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T. S. 엘리엇 / 시의 사회적 기능으로서의 감수성의 조정
Articles in Korean : T. S. Eliot / Unified Sensibility as a Social Function of Poetry
양균원(Kyoon Won Yang)
현대영미시연구 4권 121-148(28pages)
UCI I410-ECN-0102-2009-840-004434280
* 발행 기관의 요청으로 이용이 불가한 자료입니다.

In his Clark Lectures on the Metaphysical poets, Eliot implied that a new unified sensibility could be a condition for better living as well as for good poetry. His interest in sensibility is apparent in his dissertation on F. H. Bradley`s philosophy and much of his other literary criticism regarding tradition, culture and the social function of poetry. In his ideas of `immediate experience`, `objective correlative`, `art emotion`, etc., feeling and thought are associated and united with the world. The world is an ideal constriction which is equivalent to what we perceive through a unified sensibility. Eliot said that people had never recovered from a dissociation of thought and feeling which started in the 17th century (SE 287~288). Culture was thought to deteriorate unless constantly changing sensibility was fused into the language by great poets (OPP 10~11). This was the reason why he considered poetry in its social function. Poetry may accomplish revolutions in collective sensibility and put an end to the `conventional modes of perception and valuation` (UPUC 155). For Eliot sensibility was not a mere faculty of individual receptivity but a condition with which people could not keep a healthy civilization. In the refined sensibility of a poet with `historical sense`, the world can be perceived in its pastness as well as its presence of the past. In Eliot`s ideal society a few great poets comprehend the world in its complexity and significant history; their new sensibility may effect minor authors and ordinary people until it is settled in the language and fused unconsciously into tradition and culture. This world may be an homogeneous background in which people, some of whom don`t even know the poets` names, have something in common with them. This vision of an homogeneous world, Eliot thinks, is a social function of poetry. Poetry can give pleasure and a new experience to an individual reader. But in addition it can give collectively to all members of a society a refined sensibility. The collective sensibility comprehends the world in its complexity and diversity, and still provides an identical vision of it. The problem is that the identity of the world cannot be achieved without the intention of a few who aspire to restore it. The ideal society is valid only when all members of a society share an identical way of feeling and thinking, however vague and unconscious it may be. Eliot`s tradition and culture are significant in that they are conditions for a sense of identity among the members of a society. Eliot`s quest for a new sensibility is an effort to have a mental mechanism by which people can absorb a variety of experiences into a `whole of feeling` and even have reconciliation with the past in its pastness and presence.

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