Preview

T.S Eliot as a Critic

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
443 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
T.S Eliot as a Critic
In the history of written art, some of the authors and poets took the lead and pushed literature beyond its borders. Some was known well and included in cannon some was not known. Either way, these pioneers' contribution to art is undeniable. Thomas Stearns Elliot was a mortal poet but his works are immortal. I know this sentence has strong meaning and may regarded as nonsense, but at the end I'm sure this duality will disappear and there will be no confusion about his power of creating a life with words. I want to call him literary god. Because as I say, he had the power of creating things with words. If my essay was about his poems this page would have not been enough. As I said our topic is not about his poems, it's about his critical reception.

In the course of literary history some movements emerged out of need for new ways of expression. Some of them were great, stroke like a lightning, some was perfect like a statue but had no life in it and some based on illusions and natural images. Whether we like it or not they were created by great men. This pops a question in our mind. If someone hates Metaphysical poetry, should he act like it didn't exist at all? Lucky for us this question was answered by Eliot. He said a poet is not an individual who is separate from the rest of literary history. This statement is the very essence of his essay, traditional bounds should exist he said but he warned us about mere copying of some ancient or medieval poet. He was right of course, because one simply can't deny entire literary history and attempt to create a poem! This is just a fool's errand! Personally, I'm not a great fan of 18th century poetry or theatre but if I attempt to write a play I would examine every milestone in theatre which includes some of the Dryden's plays which I don't like much. But it was there before me. I can’t deny its existence.

T.S Eliot was a great man because he united every movement's essential pieces. Only his ideas on spontaneity are

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    T.S. Eliot was the most dominant literary figure between the two World Wars, his unique concepts, precise vocabulary, and the power of his Modernism (which is still as relevant today as it was in the 20th century) changed the face of poetry. The Nobel Prize winning poet’s original and inventive style is credited with viewing the world as it appears, without making any optimistic judgements. Eliot’s poems ‘Journey of the Magi’ (1927) and ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’ (1920) both explore the fragility of the human mind (an idea streaming directly from the era of Modernist poetry, where writers perceived the world as fragmented and alienated), showcasing his original and abstract style of writing and, when read into further, reflect Eliot’s own values and the commons of society and culture and the time of composition.…

    • 1386 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Literature has long been difficult to understand, an author’s use of rhetoric can be analyzed to have many different significances as well as meanings. Poetry is particularly difficult to analyze, thus many writers and critics have created their own arguments for the meaning of different pieces. As literary critics and scholars ourselves, we in this English 100W class must determine what arguments we find valid, and which arguments give us deeper insight on pieces that we read and study.…

    • 937 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    account, how can a man that could barely write his own name be the greatest poet…

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although he was also a painter, he was mostly known for being a “painter with words.” Born into one of Boston’s most influential families, Edward Estlin Cummings’ (later known as e.e. Cummings) iconoclastic poetry acquired much attention from 20th century society. Encompassing over a total of 2,900 poems, four plays, essays, and two autobiographical novels, Cummings’ work is plentiful. (Poets.org) However, his errant but meaningful misuse of punctuation and grammar, a unique form of literary cubism, is what sets him apart from the poets before him. Readers of all ages were drawn to his poems, as they presented a challenge both visually and psychologically. Cummings’ poems revolved around the topics of war, sex, and love, which further catapulted his popularity. (Kennedy) The idiosyncratic state of e.e. Cummings’ poems destined him to become one of the 20th century's most eminent literary voices.…

    • 2517 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Texts are a product of their contexts, but to what extent is this statement true? To investigate the truth behind this statement we explore the poets John Donne and William Wordsworth in the Metaphysical and Romantics movement. The context of these different movements heavily influenced the texts produced by the poets, through the different values these movements possess, such as the belief of logic and rationalism in the metaphysical period, and the deep respect of nature and spirituality in the romantics.…

    • 1434 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Though the title of Eliot's poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" leads the reader to believe it will be a sweet poem, the juxtaposition of the epigraph right after the title deeply contrasts the initial thought. It is from Dante's Inferno and explores the suffering and uncertainty in Prufrock. Translated, the epigraph is Guido de Montefeltro confessing his sins to Dante assuming that he, like all others, will not be able to escape the depth, the depth being Hell, and therefore not be able to tell others of his sins. Prufrock, much like Guido, tells his story, his self-doubt and insecurities to the reader because he believes the reader will not speak of it to anyone else. Also, the prologue paints the image of Prufrock isolated in a personal hell not unlike a person stuck in the fiery depths of hell.…

    • 628 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Thomas Sterns Eliot, an influential poet and literary critic that caused massive change with his work in social and cultural theory. According to the article “T. S. Eliot” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Elliot had such a unique view on the social and political world that he was able to create many works of art that caused a cascading rush of new ideas that have survived well through the 20th century and into the 21st century. His superbe education and philosophical view of the world made him an ideal character to charge the minds of people who were more open to change after the end of World War II (“T.” Encyclopedia).…

