T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

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T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
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Tradition and the Individual Talent

• Impersonal theory of poetry
• - relation of the poem to other poems by other
  authors consciousness of the past
• - relation of the poem to its author
• emotions feelings

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Objective Correlative

• Poetry is
• - not a turning loose of emotion, but an
  escape from emotion
• - not the expression of personality, but an
  escape from personality

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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

1. Introduction
2. The subject of Love Song
3. The form of Love Song

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I. Introduction

• T.S. Eliot The Waste Land (1922)
• Modernism rejection of traditions experimental
  in form
• - emphasis on inner world / consciousness
• - dehumanization, helpless man, chaotic world
• - symbolism, stream of consciousness
• - sense of rejection, tone of desperation
• - obscurity in language

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Summary of the Story

• A poem of self-irony
• - love song vs. absence of love
• - effort of action vs. effectual inaction
• - ordinary surname vs. elegant initial J.
  and middle name
• Fear, boredom, despair, breakdown

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II. Subject

1. Focus on the inner world
2. Anti-hero dehumanization
3. Alienation estrangement

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1. Focus on Inner World

• dramatic monologue
• - (cf. Robert Brownings poem)
• Interior monologue stream of consciousness
  talking to self ego id free association

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Fra Lippo Lippi

• I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
• You need not clap your torches to my face.
• Zooks, whats to blame? You think you see a monk!
• What, tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,
• And here you catch me at an alleys end
• Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?

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Fra Lippo Lippi

• Fra Lippo Lippi (1406-1469), a Florentine painter
  and friar with the Renaissance fresh appreciation
  of earthly pleasures as a reaction against the
  medieval attitude.

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2. Anti-hero dehumanization

• Hero large, dignified, powerful, heroic like
  Hamlet and Michelangelo
• Anti-hero petty, ignominious, ineffectual,
  passive, e.g. Prufrock a bald-haired middle-aged
  man of social failure
• Dehumanization insect (butterfly), crab, e.g.
  Kafkas Metamorphosis (Gregor changed into a
  gigantic insect, a cockroach.)

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3. Alienation / Estrangement

• From the society ill at ease, bored, unwelcome
• Self-estrangement self-debasing, coward / timid

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III. Form

1. Free verse no fixed metrical foot, irregular
   line length, no regular rhyme, mixture of iamb,
   trochee or anapest rhymed lines images of
   irony, etc.
2. Symbols
3. Allusions
4. Lack of continuity

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2. Symbols

• Jules La Forgue
• Symbols for complex reality
• - evening (a patient etherized upon a table -
  inaction ) (John Berryman, Confessional poet)
• - cat sexy, alluring and fearsome slothful
  state of spirit

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3. Allusions

• Dantes Inferno the characters pain
• Hamlet, Bible stories, Andrew Marvels poem
  Prufrocks cowardice
• John the Baptist (a prophet) Prufrocks
  reputation is picked pieces his head, a
  slightly bald head, is brought in on a platter,
  but hes no prophet

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Lazarus raised to life - Prufrock is like
Lazarus raised from death to life, who has
glimpsed sth. of another world and is not
understood by the women. These women are a group
of overcultured, bored people in the drawing
rooms who sip tea and discuss art (Michelangelo)
with shallowness.
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Mermaids - opposite of what the women in the
drawing rooms represent (their dried out,
over-refined life) - stands for beauty, life,
vitality
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Phrase
Source I have wept and fasted, Matthew
(The Bible) wept and prayed   Among the
porcelain Emily Dickinson I cannot live
with you   Ive heard the mermaids singing each
to each John Donne   squeezed the
universe into a ball
Andrew Marvel To His Coy Mistress   the last
but five stanza Hamlet and Polonius in
Hamlet
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4. Lack of Continuity

• Sudden shifting from one scene to another
• Jumping from one thought to another
• Collage of fragmented pieces

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Assignments for Hills like White Elephants

• Modernistic elements
• - theme
• - relationship between the characters
• - narration
• - symbols
• - style

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Assignments for Everyday Use

• Background information research
• - The Nation of Islam and Malcolm X
• - The Black Power (Movement)
• - African Americans condition in 1950-1970
• Briefly retell the most important part of the
  story that typically illustrates its theme.
• Which type of female does each of the three
  characters belong to? What are their attitude to
  black cultural heritage? Who can inherit and
  develop the black cultural heritage?