As one of America's first modernist poets, T. S. Eliot's unique style and subject matter would have a dramatic influence on writers for the century to come. Born in 1888 in St. Louis Mo. at the tail end of the "Cowboy era" he grew up in the more civilized industrial era of the early 20th century, a time of the Wright Brothers and Henry Ford. The Eliot family was endowed with some of the best intellectual and political connections in America of that time, and as a result went to only the best schools. By 1906 he was a freshman in Harvard, finishing his bachelors in only 3 years and studying philosophy in France from 1910 to 1914, the outbreak of war. In 1915 the verse magazine Poetry published Eliot's first notable piece, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. This was followed by other short poems such as 'Portrait of a Lady'. 'The Waste Land', which appeared in 1922, is considered by many to be his most challenging work (see American Literature).
In 1927 Eliot became a British subject and was confirmed in the Church of England. His essays ('For Lancelot Andrewes', 1928) and his poetry ('Four Quartets', 1943) increasingly reflected this association with a traditional culture.
His first drama was 'The Rock' (1934), a pageant play.
This was followed by 'Murder in the Cathedral' (1935), a play dealing with the assassination of Archbishop Thomas a Becket, who was later canonized. 'The Family Reunion' appeared in 1939. 'The Cocktail Party', based upon the ancient Greek drama 'Alcestis' by Euripides, came out in 1950 and 'The Confidential Clerk' in 1953. The dialogue in his plays is written in a free, rhythmical verse pattern. Eliot won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948 and other major literary awards. The author was married twice. He died on Jan. 4, 1965, in London.
T.S. Eliot once said that the largest difficulty facing poets today was form and that they must find "a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." This idea that the world is chaos and only the structure of the poets prose can bring order to it is the driving force behind Eliots work. But yet, Eliot has often been criticized or admonished for not providing that very order he speaks of. Professor of English Melissa Sodemn said that most of his poems are...
... middle of paper ...
...ite…I still believed Lewis to be in error, but for a fundamentally different reason. Eliot was certainly not a typical anti-Semite. He was an extraordinary anti-Semite. " Kitaj claimed he found numerous anti-Semitic referrals in Eliots poems, and even claims that entire poems were devoted to this Anti-Semitism. Most English professors feel his work is to imbed with Anglo-Christian ideals and political conservatism. Others still consider him a liberal and his books to promote ideals counter to the workman American ideals.
However, in the 1920's most English professors felt Eliots new style was simply counter to all the pre-set rules of prose which had been set out ever since Dante wrote in his native language. Now Eliot's modernist style is copied throughout the world in virtually all circles of literature.
	It could be said the Eliot was an Anti-Semite who believed in Kings over presidents and felt we should all just be good little Christians who live a liberal life style. But then the fact still remains, Eliot revolutionized poetry and society, he had a dramatic effect on England and America and regardless of what you think of his ideals, he wrote beautiful poetry.
Despite the similarities between these two poems, Corso and Eliot shared little in common. Corso spent much of his early life between foster parents and prison, the latter being where he was introduced to poetry. Now credited as a key member of the “Beat Generation”, a group of poets who were opposed to social conformity and the traditional forms of poetry, Corso typically wrote poetry “on serious philosophical issues” (Olson 53). On the other hand Eliot’s upbringing was more traditional where he attended Harvard and went on to become a figure of immense influence in the literary world. Eliot’s first major poetic publication: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock bares many resemblances to Corso’s postmodern poem Marriage, a poem written to criticize the philosophical issues associated with marriage.
Elliot, George, and Gordon Sherman. Haight. Selections from George Eliot's Letters. New Haven [Conn.: Yale UP, Print
Garraty, John and Mark C. Carnes, eds. T.S Eliot’s life and Career. New York: Oxford University Press.1999. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/life.htm
The Modernist era of poetry, like all reactionary movements, was directed, influenced, and determined by the events preceding it. The gradual shift away from the romanticized writing of the Victorian Era served as a litmus test for the values, and the shape of poetry to come. Adopting this same idea, William Carlos Williams concentrated his poetry in redirecting the course of Modernist writing, continuing a break from the past in more ways than he saw being done, particularly by T.S. Eliot, an American born poet living abroad. Eliot’s monumental poem, The Waste Land, was a historically rooted, worldly conscious work that was brought on by the effects of World War One. The implementation of literary allusions versus imagination was one point that Williams attacked Eliot over, but was Williams completely in stride with his own guidelines? Looking closely at Williams’s reactionary poem to The Waste Land, Spring and All, we can question whether or not he followed the expectations he anticipated of Modernist work; the attempts to construct new art in the midst of a world undergoing sweeping changes.
