Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
William Butler Yeats an T.S.Eliot at 20th century
The wasteland as a modernist text
Essay on the wasteland
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: William Butler Yeats an T.S.Eliot at 20th century
Comparing T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland and William Butler Yeats' The Second Coming
World War One fundamentally changed Europeans perspective on man. Before the war they believed that man was innately good, after it people were disenchanted with this vision of man. Both Thomas Sterns Eliot and William Butler Yeats keenly felt this disenchantment, and evinced it in their poetry. In addition to the war, Eliot and Yeats also saw the continuing turmoil in Europe, such as the Russian Revolution and the Irish Rebellions, as confirmation of their fear of man's nature and expanded their disillusionment in "The Waste Land" and "The Second Coming."
The poets shared more than a disbelief in the goodness of man's nature, they also both had religious experiences that colored their thoughts. Eliot was an atheist at the start of his life, and converted to Christianity, coming to believe in it fervently. Eliot also toyed with Buddhism during one stage of his writing "The Wasteland" (Southam 132). Yeats, on the other hand, grew up a practicing Christian and by the time he wrote "The Second Coming" was forming his own personal philosophy founded on an accumulation of everything "[he] had read, thought, experienced, and written over many years" (Harrison. 1). His philosophy, therefore, included Christianity as a factor in his life, but not nearly as significant a factor as in Eliot's life. Because of the importance of religion in both of their lives, Yeats and Eliot used many mythological and religious allusions in their poems. While both poets shared a disenchantment in the nature of man, their varying religions made them see different outcomes on mankind's horizon. Eliot saw the future as redeemable, while Yeats believed it could onl...
... middle of paper ...
..."
Works Cited
Harrison, John. "What rough beast? Yeats, Nietzsche and historical rhetoric in 'The Second Coming.'
Electric Library
Leavis, F.R. "The Waste Land." T.S. Eliot: a Collection of Critical Essays.ed.
HughKenner. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1962. 104-109 "Rudyard Kipling and William Butler
Yeats"
http://www.en.utexas.edu/~benjamin/316kfall/316unit4/studentprojects/ kiplingyeats/intro.html
Southam, B.C. A guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1994.
UVA class notes, Dept of English, lit. intro into English from 1890 1989.
http://www.faraday.clas.virginia.edu./~sg5p/Class_notes_2.html
Vickery, John B. The Literary Impact of The Golden Bough. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.
B.B. King is an African-American musical artist and song composer. B.B. King, whose real name is Riley B. King. B.B. King was born in September 16, 1925 in Berclair, Mississippi. B.B. King was born into a sharecropping family with his mother, Nora Ella, and father, Albert King. Three years later, B.B. King’s little brother was born, his name was Curce King. B.B. King had a hard life growing up as a child. In 1928, B.B. King’s little brother died at the age of two from eating grass. A couple of years later, his parents separate and B.B. King leaves with his mother to his cousin’s house in another part of Mississippi. A very tragic event happened in 1935; B.B. King’s mother dies drunk and the cause of death was because of her diabetes complications. While B.B. King lived with his aunts and his grandmother, Elnora Farr, they took him to church where he played the gu...
Ellmann, Richard and Robert O'Clair, ed. The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 2nd Edition. New York: W.W. Norton
Thomas." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. 101-10. Print.
Thomas Stearns Eliot was perhaps one of the most critical writers in the English language’s history. Youngest of seven children and born to the owner of a Brick Company, he wasn’t exactly bathed in poverty at all. Once he graduated from Harvard, he went on to found the Unitarian church of St. Luis. Soon after, Eliot became more serious about literature. As previously stated, his literature works were possibly some of the most famous in history. Dr. Tim McGee of Worland High School said that he would be the richest writer in history if he was still alive, and I have no choice but to believe him. In the past week many of his works have been observed in my English literature class. Of Thomas Stearns Eliot’s poems Preludes, The Journey of the Magi, The Hollow Men, The Waste Land, and Four Quartets, I personally find his poem The Hollow men to be the most relatable because of its musical allusions, use of inclusive language, and his opinion on society.
Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land and Other Poems, New York, London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1988
Eliot, T.S. “Preludes” T.S. Eliot: Selected Poems. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1958. 22-4.
