T. S. Eliot's ‘Ash‐Wednesday’ and Four Quartets: Poetic Confession as Psychotherapy (2024)

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Volume 17 Issue 1 March 2003
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Dennis Brown

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Literature and Theology, Volume 17, Issue 1, March 2003, Pages 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/17.1.1

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01 March 2003

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Abstract

The article considers T.S. Eliot's ‘Ash‐Wednesday’ and Four Quartets as confessional poetry in a double sense—as interpersonal communication before God, and to the reader. It is thus akin to the relationship between therapist and client in a counselling situation. ‘Ash‐Wednesday’ constitutes a Lenten preparation in which understanding is sought by means of an articulation of failure, loss and repentance. Four Quartets uses a similar confessional technique, evoking ‘peak’ moments (both primal scene and the site of mourning) out of which religious philosophising emerges as proposed ‘interpretation’. It is suggested that the poems resemble a confidential ‘talking cure’.

Copyright Oxford University Press 2003

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