The dissertation deals with the characteristic feature of T. S. Eliot's poetic style intertextuality. This phenomenon has investigated on the material of such collections: "Prufrock and Other Observations" (1917), "Poems" (1920), "The Waste Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925) and "Ash Wednesday" (1930). These writings are the results of spiritual and literary searching in different periods of Eliot's creative activity. His original poetry has been investigated on a level of cultural dialogue with world and national heritages. The paper determines the intertextual frame of Eliot's metatext. It is formed by "Metamorphosis" by Ovid, "Satiricon" by Petrony, "Divine Comedy" by Dante and "Pericles", "Measure for Measure", "Twelfth Night; or, what you will", "King Henry the fourth", "Twelfth Night", "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", "The Tempest", "Othelo" and others by Shakespeare. "Golden bough" by J. Frazer and "From Ritual to Romance" by J. L. Weston are also important part of this intertextual frame. It hasbeen ascertained that intertextuality is the aesthetic principle of Eliot's poetic manner. It integrates the world culture in the author's metatext. A high degree and specific character of intertextual connections of Eliot's poems has been discovered. Intertextuality in Eliot's writings is presented by such forms as quotation, allusion, reminiscence, paraphrase, disseminations of another style. These intexts have such functions as structure-forming, interpretative, communicative, as Eliot used the "voices" of his predecessors. Frequently these "dialogues" have evident or concealed irony. That's why we determine ironical function. The next one is cultural-semiotic, as long as Eliot not only borrowed some fragments from the indicated predecessors, he expressed his own semiotics orientation. Using intexts from diverse works of literature which Eliot inserted for canon, he strengthened relations with epoches and cultures. Intexts also act as evaluation, motif (intext is the source and means of transparent elementformation), generalisation (strengthening the meaning).
