'Religion and Literature' - T.S. Eliot

The essay ‘Religion and Literature’ written by T.S. Eliot can be viewed as a reaction against the tradition of viewing a literary work from purely aesthetic point of view. Many critics, especially the New Critics, believed that literature is not to be valued for its ethical and theological significance. But T.S. Eliot held the opinion that only literary criticism was not sufficient. After a literary work has been viewed as a work of imagination, it should also be considered from ethical and theological point of view. It is all the more important in our age when there is no agreement on ethical and theological values. For ascertaining the greatness of a literary work, that work of imagination should be appreciated from ethical and theological angles.
Although literature has been judged from moral standards, yet it has been believed for a long time that there is no relationship between religion and literature. T.S. Eliot believes that there is and should be a relationship between the two. In his essay ‘Religion and Literature’ he has discussed the application of religion to literary criticism. According to Eliot the essay is not about religious literature, but he as a degression, mentions three types of religious literature. First, is the religious literature, which has literary qualities in it. For instance, the authorized version of the Bible or the works of Jeremy Taylor. Those persons, who describe Bible only as a literary work and talk of its influence on English literature, have been referred to as ‘parasites’. According to Eliot, Bible is to be considered as ‘word of God’. Secondly, he mentions devotional poetry. A devotional poet he says is not the one who treats the subject matter in the religious spirit, but the one who treats a part of the subject matter. Eliot considers poets like Spencer, Hopkins, Vaughan and Southwell as minor poets while Dante, Corneille and Racine as major poets. Thirdly, he states, are the works of authors who want to forward the cause of religion. These types of works come under propaganda, for instance, Chesterton’s ‘Man who was Thursday’ and ‘Father Brown’.
Eliot laments over the irrationality behind the separation of our literary and religious judgment. Exemplifying literature by the way of novel (as it has the effect upon the greatest numbers), he says this secularization has been a gradual process for the last three hundred years. Since Defoe the process has been continuous. The process can be divided into three phases. In the first phase fall the novels in which Faith is taken for granted and omitted from its picture of life. The author belonging to this phase are: Fielding and Thackeray. In the second phase novels, Faith is doubted, worried about and contested. It includes authors like George Eliot, George Meredith and Thomas Hardy. The third phase is the age in which we are living and authors included are all contemporary novelists except James Joyce.
This secularization is evident in the way a reader reads a novel – without caring for the effect it has upon one’s behavior. The common factor between religion and literature is behavior. Our religion imposes upon us ethics, judgment and criticism of ourselves, and our behavior with our fellow men. Literature too has an effect on our behavior. Whatever the intentions of the author, his works affect us wholly as human beings. Even if we read a literary work purely for aesthetic purposes (keeping our ethics and morality in a separate compartment), it affects us as human beings, whether we intend it or not.
Modern readers have lost their religious values. They don’t have the wisdom to be able to obtain knowledge of life, comparing one view against the other. Moreover, the knowledge of life that we obtain from fiction is not of life itself but is knowledge of other people’s knowledge of life. What adds to the problem is that there are too many books and the reader is confused. Only modern writers of eminence have an improving effect, otherwise the contemporary writers have an effect that is degrading. The reader must keep in mind two things – ‘what we like’, that is, what we really feel; and ‘what we ought to like’, that is, understanding our shortcomings. As honest men we must not assume that what we like is what we ought to like; and as honest Christians we should assume that we do like what we ought to like.
Eliot is mainly concerned with secularization of literature. It does not concern itself with things of spirit. It is simply oblivious or ignorant of the primacy of the supernatural over the natural world. Most of the books are written by people who have no real belief in supernatural order. Moreover, they are ignorant of the fact that the world has still many believers. It is the duty of the Christians to use certain standards in addition to those used by the rest of the world. If a Christian is conscious of the gulf between him and contemporary literature, he won’t be harmed by it.
Majority of the people consider economic ills as cause of all the problems and call for drastic economic changes, while others want more or less drastic social changes. Both types of changes are opposed to each other but a common point is that they hold the assumption of secularization. Some want the individual to subordinate his interests to those of the state. But Eliot does not agree with these people. Eliot does not complain about modern literature because it is immoral or even amoral but because it instigates people to try out every kind of experience and not to stay back or miss any. A Christian reader should add to the literary criticism followed by the rest of the world. He should, in addition, apply ethical and theological standards to it.

