La muerte de Thomas Becket en T.S. Eliot y Jean Anouilhentre historicidad y alegoría

Resum

The aim of this paper is to explore the concepts of historicity and allegory in the plays of T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (1935), and of Jean Anouilh, Becket, ou l'honneur de Dieu (1959). From the contrastive analysis of both pieces, we observe a common feature in both playwrights, which is the depiction of a main character doomed to resignation and death, as a result of his defence of divine interests on earth. The historic episode of the killing of the archbishop of Canterbury by four knights commanded by the King of England, Henry II, inspires in T. S. Eliot the composition of a religious drama, based upon the lyric and mystical inner exploration of a martyr facing death. On the other hand, in his play, lean Anouilh focuses on the personal friendship between both characters, which was ambiguously defined as a love union. Therefore, History is minimised, rewritten and updated according to the compositive perspective of the playwrights, being just a pretext for their fictional creations.