T.S Eliot, a man known for his dedication to literature, was a determined poet that was willing to overcome any obstacles to achieve a higher place in the literary world. Eliot’s poems, not for the faint of heart, dealt with his more troubling life experiences, such as depression, illnesses, and the complex society of World War One. These trials and tribulations lead Eliot into a state of collapse, which was fueled by his wife Vivien’s illness, and started publishing at night. Eliot was notorious
the most important poems of the twentieth century (Dictionary.com). The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot, has puzzled its audience and been tossed aside by the general population since 1922, when the poem was published. To a reader not committed to delving into its metaphors, the story might appear to represent the broken faithlessness of a society physically and emotionally marred after the Great War. However, Eliot intended the meaning to be much deeper. He strived to capture the struggle of awareness and
The Contemporary Resonance of T. S. Eliot 's poetry My critical analysis of T S Eliot’s iconic poetry reveals that its contemporary relevance is mainly a consequence of the hopelessness it embodies. By examining The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock (1915) and Preludes (1911), I gained an insight into the futility conveyed by Eliot’s exploration of stagnation and industrialization. These ideas, which Eliot explores in his distinctive style, are still relevant within modern-day society and add to the
"Cascando," by S. Beckett (Poems 41-42), and "Burnt Norton," by T. S. Eliot (Quartets 7-13) express the poets' desire for love and union: Beckett, desiring a woman, expresses his apprehension of their love, and Eliot, wanting divine revelation, expresses his apprehension of God's love in creating the universe. Knowing the poets' personal circumstances, the artists' creative suffering can be discovered in these complex poems, as they struggle to discern the uncertain future, and to arrange to procure
Faced with a world lacking variety, viewpoints, vibrancy, and virtue- a world without life- a fearful and insecure T.S. Eliot found himself the only one who realized all of civilization had been reduced to a single stereotype. Eliot (1888-1965) grew up as an outsider. Born with a double hernia, he was always distinguished from his peers, but translated his disability into a love of nature. He developed a respect for religion as well as an importance for the well-being of others from his grandfather
zero [and the signifier] can take on any value required ”, meaning that the images Eliot uses do not have one fixed signification and consequently conjure up thought-provoking ideas that need to be studied (qtd. in Derrida 10). One idea critics agree on is, as Paul Muldoon notes in his introduction to “The Waste Land” that “[i]t’s almost impossible to think of a world in which The Waste Land did not exist” (Eliot 2013, pg.5 ), further he proceeds that the poem has been written in an “oppressive climate”
Davis-Kilpatrick Professor Babbitt Modernist Poetry May 1, 2015 T. S. Eliot vs. Wallace Stevens 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
T. S. Eliot uses The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to highlight the everyday anxiety which stops humans from living meaningful lives. A few ways in which Eliot exemplifies this everyday anxiety is through the suppression of important thoughts or questions, a mundane hyper-focus on the trivial, and a crippling fear of other’s opinions. One major idea throughout The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is the suppression of an important question. The first the reader hears of this question is in stanza
that “no one has ever / returned alive from” (?) which convinces Montefeltro to reveal his secrets as he is sure anyone else in hell is stuck there without the possibility of going back into the world with other people. The use of this passage by Eliot aids in setting up the fact that Prufrock is isolated from those around him and is unable to leave his mental confinement in order to escape his
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot is proof of entirely modernist English when the comparison is made to other famous writers such as Shakespeare. In the poem, Eliot is dealing with an exceptionally personal subject matter that makes use of indirect, fragmentized, ironic and equivocal style. By making use of modernist English, Eliot calculative does this in a manner that is giving a picture of complete objectiveness as well as detachment. Also, as a well-versed writer, the Love
In The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot offers a wonderful insight to the spiritual aspect of the modern world. The wasteland that is described in the poem consists of a dried up and waterless land. Throughout the poem, Eliot looks for us to find a solution on how to rescue ourselves from what is known as the wasteland. To come to the full solution, he asks that we must give ourselves in the way of sacrifice. Another way to look at sacrifice is in Christianity, it has a tie into the theme of love. In order
Alfred Prufrock” was written during the early 1900s and was published in 1915 (Longxing). The poem was one of the modernistic works written by one of the well-known authors named T. S Eliot. Modernism, a type of writing written in the early 1900s after World War I, focuses on the negative aspects of reality (Pearce). Since Eliot wrote the poem during the modernism era, the poem portrays the loneliness, failure, and depression of a man’s life. The poem is about a man named J. Alfred Prufrock who does not
had been opened that allowed one to see within the minds. It invoked an obsession with figuring out the human mind and psyche. It also encouraged many artists and writers to try to find an understanding of the dark regions of the human psyche. T. S. Eliot captures the idea of inward thought in his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The entire poem is about Prufrock's inner dialogue as he struggles against his own inner psyche. He spends the whole night trapped in his own thoughts, unable to
Presentation on a Short Poem Written by T. S. Eliot-Cousin Nancy First, let me talk something about T. S. Eliot T. S. Eliot is considered to be one of the most prominent poets, critics and playwrights of his time and his works are said to have promoted to "reshape modern literature". He was born in 1888 in St. Louis Missouri and studied at Harvard and Oxford. It was at Harvard where he met his guide Ezra Pound, and under the encouragement of Pound, Eliot expands his writing abilities and publish
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a poem by T. S. Eliot, in which Eliot describes a man that was placed in the wrong time period. To do this he references some of Prufrock’s characteristics from other authors, such as Shakespeare. Shymal Bagchee expresses his view on Eliot’s modernist and absurdist viewpoints for the poem in his critical review titled “‘Prufrock’: An Absurdist View of the Poem.” Prufrock does not express his emotions like a regular person would, one that is connected to their
poets and writers of the Modernism Period, but one can say that there is no one more unique than T.S. Eliot. During the Modernism Period, poetry broke away from the traditional format of rhyming and having a literal meaning, and began to take on a dramatic monologue style with hidden meanings within the text. This contemporary style caused many people to become more involved in their reading. Eliot, being the most expressive during this time, wrote a poem entitled “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
A common practice when faced with a difficult choice, self-examination, is the centerpiece of two popular poems: Gregory Corso’s Marriage and T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Both poems are dramatic monologues in which the speakers address the similar situations that they find themselves in. While the speaker of Eliot’s poem has a nervous and bashful approach in his attempts at romance, the hesitant postmodern speaker in Corso’s poem makes use of sarcasm to attack the institution
throughout the span of two decades. Fortunately, the most accomplished poet T. S. Eliot, defends James on exactly this topic in his short essay, "A Prediction." "With 'character,' in the sense in which the portrayal of character is usually expected in the English novel," Eliot writes, "he had no concern" (55). He went on to add " 'character' is only one of the ways in which it is possible to grasp at reality" (55). Eliot insists that had James been better at developing characters, his writing would
times people find it difficult to answer. Just when one thinks they have decided that they are one or the other, they come across a song, poem, or an experience that makes them reevaluate the mind frame from that which they have normally embraced. T. S. Eliot’s famous quote from The Waste Land, "I can show you fear in a handful of dust," is one that has been the trigger, for many, in this self-evaluation process (1.30) Quite often, people do not participate or embrace this process of self-evaluation
inconsistency may well be an even more outstanding characteristic. T. S. Eliot, in 1932, wrote an essay on Hamlet that is still cited as a noted critique of Shakespeare's great tragedy. Eliot argued that Hamlet is an artistic failure, due to a basic weakness in the play. It was his contention that a playwright owes a duty to the audience to write dialogue appropriate to characters as they have been developed in the drama. Eliot made the point that in the "Closet Scene," when Hamlet confronts Queen