'Murder in the Cathedral' - An overview

‘Murder in the Cathedral’ (a brilliant example of a poetic drama by T.S. Eliot) was written for the Canterbury festival in 1935. The play follows the event in Canterbury after Becket’s return in 1170. A chorus of women laments the absence of their archbishop and the people’s helplessness. In the schism between the Church and the State, it is announced that Becket is returning, the news is welcome but all, save the second priest, are fearful of King Henry II’s reconciliation with Becket and wonder if it is to be trusted. Becket enters determined to resolve the crisis, though he knows that it may cost him his life. In the long scene, in the play, the Four Tempters illustrate the conflict. His decision provokes within himself, the temptation to seek martyrdom is powerful. Becket realizes that the only course he has to follow is to offer his life to the law of God above the law of man. The Christmas morning sermon of 1170 makes the position clear. Four days later, four knights of the King arrived and charged him with rebellion, he is ordered to depart from England but he refuses and the abusive Knights warn him that they would come again. The Priest try to persuade Becket barricade himself in the Church but he refuses and orders them to open the door. They open it. The Knights return half-drunk and murder him. Then they address the audience in turns, with their justifications for their deed. After they withdraw the stage is left to the Priest to offer thanks to God for having given another saint to the Cathedral of Canterbury.
The basic plot concerns the death and martyrdom of Becket. The story of his life seems to hold great dramatic and tragic potentialities. The horrible deed which culminated is life involves persons who, though not directly related by blood ties, were suddenly bound by old ties of friendship and humour. Thus, the central theme of the play is martyrdom in the strictest sense of the word. From the long scene which follows the speech of Becket, we can hardly say he was to be tempted by the tempters “for a little time the hungry hawk/ will soar and hover circling lower/ waiting excuse pretence, opportunity/ end will be simple, sudden, God-given.” The last temptation is so subtle that it is a really impossible to judge whether or not, Thomas succumbs to it. Though he actually says at the conclusion of the scene:
Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain
Temptation shall not come in this kind again.
it may be assumed that Thomas died with pure will.
The second act of this poetic drama has no play at all. The martyr’s sermon plainly states: “A martyrdom is never the design of man” and martyrdom cannot be “the effect of a man’s will to become a saint.” Thus, Eliot is concerned with the quest for vision and despair of attaining it. This quest has been pointed in various contexts in the notes concerning every poem. The protagonist seeks a way to live up to his great mission, that is, martyrdom by divorcing it from his own ambition for fame and canonization. So he is less a man that an embodiment of an attitude. He is aware of what is happening to him. But if there is no action in the normal sense of the world, if the centre of the play is a state of mind, then the protagonist can be only self aware. This is exactly, the situation in the play as the protagonist is only self aware what the playwright attempts to accomplish the play with “Message”.
The chorus that represents ordinary people consists of onlookers or persons who are only passively concerned with futility of time and change. Becket is not related to them in any way; that he is in some physical changes, is apparent to them. But the idea that he might be on the verge of martyrdom or even death, is an idea that has no reality for them. In spite of the deficiencies the play is successful because of its emotional power. The real drama is formed where its greatest poetry lies, that is in the choruses. The fluctuations of the chorus, temporal changes which refer to the theme are real measure of Thomas’ spiritual conquest. While Thomas is the chief protagonist of the play, the chorus is the hero but an unconventional hero – one who does not physically participate in the action, one who is only an observer, isolated from the action.

