Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, the seventh and last child of Henry Ware Eliot, a brick manufacturer, and Charlotte (Stearns) Eliot, who was active in social reform and was herself a not-untalented poet. Both parents were descended from families that had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. William Greenleaf Eliot, the poet's paternal grandfather, had, after his graduation from Harvard in the 1830s, moved to St. Louis, where he became a Unitarian minister, but the New England connection was closely maintained--especially, during Eliot's youth, through the family's summer home on the Atlantic coast in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Eliot attended Miss Locke's Primary School and Smith Academy in St. Louis. His first poems and prose pieces appeared in the Smith Academy Record in 1905, the year of his graduation. He spent the 1905-1906 academic year at Milton Academy, a private prep school in Massachusetts, and then entered Harvard University, beginning his studies on September 26, 1906, his eighteenth birthday. There, he published frequently in the Harvard Advocate, took courses with such professors as Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt, the latter of whom influenced Eliot through his classicism and emphasis upon tradition, and also studied the poetry of Dante, who would prove to be a lifelong source of enthusiasm and inspiration. Eliot received his B.A. in 1909, and stayed at Harvard to earn a master's degree in English literature, which was conferred the following year. Beginning in the fall of 1910, he spent a year in Paris, reading, writing (including "The Wi... ... middle of paper ... ...mpossible to overstate Eliot's influence or his importance to twentieth-century poetry. Through his essays and especially through his own poetic practice, he played a major role in establishing the modernist conception of poetry: learned, culturally allusive, ironic, impersonal in manner (but, in his case, packed with powerful reserves of private feeling), organized by associative rather than logical connections, and difficult at times to the point of obscurity. But, despite the brilliance and penetration of his best essays, Eliot could not have accomplished so wholesale a revolution by precept alone. First and last, it was through the example of his own superb poetry that he carried the day, and the poetry will survive undiminished as his critical influence waxes and wanes, and as the details of his career recede into literary history.
When he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1925 after that he attended Lincoln College at Oxford.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in The Vicarage, in Down Ampney, on October 12, 1872 to Arthur and Margaret Vaughan Williams. Ralph’s father; Arthur was the vicar of the All Saints Church in Down Ampney in 1868. Through his mothers side Ralph had two famous great-great-grand fathers; Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the pottery at Stoke-on-Trent, and Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin. In 1875 Ralph’s father suddenly died, when he was only two years old. His mother moved him and his two siblings to the Wedgwood family home: Leith Hill Place, in Surrey.
When he was fifteen years old, his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years, he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career.
Alienation is a common theme that consistently runs throughout TS Eliot’s poetry. Eliot knew how alienation felt first hand through his experience of being born in Missouri and later moving to Boston to go to college. He described himself as feeling like a New Englander in the Southwest, and a South westerner in New England (Bush, TS Eliot’s Life and Career). Knowing this feeling made it easy for him to write many poems concerning this idea such as Rhapsody on a Windy Night.
When he returned from the army he got enrolled at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He received M.A. degree and began to work on his Ph.D. at the same time he started teaching at University of Minnesota and later at MacAlester College. He received Ph.D. from University of Washington for study on Charles Dickens and he did public readings. He taught at Hunter College in New York City from 1966 to 1980. He also worked as translator. He completed some of his poems as he was teaching in the college he states that he didn’t feel any conflict between the duties of teaching and the labors of writing books which are non-academic.
Despite the similarities between these two poems, Corso and Eliot shared little in common. Corso spent much of his early life between foster parents and prison, the latter being where he was introduced to poetry. Now credited as a key member of the “Beat Generation”, a group of poets who were opposed to social conformity and the traditional forms of poetry, Corso typically wrote poetry “on serious philosophical issues” (Olson 53). On the other hand Eliot’s upbringing was more traditional where he attended Harvard and went on to become a figure of immense influence in the literary world. Eliot’s first major poetic publication: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock bares many resemblances to Corso’s postmodern poem Marriage, a poem written to criticize the philosophical issues associated with marriage.
