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Literature is the bearer of all treasures in the world-that includes the author's worldview and his philosophy in creating and writing his literature. There is therefore a need to teach the students on the proper way of understanding and interpreting a literary work. This study aims to interpret the meaning of T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding, employing close reading interpretation and hermeneutics approaches. Specifically, this study aims to: (1) describe T.S. Eliot's poetics through the aesthetics he employed in Little Gidding, and (2) unveil the philosophical worldviews of the poet through the explication of the themes seen in the poem Little Gidding. The analysis reveals that T.S. Eliot employs creatively the aesthetics of literature, specifically in his poetry Little Gidding. The language used in the poem brings the reader to another dimension of understanding the concepts of time and timelessness, and of the being and the now - the philosophical worldviews that every reader should understand and be given meaning in relation to their lives and experiences. The imaginative writing of T.S. Eliot was explicitly exhibited in his Little Gidding, thereby leading the readers to understand its philosophical contexts and the milieu of the poet in order to comprehend and appreciate better the central and philosophical meaning of the poem. Reading T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding employing interpretative and hermeneutical approaches explores the meaning of the poem in different levels of reading and interpretation - that should not be overlooked by the teacher in the teaching of this literary piece to the students.

 

Keywords: T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding; literary criticism; interpretative reading; hermeneutics; descriptive-qualitative research