ABSTRACT |
The poetic works of T.S. Eliot and the twentieth century Catalan author
Salvador Espriu have a number of things in common, among them their
perception of their literary task as a continuation of tradition (with
its interconnected classical and Jewish/Christian components), as an
addition that needs to fit into it. Eliot makes the idea explicit in
“Tradition and the Individual Talent” and, in his poems and in Espriu’s,
it takes the form of multiple allusions that weave a literary net
conforming the unity of human experience, regardless of time and space.
Both Eliot’s and Espriu’s works would therefore be examples of the
“encyclopaedic form,” as defined by Northrop Frye, and they can be
considered comparable poets, despite their different cultural
backgrounds.
|
