A Critical Analysis of Free Verbal Repetition in Ash-Wednesday by T. S. Eliot

Author(s) : Muhammad Saleem

Abstract:

This paper aims at investigating the form and function of T.S. Eliot’s favourite artistic technique i.e. free repetition of form in Ash-Wednesday. Well aware of the strategic use of verbal choices in poetic art, Eliot consciously appropriated two distinguished categories of traditional rhetoric: epizeuxis and ploce. These two modes of exact copying of some previous part of the text stand for immediate repetition and intermittent repetition, respectively. They operate at a word level, phrase level and clause level in the language of the poem under analysis. The acceptance and respect this modern poet of the previous century continues to enjoy greatly owes to his mature artistic sensibility that is actualised through the formal devices he used. The hypothesised functions that these two means of free verbal repetition perform are: to estrange the poetic discourse for enlisting the reader, to stress some idea, to convey the size and depth of the emotion or thought, to enpasulise some discussion, to turn the poetic argument into a debate, and sometimes to emphasise the helplessness of the modern man. A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry by Leech (1989) is selected to work as the theoretical frame work for the present study. The research project is expected to define and determine the aesthetic role of free verbal repetition in the creation, effectiveness and suggestiveness of Eliot’s poetic art.