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Photographs included in tfie original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higfier quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are availatile for any pfxitographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional cfiarge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Leaming 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 UMI* T. S. ELIOT'S COMIC VISION: "FOUR QUARTETS" AND THE COMIC STRUCTURE OF THE LATE PLAYS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By William Errett Kinnison, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2000 Dissertation committee: Approved by — . Professor Walter Davis, Adviser Professor Sebastian Knowles Adviser Professor Morris Beja English Graduate Program UMI Number 9962413 UMI* UMI Microform9962413 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Copyright by Willlam Errett Kinnison 2000 ABSTRACT T. S. Eliot's prose writings on the theory and practice of drama (both the group of essays written many years in advance of his attempting to write plays of his own and called by Eliot "workshop criticism" and the "retrospect essays" composed after the intitiation of his dramatic output) have been used to generate indicators of direction in the study of Eliot's three post-war comedies: The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1953), and The Elder Statesman (1958). Seven such indicators have been isolated: 1) Eliot's "search for form"; 2) "the mythical method"; 3) "Objective correlative"; 4) "nature of the audience"; 5) "levels of sensibility"; 6) "nature of the actor"; 7) "escape from personality." These seven commonplaces of Eliot's thinking in the theory of drama have been traced in terms of their influence on his dramatic practice. Key to the application of these seven commonplaces is the "comic vision" Eliot arrived at through the lengthy composition 11 of the poetic work Four Quartets. The comic spirit of this poetic vision is seen to find its dramatic expression in the three post-war comedies. It is postulated that Eliot's personal experience of witnessing his close friend Emily Hale in a production of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit during the summer of 1946 served as the catalyst which induced Eliot to "digest and transmute" the disparate materials of drama and the comic vision over which he had been puzzling during the years of World War II into the comic form he would present on the stage over the remainder of his career. Reading each of the late plays through Eliot's comic vision— the form of which Eliot groped toward in the early criticism and the spirit of which he worked out in Four Quartets— highlights the contribution Eliot ultimately makes to twentieth-century dramatic stage practice. In his last three plays, Eliot adapts devices, characters, and plot structures provided by the genre of stage comedy and weds them to the drama of layers indicated by his workshop criticism, embodying the comic vision of Four Quartets on the stage. iii For Allen Koppenhaver Iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser. Mac Davis, for his patience and support during the visions and revisions which led to the final form of this dissertation. Special thanks also to Seb Knowles whose observations and insights about T. S. Eliot and about the process of scholarly writing enriched my experience with this project considerably. I am grateful to Murray Beja for engaging with a substantial amount of new material in a short period of time. I am grateful also to Tom Cooley for his much appreciated help in the final stages of the project. Tony Libby and Katherine Burkman read well and responded insightfully to several early drafts of this dissertation and to them I offer my sincere appreciation. Doug Downey and Marsha Dickson also have my thanks. I owe a great debt of gratitude to my children, Joshua, Abigail, and Emma, the bright angels of my life, who frequently drew me from my writing and always returned me to it with fresh perspective and renewed commitment. Thanks, also, to my wife, Katie, for frequent sacrifices and for the gifts of books and shared memories of September visits to T. S. Eliot's birthplace, St. Louis. I am mindful, also, of the many insights, both scholarly and personal, to which she brought me. My debt is considerable. Deepest thanks are due to my parents, William and Lenore, for many years of support and encouragement, for cards sent and conversations shared, for questions asked and questions strategically withheld— I could not have completed this work without them. I am grateful to Katherine A. "Kitty" O'Brien, Graduate Office Associate in the Department of English, for her information, her expertise, and her kindness. Thanks to Bobbi Davis-Jones and Tim Watson of the Graduate School for the care and concern with which they treated my manuscript. I am grateful also to my colleagues at Bishop Hartley High School for their friendship and support, especially Barb Recchie, Mike Winters, and Jim Silcott. In addition, I offer a wink of the eye to my Brothers in Arms: Scott, Tom, Bob, and Michael (aka "Steve"). Vi A word of thanks Is due to my teachers and students, past and present, for continually challenging and broadening my thinking and %*riting. Finally, I wish to thank Allen Koppenhaver, my teacher, friend, and colleague at Wittenberg University and fellow member of the T. S. Eliot Society. Allen shared with me his love of T. S. Eliot’s poetry and prose and first turned my critical eye to the plays. It is to Allen that this work is dedicated. vii VITA April 25, 1961..... Born - Springfield, Ohio 1979.................Diploma, Springfield North High School 198 3 ................ B.A. English, Wittenberg University 198 4 ................ M.A. English, University of Michigan 1983 - 1984........ Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of English University of Michigan 1985 - 1969........ Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English The Ohio State University 1987 - 1988........Adjunct Instructor, Department of English Wittenberg University 1989 -.. 1993....... Lecturer, Department of English The Ohio State University 1993 - 1996....... English Teacher, Catholic Central High School Springfield, Ohio 1996 -.. 1997....... Visiting Instructor, Department of English Ohio University 1997 - 1998....... Lecturer, Department of English The Ohio State University viii 1997 - 1998......... Adjunct Instructor, Department of English Wittenberg University 1997 - present...... English Teacher, Bishop Hartley High School Columbus, Ohio PUBLICATIONS Research Publication 1. William E. Kinnison, "'Why Damme, It's Too Bad!': The Structure of Comedy and the Strictures of the Doubting Game in T . S. Eliot's The Confidential Clerk." Yeats-Eliot Review: A Journal of Criticism and Scholarship. 10.5 (Winter-Spring 1989): 21-24. FIELD OF STUDY Major Field: English ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract........................ 11 Dedication. ...... ...................iv Acknowledgments............................................ v Vita..................................................... Vi 11 Abbreviations............................................. xl Chapters : 1. Variations on a Theme: Eliot's Workshop Criticism on the Drama..................................... 1 2. Eliot's Comic Vision and the Spirit of Comedy in FOUR QUARTETS................................... 38 3. Between Two Lives: The Use of Memory and the Conditions of Comedy in THE COCKTAIL PARTY.......... 85 4. Between Two Worlds : The Use of Imagination and the Search for Identity in THE CONFIDENTIAL CLERK...................................................... 146 5. T. S. Eliot's Divine Comedy of Situation: Dante's PURGATORIO, Sartre's Tragedy of Situation, and THE ELDER STATESMAN.................................. 178 Bibliography.............................................. 227 ABBREVIATIONS In the pages that follow, Eliot's major works will be referred to parenthetically by abbreviations. The abbreviations and the editions to which they correspond are as follows: APD The Aims of Poetic Drama: The Presidential Address to the Poet's Theatre Guild. 1949. London: Norwood Editions, 1978. CP The Complete Plays of T. S. Eliot. 1st American Ed. New York: Harcourt, 1967. CPP The Complete Poems