Abstract

This dissertation explores Benjamin's, Baudelaire's, and Eliot's view of modernity, history, and aesthetics in terms of the discourse of difference and sameness. ;Part I examines how Benjamin's politics of difference and his critique of sameness underpin his philosophy of time and history, his theory of allegory and symbol, and his study on urban modernity. By exploring Benjamin's politics of difference that merges Marxism with Nietzsche's philosophy, we aim to present him as a thinker who foreshadows the postmodern discourse of Deleuze and Foucault. ;In Part II we re-read the poetry and criticism of Baudelaire in terms of Benjamin's politics of difference. We at first examine Baudelaire's urban symbolism that aims to aestheticize urban modernity. Our reading of Baudelaire's later allegorical poetry, in which he deconstructs his early symbolism, focuses on the poet's critique of modernity as the time-space of the eternally self-same. ;In Part III we at first examine the affinity between Baudelaire's later allegorical poems and Eliot's early city poems. In the second chapter on Eliot, we explore the poet's nihilistic historiography in the period of The Waste Land, which views the history of the West in terms of the repetition of endless decay. The last chapter uncovers how Eliot's later Christian symbolism, which seeks to redeem urban modernity, is founded upon the discourse of sameness