A Reason in a Storm A Study of the Use of Ambiguity in the Writings of T.S. Eliot

This book shows that T.S. Eliot, working in the romantic tradition, deliberately uses ambiguity in language to manifest the realm of ultimate reality. He maintains this technique first to create moments of unmediated experience in his early poetry and, in his later poetry, to express the transcendent in time. No other study has explicitly dealt with Eliot's use of ambiguity and its significance in relating Eliot to romanticism and postmodern practices of deconstruction. In this study, Eliot is shown to be a significant link, overlooked until now, between tradition and the contemporary fracturing of tradition.