T. S. ELIOT

T. S. ELIOT

DATE:

1888-l965

EDUCATION:

His parents were wealthy and fond of culture

He studied at Harvard, Paris and Oxford university: cosmopolitan education

MAIN WORKS:

"the waste land" dedicated to Ezra Pound

He's the 1^st modern poet in English literature of the period between the 2 world war

INFLUENCES:

DANTE(Italian poetry):the capacity to express emotional experience based on the entire cultural reality of his time

JOHN DONNE: for immediacy and technical control

BAUDELAIRE(the symbolists): for his vision of the sordid aspects of the modern metropolis

IMAGIST MOVEMENT: for the use of clear and precise images and concision in language

EZRA POUND: because he helped and encouraged E. and he revised the opera before the publication

THEMES:

Inability to communicate

Lack of love

corruption

alienation and sterility of modern life

FEATURES OF STYLE:

lack in plot

no logical time sequences(present, past and future are mixed)

irregular rhyme scheme

characters not really defined

similes, alliterations, repetitions

juxtapositions: a contrast of images which strike the reader, between lyrical and everyday images

quotations from different language

atmosphere of alienation and spiritual sterility

geographical references(historical, religious, to death, literary)

repetitions of sounds and words

mythical methods: modern life can be more deeply interpreted if it's presented parallel to equivalent models from the mythical past

STRUCTURE:

Which breaks away from the canons of traditional poetry reminds us of:

Joyce's experimentation in novel writing

Picasso in painting

Stravinsky in music

àaffinities with other work of Modernism

Every work is composed of the contrast between past and present:

Past à glorious, meaningful(he believe in the importance of the past)

Present à meaningless, sterile

Much attention to the old tradition

In the last lines: THE PAST SHOULD BE ALTERED BY THE PRESENT AND THE PRESENT SHOULD BE DIRECTED BY THE PAST

CHARACTERS:

People recite monologues, sexual relationship are a manifestation of violence or boring

HIS CONCEPTION OF POETRY:

Poetry had to be objective and impersonal to express the complexities of reality

Images are the "objective correlative" of the emotions = THE ONLY WAY TO EXPRESS EMOTIONS IN THE FORM OF ART (objects, situations)