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Not What You Meant?  There are 3 definitions for Cocktail party.

The Cocktail Party Study Guide

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by T. S. Eliot
About 62 pages (18,629 words)
The Cocktail Party Summary

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Critical Essay #3

In the following essay, Davenport explores how the "same two-eyed vision which brings laughter brings salvation from the prison of self' in The Cocktail Party.

T. S. Eliot's plays, like his poetry, have always inspired critical extremes, few writers have had such loyal disciples or such violent detractors. The Cocktail Party (1949), the first of his post-war comedies, is no exception. Its problematical nature, one feels, is largely the result of Eliot's ambitious attempt to reconcile two seemingly incompatible elements: high moral seriousness and "light" comedy in the Noel Coward Idiom. Thus, much of the discussion of the play has rightly centered on its comedy. In his final chapter to the third edition of Matthiessen's book on Eliot, C. L. Barber draws attention to the importance of the comic tone of the final argument between Edward.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 2,549 words. This study guide contains 18,629 words (approx. 62 pages at 300 words per page).

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The Cocktail Party from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.



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