Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot on Modernism On Ezra Pound’s quote on modernism, he claims that "the modern age wants a literature that reflects an image of itself: "accelerated" and mass produced ("a mould in plaster/Made with no loss of time) as well as superficial." This means that today’s society wants a literature that resembles itself, fast paced and shallow. Society want literature that is direct and straightforward simply because people find it too "time consuming" to think for themselves. They would rather resort to the "work" already being done for them. Instead of experiencing the true beauty of literature and the arts, they would rather use "Cliffs’ Notes ("the classics in paraphrase")." As a result of various "time savers," the people of the modern age are left without the feelings that only reading the literature itself would provide. The people are hollow, dehumanized, and utterly superficial. Society lacks creativity and originality. The people are left numbed in the sea of clones. They fail to give acknowledgement or praise to those who do dare to be different and unique. Instead, they are cast out from society for being different. Ezra Pound states that, "Introspection ("the obscure reveries/of the inward gaze") in this age is unthinkable." This means that the people are afraid to examine their own thoughts and feeling because they are afraid of what they will see. T.S. Eliot’s works, "Preludes," "The Hollow Men," and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" substantiate Ezra Pound’s statement. "Preludes," by T.S. Eliot, is a literary work depicting city life. Although it was written some time ago, it contains a universal theme and is applicable even in today’s world. Eliot expresses the lonely, isolationist environment of the city. The people of the city seem dull, dreary, fatigued, and lifeless. The city dwellers repeat their daily mechanical routines; there is no change or break in the cycle. They come home tired and worn out from a day’s work, sleep, wake up, head towards coffee stands for a jolt of energy, and off they are to work again. Eliot expresses that people put on false fronts so that people do n...
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...e wants literature that is superficial like the people at this event are superficial. The conversations present are similar to "better lies than Cliffs’ Notes," they are insignificant and Prufrock is unable to make connections with anyone. Prufrock says, "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons," showing that his life is meaningless, small, and insignificant. This substantiates what Pound stated that "the modern age wants literature that reflects an image of itself: "accelerated" and mass produced ("a mould in plaster / Made with no loss of time"). It shows that modern age wants literature that is insignificant just as modern age is insignificant. Ezra Pound expressed that instead of thinking for themselves, people of the modern age would prefer literature that is in plain, and regular speech that is vague and without meaning. Today’s society does not think for itself. The beauty, emotions, and feelings are taken away from the arts by the superficiality of modern age. With T.S. Eliot’s works substantiating Pound’s statement emphasis is put on our society being filled with hollow, soulless people.
History has seen advancements in technology, philosophy, and industry, all of which radically changed the lives of those witnessing such developments. Slower, more relaxed lifestyles have given way to lifestyles of a faster paced nature. George Eliot describes her preference for the leisure of the past, conveying the message that the rushed leisure of her time is hardly leisure at all. She accomplishes this by using several stylistic devices, including personification, imagery, and diction.
The beauty of the English language is that there is a word for all situations. Poets, Carl Sandburg and Ezra Pound were master wordsmiths. Pound tries to mesh the magnificence of nature with the metronomic rhythm of an underground rail-system in his poem “In a Station of the Metro”. Sandburg also attempts to unite nature and the cityscape. The pulse of Sandburg’s “Fog” plays out similar to Planet Earth. Unlike Planet Earth, which has hours of narrative explaining the grandeur of earth; “Fog” is able to mesh the city and nature in just six lines. Pound interlaces the urban landscape and nature as if he were mixing oil and vinegar. Pound pours nature into the city, but when you leave both at rest you can clearly see which is heavier. Sandburg is also mixing two metaphorical fluids, but his two liquids are Columbian dark roast coffee and non-dairy creamer. His words, just like coffee and creamer blend slowly until you cannot differentiate the difference between the two. Ezra Pound’s word choice is stunning, but he is unable to interlock the city with nature as well as Carl Sandburg does.
Because young boys are more active they often are disciplined, while girls are often quieter and naturally become a teacher’s favorite. This causes problems because classrooms naturally become more attuned to a girl’s style of learning, leaving young boys behind in the classroom from an early age. “Boy Problems” by Ann Hulbert goes into detail over the increasing “gender educational disparity.” Hulbert gives the reader useful information about how and why men are falling behind and the increasing gender differences in education. When fixing a problem one must first realize the problem exists. Now that the problem has come to light, action must be
In conclusion, after exploring the theme of this poem and reading it for myself, Eliot has created this persona, in industrialised England or somewhere else. A man of low self-esteem, you embark his journey as he struggles with a rational fear of being rejected by a woman. Which gives the reader sympathy to Prufrock, as he lives within his own personal
Gender equity issues are virtually ignored in most university level education classes and any strategies created to decrease gender-biased classroom behavior are basically non-existent. Most efforts to remove this problem are geared toward working teachers when the focus needs to be on the upcoming generation of teachers presently in school (Miller, 2001).
Prufrock, however, could never achieve something great. He was too afraid; it held him back and forced him to subject himself to only the most trivial things in life. ,It was these trivial things that Eliot wanted to show. The modernist society had forced many others into a life just like Prufrock lead.