Robert Lee Frost began life in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. For an unknown reason, Frost believed for years that he was actually born in 1875. When Frost’s father died in 1885 his mother decided to move closer to her wealthy parents in Massachusetts. In California, Frost had dropped out of kindergarten after one day, and upon returning to the first grade, also dropped out. This was no deterrent on Frost to attend college. He was accepted to Harvard but instead attended Dartmouth because of his financial situation. Even though Frost found the school to be anything but challenging, he would not finish his time at Dartmouth, nor earn any formal degree in a school (Bengtsson). He once said of schooling that “Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.” Interestingly enough, Robert Frost held several postions at credible schools, including Amherst and Harvard. Also, Frost was awarded an incredible amount of honorary degrees from Berkley to Yale (Parini 59). Frosts careers also ranged from editing for Henry Holt to raising poultry on his Derry, New Hampshire farm.
After graduating in 1897, he enrolled at Columbia University to continue his studies and, using a pseudonym, wrote dime novels to support himself.
Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803. His parents were Ruth Haskins and William Emerson. When Emerson was a you boy at the age of 7 his dad died from stomach cancer. Emerson attended formal schooling at Boston Latin School in 1812 when he was 9. At the age of 14 he went to Harvard College and he was the messenger as a freshmen. Midway during his junior year Emerson started a journal called "Wide World" which was consisted as all the names of the books he read. Also during his junior year in college he would work for his uncle as an occasional teacher in Waltham, Massachusetts.
In order to accomplish this goal Eliot incorporated allusions into his work. These references added historical context and depth to his poetry. On the other hand Wallace Stevens opposed Eliot’s large reliance on allusion, calling it overly intellectual and a hindrance to the sound and rhythm of the poem. While Stevens’s portrayal of the desolate present was similar to Eliot’s imaginings, Stevens chose to focus on an American future rather than a European past.
In 1909, Eliot completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard, and wrote what would be relatively unchanged in its final edition, the beginning of "Prufrock", lines 1-14.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) lived from 1819 to 1880. She was raised in a very traditional family. Her father was a farmer who managed various estates, and he made certain that his daughter was given a very strict Methodist education. She attended a series of boarding schools where she learned that which was typical for a young lady in the early part of the nineteenth century -- subjects such as French, piano, and handwriting. While at these boarding schools, she frequently turned to fiction as a form of amusement, establishing at an early age the foundation upon which her later novels would be based.
Thomas Stearns was born on September 26, 1888. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was Henry ware Eliot who was the president of the Hydraulic-press company. His mom was Charlotte Champe Stearns, a former teacher, a volunteer at the St. louis, Humanity club and also bit of a poet. T.S. Eliot attended Harvard and Merton college, Oxford. I believe that by attending college it made everything possible.
Faced with a world lacking variety, viewpoints, vibrancy, and virtue- a world without life- a fearful and insecure T.S. Eliot found himself the only one who realized all of civilization had been reduced to a single stereotype. Eliot (1888-1965) grew up as an outsider. Born with a double hernia, he was always distinguished from his peers, but translated his disability into a love of nature. He developed a respect for religion as well as an importance for the well-being of others from his grandfather at a young age, which reflected in his poetry later in life. After studying literature and philosophy at Harvard, Eliot took a trip to Paris, absorbing their vivid culture and art. After, he moved on to Oxford and married Vivien Haigh-Wood. Her compulsivity brought an immense amount of stress into his life, resulting in their abrupt separation. A series of writing-related jobs led Eliot to a career in banking and temporarily putting aside his poetry, but the publication of “The Waste Land” brought him a position at the publishing house of Faber and Gwyer. His next poem, called “The Hollow Men” reflected the same tone of desolation and grief as “The Waste Land.” Soon after, he made a momentous shift to Anglicanism that heavily influenced the rest of his work in a positive manner. Eliot went on to marry Valerie Fletcher, whom he was with until the end of his life, and win a Nobel Prize in literature. T.S. Eliot articulates his vast dissatisfaction with the intellectual desolation of society through narrators that share his firm cultural beliefs and quest to reinvigorate a barren civilization in order to overcome his own uncertainties and inspire a revolution of thought.
Eagleton, Terry, "George Eliot: Ideology and Literary Form," in Middlemarch: New Casebooks, Ed. John Peck.