a series of efforts to restore our lost immediate approach to experience and things. The evaluation of his achievements in his texts can vary according to critics. Nevertheless, the fact that ‘unification of sensibility’ was one of his major poetic concerns proves that Eliot‘s poetic world never excludes romantic poetics, including monistic epistemological frame and poetic techniques such as dramatic monologue, animation of natural objects, or personification.