[fantasyfan]

The Oxford Anthology of English Literature(Kermode and Hollander) contains "Little Gidding" and gives some general information on these remarkable pieces which might provide a useful general approach.

"Burnt Norton" was developed from left-over lines of Murder In The Cathedral in 1935 and was a meditation on time and eternity. For some years it stood alone. "East Coker" (1940) was written as a parallel to "Burnt Norton" and "The Dry Salvages" and "Little Gidding" followed In 1941--the group as a whole being published in 1943.

Eliot conceived the works as a poetic analogy to Beethoven's Late Quartets "with their strange transitions--intermingling of conventional and original forms, internal references and unpredictable sonorities."

Each quartet follows a movement form analogous in some ways to the Late Quartets:
1. A first movement in three parts (rather like the sonata form)
2. Lyrical stanzas and prosaic sections
3. A discursive exploration of stated themes
4. A fourth lyrical section usually in stanzas and explicitly Christian in theme
5. A concluding recapitulation.

The themes are variations on time and eternity, history and the present, and the intervention of the divine into the human condition.

Thus the poem is a philosophical and spiritual Christian meditation.

As is the case with all great art, the poems reverberate with subtle meanings which (like the late quartets) give a resonance to life. One never really finishes reading them.