Circles of Progress in T. S. Eliot’s Poetry: Ash-Wednesday as a Model

Abstract

That T. S. Eliot’s poems recreate journeys marked by recurring images of circles is hardly a new discovery. However, after decades of criticism, we have only now begun to explore the possibility that the circular vision and structure of T. S. Eliot’s poetry depend, to a great extent, on the unique fusion of the two supreme allegories in Western literature — Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s Commedia — with the peregrine tradition that evolved from those works. At Harvard College Eliot was made aware in 1909–10 of the universal and encompassing nature of allegory, specifically in Professor Neilson’s course in the ‘History of Allegory’ and the Chaucer course which, according to Eliot’s class notes on Troilus and Cressida gave him new insights into ‘the Troy Story from Homer to Shakespeare’.² Eliot himself pointed to the essential function of allegory in the ordering and expression of emotion and used Homer and Dante as models of creative excellence throughout his prose. I have already discussed in some detail the role of the classical tradition originating with Homer and the particular function of the Ulysses figure from Homer to James Joyce in defining many of the themes and ironic heroes in Eliot’s early poems;³ and considerable scholarship has been presented on Dante’s place throughout Eliot’s work.⁴ However, the circular structure of these allegories and their impress on the secular subtext and narrative form of his major poems have yet to be fully examined.

‘I have sought to understand myself.’

Heraclitus¹