Le vers comme indice d'artificialité dans le théâtre de T.S. Eliot : The Confidential Clerk

• Main Author: Daniel Jean
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" 2009-12-01
• Series: Sillages Critiques
• Subjects: artificiality of theatre; metatheatrical discourse; Second World War; T.S. Eliot; The Confidential Clerk; Verse Drama
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/1824

The Confidential Clerk is often considered as the all time low of T.S.Eliot’s output. As a part of his agenda for reinventing Verse Drama for the contemporary stage, which he set out on in wake of WW2, Eliot presented the play as an attempt to make verse acceptable on the stage by using a fashionable form of drama, and by leaving out all poetry. This paper proposes to read the play - irrespective of its author’s prescriptions - as an attempt at underling, by the way of verse as an efficient element of metatheatrical discourse, the very artificiality of theatre.