The Family Reunion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_Reunion
مقالة ::
T. S. Eliot is a major twentieth century poet, playwright, and critic. He has greatly influenced the English literature in the first half of the twentieth century. Eliot’s works are marked for their innovative quality and rich ambiguity. As such, they lead to a variety of interpretations. Eliot emerged as a major proponent of poetic plays for which he also made adequate ground in his criticism. With the publication of the first two plays – Murder in the Cathedral and The Family Reunion – the case for poetic drama was furthered and strengthened, and it caught the imagination of other contemporary writers.
Many critics have said that poetry and drama are two separate modes of literary expression whereas Eliot seems to believe that poetry and drama are unified and they bear closely upon one another. In his opinion, poetry and drama constitute parts of a unity and they are essentially unified modes of literary expression.
The present study is an attempt to trace the growth and development of poetic drama and to explore the major contribution of T. S. Eliot in its revival in the twentieth century with special reference to his plays: Sweeney Agonistes, The Rock, Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk, and The Elder Statesman.
Through his critical essays on poetic drama, Eliot has argued that poetic drama is both possible and appropriate for the modern theatre. This has been demonstrated during the course of the study. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter is about the definition of poetic drama, its emergence and development. It also discusses some verse-dramatists before T. S. Eliot in the twentieth century. It defines and explains the meaning of poetic drama among other literary genres. It also sheds light on the development of poetic drama since its very beginning to the nineteenth century.
The second chapter focuses on Eliot’s theory on poetic drama presenting his argument and preference of poetic drama over prose drama. An analytical and comparative method is also adapted to study briefly the contribution of some contemporaries of Eliot who experimented in the field of poetic drama. The third chapter deals with Eliot’s use of poetry in his plays. An independent assessment is given to his plays starting from Murder in the Cathedral to The Elder Statesman as complete verse plays. The chapter also deals with a concise study of his two early dramatic works, Sweeney Agonistes (1932) and The Rock (1934), as experimental plays.
The fourth chapter deals with Eliot’s first successful verse play, Murder in the Cathedral (1935). The play is about the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury who was murdered by four knights sent by King Henry II. The play does not only present the story of murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket but also it shows, in a contemporary setting, the victory of Thomas Becket over the evil temptations to meet his end as a martyr. The play also demonstrates Eliot’s ability in retrieving the use of the chorus, as an old Greek means, in contemporary language.
The fifth chapter consists of an analytical study for the two plays, The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party as contemporary plays with regard to theme, setting, and characters. The Family Reunion (1939) is about the sin of parents and expiation by their successors. And The Cocktail Party (1949) also takes up a modern problem and deals with the question of mutual understanding between husband and wife.
The sixth chapter studies the last two plays, The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman(1958). The Confidential Clerk deals with the story of a financier Sir Claude who tries to fabricate an arrangement to seduce his childless wife, Lady Elizabeth to adopt Colby, an illegitimate son of him. And The Elder Statesman tells the story of the newly retired Lord Claverton who encounters two characters of his past. He prevails upon them through his confession to his daughter about his past. All of Eliot’s plays are important landmarks in the development of poetic drama in the twentieth century.
I wish to acknowledge my deep gratitude and thanks to Professor Anisur Rahman, my teacher and supervisor, for his assistance and in encouragement completing this research. These words, I confess, are not sufficient to express my sense of indebtedness to him. He always remained a source of encouragement to me throughout my Ph. D. programme. I wish also to acknowledge my gratitude and recognition to my wife and my four children for their solace and inspiration.
My thanks go to Zakir Husain Library of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and the Indo-American Centre for International Studies in Hyderabad, for the assistance with necessary material and references needed for my thesis. I would like to thank Dr. Saugata Bhadhuri and Mr. Abdul Hafeez Mudhish for their assistance in reading my thesis and for their advice. I would also like to thank the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) for providing me with scholarship to pursue my Ph. D. study.
Finally I thank Allah, the Most Compassionate and the Most Merciful for enabling me to complete this work on time.
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