Abstract

This article focuses on the Marian inspirations in T. S. Eliot’s poetry, especially in Part IV of “The Dry Salvages”, which differs importantly from the fourth part of all the other Quartets in that it is worded as a prayer rather than a reflection or meditation, and still more interestingly, is addressed directly and unequivocally to the Virgin Mary. The discussion reveals how Eliot's recourse to Marian elements and prayers unsettles the comfortable middle-of-the-road Anglicanism of which the Four Quartets have been accused. This, however, is done not by calling on the high intellectual resources of Catholic theology and philosophy but by foregrounding that aspect of ordinary Catholic devotion that was for centuries foremost in Catholic-Protestant debate, and so perhaps giving voice to a yearning for something long absent from the mainstream of religious expression in English.