ABSTRACT
Having identified the paradigm on which Eliot deliberately based his particular idea of perfection, and indicated how he moved from the story of the dying god to the formulation of an aesthetic, political and religious doctrine, we will perhaps be entitled to some scepticism about his claim to represent universal order. We might feel entitled to replace his phrase ‘the mythical method’ with the more accurate one, ‘a mythical method’. Modernism did not produce just one distinct brand of mythopoeia. Here we will contrast Eliot’s tragic vision with the comic vision of a poet and critic who consciously defined his own enterprise against that of Eliot-namely Edgell Rickword.
