Signifying nothing : plenitude and vacancy in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets and The Waste Land : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University
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1995
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Massey University
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Abstract
This thesis focuses on nothingness (vacancy) in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets and The Waste Land. Nothingness is both a theme and a technique of Eliot's poetry. As a theme nothingness may be elucidated by both existential and mystical models since both theories have nothingness as a central theoretical concept. As a technique nothingness invites the reader's response by suggesting the possibility of final meaning, simultaneously demanding and undermining interpretation. Existing in a mutually exclusive and mutually defining relationship with nothingness is the "plenitude" of signification. An underlying aim of Eliot's poems becomes to capture in language the paradoxical combination of vacancy and plenitude which will allow a subject to transcend the relativity of signification and, in the case of Four Quartets, know God and Self directly, or in the case of The Waste Land, to finalise meaning.
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Eliot, T. S. 1888-1965, Criticism interpretation