ABSTRACT
T. S. Eliot himself has commanded a literary authority possessed by no one since the days of Samuel Johnson, and his work has been criticized in great detail within a few years of its first publication. Eliot was unable to accept the civilization in which he found himself. He was aware of an upheaval in the nature of man and that left him fretful and distressed. Though Eliot was never part of the imagist movement he was influenced by Hulme's theory of the word and by Ezra Pound's practice as a poet. As Eliot himself comments, Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a 'character', is yet the most important personage in the poem uniting all the rest. As the poets of a younger generation discovered themselves in the Spanish Civil War, so Eliot finds himself in the Christian faith. His art has gained a purpose beyond itself, an urgency and a desire to seek an audience.
