Deviance from the norm : defamiliarisation techniques in T.S. Eliot's Murder in the cathedral and The cocktail party

Abstract

Any exploration of Eliot's dramatic achievement must begin, but not end, with assessing his conviction in the need to revive poetic drama. This conviction is partly spurred on by his dissatisfaction with what the stage had to offer at the time. Eliot is particularly derisive of prose drama which he deems too insubstantial to encapsulate the ache of modernism. He staunchly believes that poetry is the subtlest means of transcending the limitations of the stage; for the peculiar organicity of rhythm and imagery has the power to forge a cohesive pattern of metaphor and symbol which emanates through, but also beyond any parameters of language. Significantly, Eliot does not rest on his laurels of his canonical poet status. Several of his own essays and lectures attest to his awareness of the Herculean demands in creating a credible poetic drama, which is not simply a juxtaposition of poetry and drama, but a mutually justifiable fusion that precludes any distinction between the two. In A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry (1928) Eliot tersely affirms: "... what great poetry is not dramatic?" This bias is further ingrained by his own mastery in conjuring a highly allusive and dramatic collage of disembodied voices in his poetry, as well as to his uncanny incisiveness in articulating the artistry of Jacobean dramatists, Metaphysical and Victorian poets and early twentieth century music-hall artists. Indeed, Eliot's dramatic idiom is made up of the shadowy voices of the living dead which give use to an intensely private thought and emotion underlying the ironic questioning and detached observation of the commonplace. This is true both of the overt poetic diction in Murder in the Cathedral (1935) as well as the covert versification of the later plays such as The Cocktail Party (1949) and The Elder Statesman (1958).