Revival of Poetic Drama

According to Francis Fergussan, a poetic drama is a drama in which you “feel” the characters are poetry and were poetry before they began to speak. Thus poetry and drama are inseparable. The playwright has to create a pattern to justify the poetic quality of the play and his poetry performs a double function. First, it is an action itself, so it must do what it says. Secondly, it makes explicit what is really happening. Eliot in his plays has solved the problem regarding language, content and versification.
In the twentieth century, the inter-war period was an age suited to the poetic drama. There was a revival and some of the poets like W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot tried their hands in writing of poetic plays. This was a reaction against prose plays of G. B. Shaw, Galsworthy and others because these plays showed a certain lack of emotional touch with the moral issue of the age. W. B. Yeats did not like this harsh criticism of the liberal idea of the nineteenth century at the hands of dramatists like G. B. Shaw. So he thought the drama of ideas was a failure to grasp the reality of the age. On the other hand, the drama of entertainment (artificial comedy) was becoming dry and uninteresting. It was under these circumstances that the modern playwrights like T. S. Eliot, J.M. Synge, W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spendor and so on have made the revival the poetic drama possible.

Poetic Drama

The term ‘poetic drama’ became popular during the middle of the twentieth century. It was T.S. Eliot who revived this drama/term as a reaction to the drama of ideas popularized by Galsworthy and G. B. Shaw under the influence of Ibsen. Even Shaw has written ‘The Quintessence of Ibsenism’, in which he gave his manifesto and showed the influence of Ibsen. As a critic T. S. Eliot has written essays like ‘Poetry and Drama’ and ‘Possibility of Poetic Drama’ and so on. In ‘Poetry and Drama’ he points out that poetry and drama are inseparable from each other. Poetry mirrors the heart of the person which the reader cannot conceal. Poetic Drama, according to T. S. Eliot, has far reaching effects as it affects the emotions of person directly., as a practitioner of poetic drama, Eliot has written plays like ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, ‘The Cocktail Party’, ‘Elder Statesman’ etc. He has solved the problem of language, diction and dialogue. In ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ the subject is religious and it was written for the Canterbury Festival (1935). Even poets like W.B. Yeats, W. H. Auden have tried their hands at writing poetic drama.

In the next post I’ll be discussing Eliot’s ‘Murder in the Cathedral’.

T.S. Eliot's 'Murder in the Cathedral'

Some selected quotations from T.S. Eliot’s play ‘Murder in the Cathedral’:

“For the good times past, that are come again
I am your man.” (First Tempter)

“To man of God what gladness?” (Becket)

“Shall I who ruled among the doves as an eagle
Now take the shape of wolf among wolves.” (Becket)

“King is forgotten when another shall come
Saints and Martyrs rule from the tomb.” (Fourth Tempter)

“Is there no enduring crown to be won
Is there no way in my soul’s sickness
That does not lead to damnation” (Becket)


Here’s what expert critics have to say about the play ‘Murder in the Cathedral’.

Nevill Coghill: “Murder in the Cathedral is about a situation and a quality of life; the situation is perpetual and the quality is rare.”

Helen Gardener: “The central theme of the play is martyrdom and martyrdom in its strict ancient sense.”

David and Jones: “The play is not just a dramatization of death but a deep searching study of the significance of martyrdom.”

Here are some opinions about the role of chorus in the play:
Eliot: “The chorus has always fundamentally the same uses. It mediates between the action and the audience. It intensifies the action, we as audience see it doubly by seeing its effect on other play.”

Helen Gardener: “The chorus is also instrumental in involving the audience in Becket’s martyrdom.”

Helen Gardener: “The real drama of the play is where the greatest poetry lies – in its choruses.”

Now to end with Eliot’s opinion about borrowing material:
T.S. Eliot: “A form which has been perfected by one age cannot be copied exactly by writers of another age. We have to make use of suggestions from any more remote drama, too remote for there to be any danger of imitation, such as Everyman, late medieval morality and miracle plays and great Greek drama.”