” wrote Ezra Pound shortly after the poem was published in 1922. T.S. Eliot’s poem describes a mood of deep disillusionment stemming both from the collective experience of the first world war and from Eliot’s personal travails. Born in St. Louis‚ Eliot had studied at Harvard‚ the Sorbonne‚ and Oxford before moving to London‚ where he completed his doctoral dissertation on the philosopher F. H. Bradley. Because of the war‚ he was unable to return to the United States to receive his degree. He taught
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Eliot challenges his audience to consider the state of his character’s subconscious living within a corrupted society. Thomas Stearns Eliot’s poems‚ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock published in 1915‚ and Preludes published in 1917‚ resonate the decay and alienation of Eliot’s characters and civilization. Eliot employs various poetic techniques to challenge the reader to explore social fragmentation of the human psyche and the futility of an industrialization society. Eliot explores seclusion
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Dramatic Monologues: According to M.H. Abrahms‚ dramatic monologue is a poetic form‚ "a lengthy speech by a single person"‚ addressing a silent listener‚ intended to convey his or her inner thoughts and emotions. It can be rewritten in jargonised terms as ’a cross or hybrid of the genres of drama and lyric’. A lyric poem is ‘any fairly short poem‚ consisting of the utterance by a single speaker‚ who expresses a state of mind or a process of perception‚ thought‚ and feeling’. Though
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is referred to in the "s" sounds‚ which also end the phrase "profit and loss." The image of rising and falling appears again in line 316 as the body rises and falls beneath the sea‚ and this idea of rising and falling is linked now with the life cycle: As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool (316-318). The idea here is reminiscent of the belief that a drowning person’s life passes before his or her eyes. Eliot presents an image of this
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September 2012 Prufrock’s Melancholy “For I have known them all already‚ known them all:” (Eliot 49). To me this line defines the mood for the entire poem‚ it is such a simple statement‚ yet at the same time a deeply powerful and complex one. What is there left to do‚ what great adventures left to take‚ or great deeds left to be done. As Prufrock becomes and old man “I grow old…I grow old” (Eliot 119) he is searching for anything left in his life‚ some meaning‚ some purpose‚ something to inspire
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From How to Read Literature Like a Professor Thomas C. Foster Notes by Marti Nelson 1. Every Trip is a Quest (except when it’s not): a. A quester b. A place to go c. A stated reason to go there d. Challenges and trials e. The real reason to go—always self-knowledge 2. Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Communion a. Whenever people eat or drink together‚ it’s communion b. Not usually religious c. An act of sharing and peace d. A failed meal carries negative connotations 3. Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires
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attempted to learn science for his sake and how he tried to learn literature for hers. She was more successful and he less‚ as he explains to Peter‚ “She was studying T.S. Eliot‚ and‚ compared to science‚ Eliot is very complicated” (Murphy). A similar perplexity (or prejudice‚ for that matter) dovetails literary scholarship on Eliot‚ more specifically in relation to The Waste Land. This paper is not an attempt to make things easier or to determine a synoptically coherent logic behind The Waste Land
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texts. Consider this statement by exploring the relationship between text and context in at least two poems you studied by Eliot. Eliot’s modernist poems‚ Preludes and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‚ depict the effects of industrialisation on societal consciousness‚ through lenses coloured by war and suffering. Through the eyes of two alienated individuals‚ Eliot suggests that life is bereft of meaning‚ and that to live is not to engage with God and morality‚ but with nothing at all.
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Alfred Prufrock‚ written by T.S. Eliot‚ is a truly depressing poem. The poem concerns with a character (Prufrock) that can see and understand the values in life – love‚ joy‚ companionship‚ and courageousness – but is unable to act on his longings. The poem shows constant struggles of Prufrock’s uselessness. The worst part about his uselessness is that he is conscious of it. T.S. Eliot uses the theme of Paralysis‚ the incapacity to act‚ throughout the whole poem. Eliot uses the theme of paralysis to
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work shows the thumbprints of other poets that help to influence this distinctive style. One of those writers was T.S. Eliot. By time Plath was coming into her won as a poet‚ Eliot was already a legend and was arguably the most important English poet of the 20th century. It would be easy to see why Plath‚ aspiring to be a great poet herself‚ would be greatly influenced by Eliot. One of the ways we can see Eliot’s influence on Plath is in her use of surreal imagery mixed with opposing ideas with
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