Thesis (M.A.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Arts - Department of English

That Eliot has been linked to Romanticism is not new, but the reference has always been either to Romanticism in general or to English Romanticism. It is quite rare to find Eliot linked to Early German Romanticism. Shifting the emphasis from English Romanticism to EGR has vital basis. In addition to the belief in the necessity of a balancing act between poetic enthusiasm and skepticism, the importance of history and tradition as perspectives on the present, the essence of the self as a product of its interaction with other selves, Eliot shares with the Early German Romantics their distrust of language and their dependence on irony and fragmentary writing. Based on these parallels, the present dissertation attempts a reading of three representative poems by Eliot from an Early German Romantic perspective. It is to test whether the Early German Romantic program is relevant to Eliot when applied to the actual poetry, whether it would be able to open up the dynamics of the text and facilitate reading. Selection of the poems is based on their being representatives of the three major stages of Eliot{u2019}s poetic career

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