T.S. Eliot beautifully tells the story of Jesus’s birth through the eyes of a magus who traveled to Bethlehem in “Journey of the Magi.” “Journey of the Magi” was published in 1927 and was a part of a series of Eliot's poems called Ariel Poems. “Religious themes became increasingly important in his poetry” after Eliot converted to Anglicanism.
The title, “Journey of the Magi,” clearly communicates to the reader of what they can anticipate to read. Magi is the plural form of magus meaning “a member of a priestly caste of ancient Persia.” Commonly, people call the three men who visited Jesus wise men and kings. T.S. Eliot does not use the word magi or other similar words. The readers do know, Eliot writes from one of the magi’s point of views as in line forty, “We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,” tells the reader the narrator is a king.
T.S. Eliot uses free verse to write “Journey of the Magi” as it uses no rime or meter. The form is dramatic monologue as the narrator, the magus, is speaking to the listener about his journey. The narrator found the journey hard, but kept persevering until he reached his goal of seeing “a Birth.” Eliot communicates that the magi are strong and determined men as they withstand the journey’s hardships.
“Journey of the Magi” begins with a quote based off of Lancelot Andrewes’s “Nativity Sermon.” The reader can feel the chills of the cold and long journey the magi must endure. The reader is immediately thrust into the middle of the journey rather than starting at the beginning. The narrator uses “we” as he talks about himself and his fellow magi. Their journey has brought regrets as the men think of their summer palaces and girls bringing them sherbet. The regrets have even spread to their ...
... middle of paper ...
...s people will die, so that they will be reborn in Jesus Christ. It is a beautiful ending to the poem.
T.S. Eliot conveys a powerful message in “Journey of the Magi” of Jesus Christ’s birth and the deaths of the magi. Eliot uses symbolism to paint a picture of the magi’s treacherous journey to see the birth of Jesus and to show the reader must “die” in order to be reborn again through Him. T.S. Eliot truly accomplishes creating a dramatic poem with “Journey of the Magi.”
Works Cited
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: an introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing. 7th compact ed. /Interactive ed. Boston, Mass.: Pearson, 2012, 805.
"Definition of magus in English." Oxford Dictionary. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/magus (accessed November 14, 2013).
Eliot, T. S.. “Journey of the magi.” London: Faber & Gwyer, 1927.
Updlike, John. "A&P." Literature. An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 12th Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education (US), 2012. 17-21. Print
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: ,talk, An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and
The most obvious stylistic device used by Eliot is that of personification. She uses this device to create two people from her thoughts on old and new leisure. The fist person is New Leisure, who we can infer to be part of the growth of industry in the 19th century. He is eager and interested in science, politics, and philosophy. He reads exciting novels and leads a hurried life, attempting to do many things at once. Such characteristics help us to create an image of New Leisure as Eliot sees him.
The editors of anthologies containing T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" invariably footnote the reference to Lazarus as John 11:1-44; rarely is the reference footnoted as Luke 16:19-31. Also, the reference to John the Baptist is invariably footnoted as Matthew 14:3-11; never have I seen the reference footnoted as an allusion to Oscar Wilde's Salome. The sources that one cites can profoundly affect interpretations of the poem. I believe that a correct reading of Eliot's "Prufrock" requires that one cite Wilde, in addition to Matthew, and Luke, in addition to John, as the sources for the John the Baptist and Lazarus being referenced. Furthermore, the citation of these sources can help explain Eliot's allusion to Dante's Guido da Montefeltro.
14 Jonathan T. Pennington. Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew. (Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, 2009), 214.15 Dale C. Allison, Jr. Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 101.16 Frank J. Matera. Passion Narratives and Gospel Theologies: Interpreting the Synoptics Through Their Passion Stories. (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 115.17 Dale C. Allison, Jr. Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 229.
Murphy, Russell Elliott. T.S. Eliot: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York:
Kennedy, X. J., & Gioia, D. (2013). Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and
Choosing the first person form in the first and fourth stanza, the poet reflects his personal experiences with the city of London. He adheres to a strict form of four stanzas with each four lines and an ABAB rhyme. The tone of the poem changes from a contemplative lyric quality in the first to a dramatic sharp finale in the last stanza. The tone in the first stanza is set by regular accents, iambic meter and long vowel sounds in the words "wander", "chartered", "flow" and "woe", producing a grave and somber mood.
...s, Colleen. The love song of T.S. Eliot: elegiac homoeroticism in the early poetry. Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot. Ed. Cassandra Laity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. p. 20
“Journey of the Magi” is a poem by T.S Eliot extracted from the Ariel poems and published in 1930. It is a dramatic monologue of one of the Magi telling us about his expedition throughout Palestine to find the Christian messiah: Jesus Christ. Through the narrator’s dramatic monologue, Eliot treats the envisioning of reality, usually distorted by the human mind. In the poem, the travelers witness something that changes their reality forever. How does this monologue illustrate the narrator’s envision of his experience traveling through Palestine? In order to analyze the narrator’s perception of his past journey, I will precede with the study of Eliot’s poem by a linear analysis.
Moody, Anthony David. The Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 121. Print.
T.S. Eliot was a poet, dramatist and he was also a literary critic. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The...
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, the seventh and last child of Henry Ware Eliot, a brick manufacturer, and Charlotte (Stearns) Eliot, who was active in social reform and was herself a not-untalented poet. Both parents were descended from families that had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. William Greenleaf Eliot, the poet's paternal grandfather, had, after his graduation from Harvard in the 1830s, moved to St. Louis, where he became a Unitarian minister, but the New England connection was closely maintained--especially, during Eliot's youth, through the family's summer home on the Atlantic coast in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
This Christmas poem is about the Epiphany and was created the very year of Eliot’s conversion to Christianity (Fleisner, 66). Therefore the theme of religion is an important one if we are to analyse the poem correctly. In the book of Ephesians in the Bible, Paul describes the rebirth of the world upon Christ’s death, emphasising the Ephesians’ new life (2:4-5). This theme of death and rebirth is present in the poem Journey of the Magi, which, I will argue, is structurally and internally divided into three stages; corresponding to the Sacrament of Penance: contrition (guilt), confession and satisfaction.
T.S Eliot, widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern poetry, has written many great poems. Among the most well known of these are “The Waste Land, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which share similar messages, but are also quite different. In both poems, Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey themes of repression, alienation, and a general breakdown in western society. Some of the best techniques to examine are ones such as theme, structure, imagery and language, which all figure prominently in his poetry. These techniques in particular are used by Eliot to both enhance and support the purpose of his poems.