During T. S. Eliot’s time many of his contemporaries including himself were in the custom of alluding to classic works of poetry. They incorporated references to notable texts like Dante. Eliot especially is a main perpetrator of alluding. Eliot has the ability create a picture for the reader and provide historical context to his works. A contemporary of Eliot, Pound, once said you should try to “be influenced by as many great artists as [they] can” (Pound 95). Eliot is following what Pound said by incorporating allusions in his works.
"T.S. Eliot: Childhood & Young Scholar." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
...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
Eliot's poem with its abstract imagery, incoherent stanza structures, and attention to the concepts of individualism and alienation is a clear example of literary modernism. His "love song" exists as a poetic commentary on his society, critical of the frivolites of the upper-class socialites and sympathetic toward the members of society who felt the intense isolation that results from, essentially, not "fitting in", and in a society dominated by wealthy tycoons and modern industry, Eliot used his skill to challenge the ideals of the ruling class and to draw attention to the most simplistic, yet modern, concept of all: the individual.
Williamson, George. A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot; a Poem by Poem Analysis. New York:
But the prevailing of his contradictions involves two major themes in his poetry: history and faith. He was, in his life, a self-described "Anglo-Catholic," but was raised a Midwestern Unitarian in St. Louis. Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd describes the religion of Eliot's ancestors as "a faith [that] reside[s] in the Church, the City, and the University since it is a faith primarily of social intent, and concerned with the nature of moral obligations within a society. It place[s] its trust in good works, in reverence for authority and the institutions of authority, in public service, in thrift, and in success" (18). It is through Eliot's insistence of these "moral obligations" that his didactic poetry gives us a glimpse of both his outwardly rejected faith and his inability to shun its tenets. He becomes, through his greatest poetry, a professor of that which he supposedly does not believe.
T.S. Eliot is often considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th Century. Not only were his highly regarded poems such as “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” influential to the literary style of his time, but his work as a publisher highlighted the work of many talented poets. Analyzing his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with psychoanalytic criticism reveals several core issues in the speaker of the poem, and may reflect Eliot himself.
T.S. Eliot was a poet, dramatist and he was also a literary critic. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The...
Southam, B.C. A guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1994.
T.S Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, is written in the mood of society after World War I. By using these allusions, The Waste Land reflects on mythical, historical, and literary events. The poem displays the deep disillusionment felt during this time period. In the after math of the great war, in an industrialized society that lacks the traditional structure of authority and belief, in the soil that may not be conductive to new growth (Lewis). Eliot used various allusions that connected to the time period and the effect of the war on society in his poem. Aided by Eliot’s own notes and comments, scholars have been able to identify allusions to: the Book of Common Prayer, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles-Louis Philippe, James Thomas, Guillaume Appollinaire, Countess Marie Larsich, Wyndham Lewis, nine books of the Bible, John Donne, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Richard Wagner, Sappho, Catullus, Lord Byron, Joseph Campbell, Aldous Huxley, J.G. Frazer, Jessie L. Weston, W.B. Yeats, Shakespeare, Walter Pater, Charles Baudelair, Dente, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and John Webster—all within the first section of 72 lines, about one allusion every two lines (Lewis). Using various allusions, Eliot was able to connect to the fact that he lived in a modern day waste land as a result of the destruction caused by World War I. Eliot used the allusions to show that death brings new beginnings and change, and love still flourishes.
Michael, Levenson H. A Genealogy of Modernism: A study of English literary doctrine 1908-1922. 28 Feb. 2005 http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/wasteland.htm.