Washington Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle with the American people in mind. At this time society was changing drastically. America was attempting to go through a struggle with forming their own identity. America was wanting to have an identity that would set them free from English culture and rule. Irving uses his main character, Rip Van Winkle, to symbolize America. Rip goes through the same struggles that America was going through at this time before and after the Revolution. Irving uses such great symbolism in this story to describe the changes that American society went through. This story covers a wide variety of time periods including: America before English rule, early American colonies under English rule, and America after the Revolutionary War.
Riley B. King, known as B.B King was born September 16, 1928 in the hamlet of Berclair, Mississippi near the town of Itta Bena. His parents Albert and Nora Ell King were sharecroppers who divorced when he was four years old. He lived with his mother until she passed away when he was nine and was later raised by a host of his relatives that included uncles, aunts, and kind white plantation owners. Some of his first exposure to music was from the singing of workers in fields and from the guitar playing of a reverend in a local church. His mother passed on her devout Baptist nature and it led to him becoming the lead singer in the Holiness church’s gospel choir. He was heavily influenced by the recordings of Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Johnson. He is known to have blended aspects of the blues with that of Jazz by borrowing techniques of famed Jazz guitarist Django Reinhart and saxophonist Lester Young.
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. ed. M. H. Abrams New York, London: Norton, 1993.
Dinse estimated damage could reach “the low thousands,” but both he and Mayor Rocky Anderson objected to early reports that characterized the incident as a riot.
King better known as B. B. King or “The King of Blues,” was born in Itta Bena, MS, and is widely considered to be one of the most respected blues musicians of all time. He was also ranked third on the Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of all time. His style combines gospel and the blues. His music including innovative guitar playing, became a model for many blues performers in the 1960’s. B.B King played at least 15,000 performances in over 52 years of entertaining. In 2002 he signed on as an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit organization that provides free musical instruments and lessons to children in the public
Perkins, Geroge, and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
B.B. King’s first musical influence came from his church, Church of God in Christ. He was forbidden to play blues at home. Instead, he sang in spiritual groups like the Elkhorn Singers and Saint John’s Gospel Singers. A relative of B.B. showed him his first chords on the instrument. According to B.B. King, King of the Blues Worldwide (n.d.), as a teenager, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play in as many as four towns a night. When he started making more money playing in one night than he would in a week on the farm, he headed to Memphis. At that time, Memphis was where every style of African American musicians of the South gravitated. B.B. stayed with his cousin, Bukka white, a blues performer, who schooled him further in the art of the blues.
“Sailing to Byzantium”, published in 1928, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, published in 1919, and “The Second Coming”, published in 1920, are all some of the most highly regarded works of William Butler Yeats. Although each poem seemingly contains its own personal ideas and focus on particular topics, one common theme is found throughout all three: death. In “Sailing to Byzantium” Yeats discusses the matter of growing old and attempting to find a way to live eternally after death has taken its toll, while in “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” he creates an internal dialogue of an Irish airman as he feels he is about to take his final flight into death, and lastly in “The Second Coming” he creates an allegory for post-war Ireland by alluding to the Apocalypse. Each of these poems is popular not only due to the incredible manner in which they were written, but rather, due to the voice in which Yeats discusses each of the poem’s respective subjects. Through his modernist style, yet traditional form, William Butler Yeats wrote “Sailing to Byzantium”, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, and “The Second Coming” as an attempt to answering the difficult questions that surround death in a way which resonated so strongly onto the audience that continues its legacy to this day.
The First World War was a darker time for Europe because there were a lot of mixed feelings involving the destruction and recreation of many old and new countries alike. Fear, death, and loss of loved ones hung in the air making this dark time confusing, especially for those surrounding the collapsing German economy. Though America was thriving from the sales and success in the World War I, Europe was worried and broken from the war. That is what sparked T.S Eliot, a Harvard educated poet to write three poems called: The Hollow Men, Portrait of a Woman, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Though written in the same time, the author captured feelings throughout the different social standings and social climates to highlight the feelings floating through the European countries. Throughout his three poems Eliot uses his characters and imagery to capture the brokenness and lack of identity that surrounded this time period.