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T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot. 1888-1965. Born in St. Louis, Missouri Educated at Harvard Influenced by French Symbolists At Sorbonne, followed lectures by H. Bergson Went to Oxford U. (thesis on Bradley) Settled in England during WWI.

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T. S. Eliot

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  1. T. S. Eliot 1888-1965

  2. Born in St. Louis, Missouri • Educated at Harvard • Influenced by French Symbolists • At Sorbonne, followed lectures by H. Bergson • Went to Oxford U. (thesis on Bradley) • Settled in England during WWI • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 1915 + earlyPOEMSdeals with the • VACUITY of MODERN UPPER-CLASS LIFE • DIFFICULTY of COMMUNICATING • Theyowemuch to French Symbolists

  3. 1922foundedCriterion publishedTHE WASTE LAND director of Faber&Faber His way out of nihilismwasreligion; he becameAnglicanin 1927, sameyeargotBritishcitizenship The Hollow Men (25) The Journey of the Magi (27) illustrate hissearch for religioustruth

  4. Attempted to revive verse drama Murder in the Cathedral (35) The Family Reunion (39) The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk were popular; they combined religious/philosophical themes with simple conversations The FourQuartets (36-42) poemsexpressingfundamental Christian beliefs. They conclude the spiritual quest for faiththatThe Waste Landhadbegun Awarded the Nobel Prizein 1947

  5. The Waste Land

  6. 433 lines long Divided into five parts • The Burial of the Dead • A Game of Chess • The Fire Sermon • Death by Water • What the Thunder Said The title refers to the MYTH connected to fertility rites analysed by Sir J. Frazer in The Golden Bough

  7. PAST+PRESENTinterrelate + have a simultaneous existence, just as they do in the mind Time shifts are linked by FREE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS+FLIGHTS OF THOUGHT in the mind of the narrator • It was interpreted as a comment on • the futility of civilization after WW1 • the emptiness and confusion of contemporary life • Later it was clear it also referred to personal “waste land”

  8. The centralmetaphorisone of STERILITY, ARIDITY, IMPOTENCE • E.’ s STYLEischaracterized by • metricexperimentation • frequent use of everyday, evenconversationallanguage • lack of standard punctuation He oftenshifts from a style of lyricintensityto another of ironic or bitter realismomittingexplanatorymatter+links in the narrative chain His poetryisdifficult. He himselfconsidereditinevitablethatart should be difficult in our time

  9. Two kinds of difficulty Poems of the first – nihilistic – phase up to The Hollow Men, are difficultbecause of the ABSENCE of CONNECTIVE+TRANSITIONAL PASSAGES. He put disparate IMAGES and halfdisguisedQUOTATIONS SIDE BY SIDE Poems of the second – Christian - phase are more traditional in theirsyntactical+imagestructure, buttheirPHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUNDisquitecomplex + E. plays on the etymology of words

  10. To the “waste land” E. opposes • Western culture • The Middle Ages • The Renaissance • The great rhetorical+philosophical schools • Non European cultures • Christian religion

  11. E.’s sources • Imagists: Pound+Hulme necessity for CLEAR+PRECISE LANGUAGE+IMAGES • ECONOMY OF WORDS • French Symbolists: FREE VERSE • SORDIDNESS, UGLINESS of MODERN CITY LIFE • Metaphysicals: WIT, HIGH RHETORIC, DARING IMAGES from different traditions • Dante:as expression of Medieval Christianity; complete range of emotions: from hell’s despair to heaven’s beatitude

  12. OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE ONLY WAY of EXPRESSING EMOTIONS in the form of art A SITUATION, A CHAIN OF EVENTS WHICH SHALL BE THE FORMULA FOR THAT PARTICULAR EMOTION

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