T.S. Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. His poem“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, is different and unusual. He rejects the logic connection, thus, his poems lack logic interpretation. He himself justifies himself by saying: he wrote it to want it to be difficult. The dissociation of sensibility, on the contrary, arouses the emotion of readers immediately. This poem contains Prufrock’ s love affairs. But it is more than that. It is actually only the narration of Prufrock, a middle-aged man, and a romantic aesthete , who is bored with his meaningless life and driven to despair because he wished but
To get better education, thinking and learning power comes from our hearts and minds. As Ho says in the article “We Should Cherish Our Children Freedom to Think,” American schools provide opportunities to students and a path to achieve their creativity, which “people tend to dismiss or take for granted” (2007, p.113). Moreover, he also raised a question if American education system is so wretchedly lower in merit, “why is it that this is still the country of innovation” (Ho, P.113)? Kie Ho believes that creativity and freedom to think is the essential part in American education system. If students use critical thinking skill to develop creativity, they can better understand the material and evaluate their own behavior and characteristics. In many other countries, education inhibited the children’s freedom to think and that repressed the development of students’ activities.
Often called "the poet's poet," because of his profound influence on 20th century writing in English, American poet and critic, Pound, believed that poetry was the highest of the arts. You never would have believed that a writer and optimist such as Ezra Pound would have been born in Hailey, Idaho in 1885. From the sound of his work you'd thing he was definitely one of those European Imagist. In 1908, after teaching college for two years, Pound traveled abroad to Spain, Italy, and London. He followed the teachings of Ernest Fenellosa and became very intrigued by Japanese and Chinese poetry. The literary figure who has had the most substantial impact on modern thought is without a doubt Ezra Loomis Pound. In The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1988), he is described in the following manner:
Although many do not realize, gender stereotyping is one of the most controversial topics in the field of education. Professionals are constantly trying to find efficient and effective ways to monitor not only teachers and administrators, but the students as well, to be sure that gender stereotyping and gender biases and kept at a minimum within the school environment. With the goal of neither gender biases not gender stereotyping taking place within the school system, higher educational professional constantly seek to find research that can help them understand how to prevent, or possible even cure, biases that are developed to ensure equal rights to all students.
Prufrock’s social world is initially revealed as he takes the reader on a journey. Through the lines 1-36, the reader travels with Prufrock through the modern city and its streets as we experience Prufrock’s life and explore his surroundings through his eyes. From the very beginning, the city is portrayed as bleak and empty with no signs of happiness. The setting as Prufrock walks through the street appears to be polluted, dirty, and run-down, as if it is the cheap side of town, giving the feeling of it being lifeless, still, eerie, sleepy and unconscious. Eliot uses imagery, from the skyline to half-deserted streets, to cheap hotels to sawdust restaurants to demonstrate the loneliness and alienation the city possesses. The city Prufrock resides in is, in a way, a shadow of how he is as a person, and the images of the city speak to some part of his personality. Just as the skyline is described as “a patient etherised upon a table” (3), it foreshadows and hints that Prufrock has an...
In our first class session we accomplished a lot, we learned about the key themes that can be found in the New testament and how one goes about questioning the themes and connecting the new and old testaments. The one major theme that we found to be one of the big ones of the New Testament was Jesus and all his deeds, death and resurrection. When this theme was first revealed to the class, I thought well obviously! But once we began to talk about all the other themes such as restoration, redemption, the church and the building relationship between the Jews and Gentiles. And Dr. Hall began to connect each theme together with a link and with each connection every last theme eventually led back to Jesus and his deeds, death and resurrection
William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost all had an amazing ability to write and were at the forefront as literary authors of modernism which was not a period, but a faction, an attitude that focused on individualism, randomness of life, etc. Their writings were based on a worldly position that included most poets. They contributed intellectually to literature as well as made aesthetic innovations in a modernist context. Their uniqueness as authors set them apart from the average author of their day. Their literary modernism themes were of dishonesty and decay, failure and despair, race affairs, and inescapable revolutionize. These elements were mainly founded on the world transformation as to the reaction of war and depression. Not only were they in a place of melancholy but also the economy was at risk. Therefore, taking a deeper look at the role of aesthetic innovation in a modernist context of the works of William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost reveals their originality as modern literary authors.
Modernists did not have faith in the external reality put forth by social institutions, such as the government and religion, and they no longer considered these avenues as trustworthy means to discover the meaning of life. For this reason they turned within themselves to discover the answers. Modernist literature is centered on the psychological experience as opposed to the external realities of the world. The experience is moved inwards in an attempt to make modernist works more representative of reality by making the experience more personal. The modernist era of literature is closely associated with the works of T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, among others. These three authors stand out because they have made use of unique literary tactics and devices which emphasize the inward turn of modernist literature.
The title T. S. Eliot chose for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is ironic. Mr. Prufrock does not love anyone, nor does he believe he is loved. He has disdain for the society of which he wishes he were a part, and he believes society views him no differently. The imagery of Mr. Prufrock's thoughts provide the audience a more detailed insight into his character than had Mr. Eliot simply listed Mr. Prufrock's virtues and flaws. Mr. Prufrock is seen as an exaggeration or extreme for the sake of literary commentary, but the world has many Prufrocks in many differing degrees, and T. S. Eliot has made them a little easier to understand.