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TWENTIETH CENTURY CULTURAL ETHOS AND ELIOT’S RESPONSE
Authors: Dr. Ms. Kaneez Banoo Quraishi,H. O. D. English, Smt. G. B. Mahila Mahavidyalaya,Tumsar, Bhandara (M.S)
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Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888, at St. Louis, in the state of Missouri, the United States of America. Eliot himself
told an audience at St. Louis, in 1953, that the ‘original law of public service’, which inspired him as a child, ‘operated
especially in three areas: the church, the city, and the university”. He further explained that for him the church meant the
Unitarian church of the Messiah the city was St. Louis, and the University the Washington University. ‘These’, Eliot
elaborates, ‘were the symbols of Religion, the Community and Education’. He comments that ‘it is a very good beginning for
any child, to be brought up to reverence such institutions, and to be taught that personal and selfish aims should be
subordinated to the general good which they represents’.