T. S. Eliot의 시문학과 종교 = T.S.Eliot’s Literature and Religion

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

As a poet, a critic and a philosopher, T. S. Eliot( 1888-1965) uses his literature and religion in order to overcome the skepticism of the present perceived on account of the disintegration between man and society. The literature and the religion for him have the interrelated function to avoid individual and social problems and to lead them into salvation. Because he found the industrialism and commercialism as the cause of the disease of the modern society to destroy or dissolve the community such as the family, the group and the society, he uses the religion such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity to pursue ultimate goal of salvation of man and society.
This thesis is, therefore, to find the way of the social salvation by healing the modern ailment through the religion and the literature. Eliot, s religions are the ways to cure the plights of the modern society - the hopelessness, irresponsibility and insensibility - through the industrialism and commercialism. Like his religions, his literature is also the way to do so through the concept of tradition and the historical sense, and through the theory of impersonality and the unified sensibility. He suggests, in other words, the meaningless society can be transformed into the meaningful society. At first, the indian thoughts like Hinduism and Buddhism is the way of the social salvation, as they can cure the irresponsibility and hopelessness, the symptom of modem disease, by making modern men realize their duty and identity in the community through Karma, Nothingness and Samsara. Besides the indian thoughts, Christianity is more important to Eliot, as it emphasizes man s original sin and love. Unlike the indian thoughts focusing man s ignorance. It wakes up the paralyzed senses of man and society by making the modern men feel guilty consciousness.
Ultimately Christianity makes man realize the communal beings, not the individual beings. Finally, by suggesting the way of ‘illumination’, ‘purgation’ and union with God’ through his religions, Eliot constructs the way of social salvation which transforms the meaningless into the meaningful as the main theme in his literature.