    • 1201 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    T.S. Eliot is often regarded as a poetic genius of his time and frequently, to this day as well. He lived a fairly, normal life as he grew up in St. Louis, Missouri then later attended Harvard University. Eventually, he left the United States for Sorbonne, England and returned to Harvard to study some more and ended up back in England where he became under the influence of Ezra Pound. Pound recognized Eliot’s poetic talent and assisted in many of his publications and influenced his work. What stood out to Pound was, perhaps, Eliot’s distinct style of writing created from his intense use of diction and lengthy sentences that often derived from metaphors.…

    • 1095 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    He contributed his ideas that helped shape our literary world as the one it is today. The intrigue of his life, the cultural aspects that influenced his writings, and the thought process that goes into developing the poems people read today, are important in knowing and understanding E. E. Cummings himself. Edward Estlin Cummings matured and unsheathed his poetic…

    • 1295 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    George Eliot is known as an exceptional writer now and of her time. George Eliot is not what most people think of her, when they hear the name George Eliot; most think that she is a he but the case is that George Eliot used the name as a pen name, because back in her time female writers were not even common or thought of really. George Eliot was born to Robert Evans and Christiana Pearson Evans. George Eliot’s father was a carpenter but later got a better job as an estate agent for Arbury estate in Warwickshire. Mr. Evans also had two older children from a previous relationship. Eliot’s mother was just a stay at home mom. Eliot’s mother was the daughter of a yeoman farmer. It is told that there are traces of Robert Evans in the character…

    • 1377 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Choices in College and After

    • 51796 Words
    • 208 Pages

    “Yes, certainly,” said the inkstand to the pen, and to the other articles that stood on the table; “that’s what I always say. It is wonderful and extraordinary what a number of things come out of me. It’s quite incredible, and I really don’t know what is coming next when that man dips his pen into me. One drop out of me is enough for half a page of paper, and what cannot half a page contain? From me, all the works of a poet are produced; all those imaginary characters whom people fancy they have known or met. All the deep feeling, the humor, and the vivid pictures of nature. I myself don’t understand how it is, for I am not acquainted with nature, but it is certainly in me. From me have gone forth to the world those wonderful descriptions of troops of charming maidens, and of brave knights on prancing steeds; of the halt and the blind, and I know not what more, for I assure you I never think of these things.”…

    • 51796 Words
    • 208 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    J.S.Mill

    • 13220 Words
    • 53 Pages

    * Robson, John. ‘J.S. Mill’s Theory of Poetry.’ In Mill: A Collection of Critical Essays, J. B. Schneewind, (ed.). London: MacMillan, 1968.…

    • 13220 Words
    • 53 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    It’s odd to think that two of America’s most renowned poets of the 1800’s had never received the recognition they deserved till long after their deaths. This could have been due to their distinctive writing styles, rebellious to the 19th century transition between the literary concepts of Gothic Romanticism and Naturalism or Realism. The rhythm schemes, word play, and imagery of both these authors, was unlike any poetical works that readers of the day had been exposed to, hence making their writings later, by critics of this day-and-age, considered creatively distinguishing from their fellow poets of the time. But perhaps, most notable of all, the lack of appreciation they should have earned…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    T.S.Eliot Assignment 1

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “La Figlia Che Piange”, which means “young girl weeping”, is the last poem of T.S.Eliot’s “Prufrock and Other Observations”, the first collection of poems published by him. Even though Elliot wrote a relatively small number of poems throughout his life, he believed that each of them “should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event”.…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Metaphysical Poets

    • 1611 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The term metaphysical poets was coined by the poet and critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, whose work was characterized by the inventive use of conceits, and by speculation about topics such as love or religion. These poets were not formally affiliated; most of them did not even know or read each other (Wikipedia). Their work is a blend of emotion and intellectual ingenuity, characterized by conceit or “wit”—that is, by the sometimes violent yoking together of apparently unconnected ideas and things so that the reader is startled out of his complacency and forced to think through the argument of the poem. Metaphysical poetry is less concerned with expressing feeling than with analyzing it, with the poet exploring the recesses of his consciousness. The boldness of the literary devices used—especially obliquity, irony, and paradox—is often reinforced by a dramatic directness of language and by rhythms derived from that of living speech. Esteem for Metaphysical poetry never stood higher than in the 1930s and ’40s, largely because of T.S. Eliot’s influential essay “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921), a review of Herbert J.C. Grierson’s anthology Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the Seventeenth Century. In this essay Eliot argued that the works of these men embody a fusion of thought and feeling that later poets were unable to achieve because of a “dissociation of sensibility,” which resulted in works that were either intellectual or emotional but not both at once. In their own time, however, the epithet “metaphysical” was used pejoratively: in 1630 the Scottish poet William Drummond of Hawthornden objected to those of his contemporaries who attempted to “abstract poetry to metaphysical ideas and scholastic quiddities.” At the end of the century, John Dryden censured Donne for affecting “the…

    • 1611 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics