Poems; with an Essay on Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot

The thesis consists of a selection of original poems and an essay on the literary relationship between Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot. The poems are loosely related in theme; they are the responses of the poet to the various forces in his upbringing, such as literature, religion and the American Southwest. The essay compares the literary criticism of Arnold and Eliot, the foremost critics of their respective periods, with special attention to Eliot's criticism of Arnold. The conclusion is that despite this criticism Eliot accepted Arnold's major critical precepts and perpetuated in his own work Arnold's central concerns about literature and culture