Thomas Becket: personaggio storico e figura letteraria

Abstract

As Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket came into conflict with King Henry’s II policy due to his relentless defence of the church privileges. He was assassinated in the Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 and was canonized in 1173. His fate is the subject of several literary works. This article deals with Thomas Becket as a central figure in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s Der Heilige (1880), Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Becket (1884), T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and Jean Anouilh’s Becket ou l’honneur de Dieu (1959).