Thomas S. Eliot’s eyes on Dante Alighieri

Abstract

Thomas E. Eliot devoted several essays to Dante Alighieri, declaring that he considered the Italian poet the most universal of all poets of the continent. Dante’s recourse to visual images to enunciate very abstract philosophical and theological themes, finds its counterpart in Eliot’s use of the ‘objective correlative’ to evoke in the reader sensory experiences. Purpose of the present paper is to investigate about the influence exerted by the author of the “Divine Comedy” on the great innovator of the English literary landscape of the 20th century, utilizing to that purpose the scripts by T.S. Eliot himself.