Literary Allusions in Eliot's The Hollow Men
Scholars have long endeavored to identify the sources of various images in T. S. Eliot's work, so densely layered with literary allusions. As Eliot himself noted in his essay "Philip Massinger" (1920),
One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
In Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men," several sources have been posited for the "hollow men . . . the stuffed men / leaning together . . . filled with straw" (lines 1-2). B. C. Southam notes three: that the "hollow . . . stuffed men" are reminiscent of the effigies burned in celebration of Guy Fawkes Day; that "according to Valerie Eliot, the poet had in mind the marionette in Stravinsky's Petrouchka"; and finally, that the "straw-stuffed effigies are associated with harvest rituals celebrating the death of the fertility god or Fisher King."(n1)
In 1963, some years before Southam's summary, John Vickery had proffered an interpretation similar to the third point mentioned. He noted that "the opening lines of `The Hollow Men' with their image of straw-filled creatures, recalls The Golden Bough's account of the straw-man who represents the dead spirit of fertility that revives in the spring when the apple trees begin to blossom."(n2) Whereas Eliot may well have had any or all of these ideas in mind, I suggest that there is yet another connection to be made, namely between Eliot's "hollow . . . stuffed men" and the Roman ritual of the Argei.
In 1922, a few years before Eliot wrote "The Hollow Men," W. Warde Fowler described the particulars of this ritual, which was to him a "fascinating puzzle" and "the first curiosity that enticed" him "into the study of Roman religion," in his book Roman Religious Experience.(n3) The rite according to Fowler occurs
each year on the ides of May, which is in my view rather magical than religious, though the ancients themselves looked upon it as a kind of purification, [namely] the casting into the Tiber from the Pons Sublicius of twenty-four or twenty-seven straw puppets by the Vestal Virgins in the presence of the magistrates and pontifices. Recently an attempt has been made by Wissowa to prove that this strange ceremony was not primitive, but simply a case of substitution of puppets for real human victims as late as the age of the Punic wars.
“The Hollow Tree” is a memoir of a man by the name of Herb Nabigon who could not
The object of analysis for today’s program is an Etruscan Votive ear which is displayed in the Eaton Gallery of Rome at the Royal Ontario Museum. The Etruscan Votive ear is a beige sculpture, roughly five to ten center meters in length, of a human’s right ear produced during the Republican Era of Rome between 200-100 BC (Refer to image 3 on page 9). According to the Royal Ontario Museum, the Votive Ear reflects “the lasting influence of Etruscan religion in Rome” (Refer to image 4 on page 8)
Not a lot of people survived, 31.6% was the percent of people who survived. A lot of people could've survived because of the extra lifeboat room, 53.4%. 2 dogs survived because of the people who brought dogs aboard.
Rylee O’Brien Ms. Daniel Language Arts 5-6 10 December 2017 Recapturing The Past A woman named Lauren Oliver once said, “Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do-the only thing-is run.” When reading the story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, this quote is very relevant to the people of Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod Crane lives in a the small town of Sleepy Hollow, he falls in love with Katrina Van Tassel.
Unfortunately there was very many important people on the ship. Many of the people on the titanic died in the freezing cold water.There was thre...
What is described above may very well seem like a rite that could be celebrated in some traditions of religion. However, it is arguably, what essentially happens at an Ohio State Football game on nearly every Saturday in Columbus, ...
Then on the fifth day of its journey, Titanic was progressing across the Atlantic. Captain Edward Smith had plotted a new course upon hearing earlier reports of ice from other liners, there were many more communications that day of ice in Titanic's path. On that very night of Sunday 14 April 1912. The sea was calm, the sky dark and clear, and the temperature was getting colder by the minute. With conditions like this an ice berg is very hard to spot. Then, at 11.40pm the lookout rang the alarm and telephoned the bridge saying "Iceberg, right ahead.” It was already too late to avoid the iceberg and Titanic began to start sinking within less than 40 seconds later, a series of holes appeared on the hull. It also took 3 ho...
. It's almost as if they heard of the tradition, took the stoning someone to death part, and then created the rest of the ritual themselves.
“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot is a poem of struggle for meaning amongst the meaningless. T.S. Eliot shows the reader how in this day and age society is becoming less and less active and beginning to become more careless in the way in which we live and behave, as represented throughout the poem. It brings out all of our worlds weaknesses and flaws. Eliot brings out the fact that the human race is disintegrating. We are compared to as hollow men with no emotions, cares, and nothing inside. Hollow men all look different in some way, but inside we are all the same. We shift in whatever direction we are being blown in. In The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot examines the absence of spiritual guidance, lack of communication between individuals, and absence of direction of outstanding and pro founding leadership.
The RMS Titanic; A Tragedy Based on Class. In April, 1912, the so called "unsinkable" Titanic set sail to New York. The great ship was as big as five city blocks, and weighed thousands and thousands of tons. Everyone who was everyone grabbed a room on the luxurious ship for the trip of a lifetime. On April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg an sank into the icy depths of the North Atlantic.
I arrived at the destination of where the ritual observation was to take place at 9:45 a.m. on February 23, 2014. The ritual takes place in Brockville, Ontario in a building called the New Hope Brockville Tabernacle. The tabernacle is a large building that has a tower, also known as a steeple, erected on the roof. On the steeple is the symbol of the cross. The front doors opened up to a large foyer where the majority of the people inside were gathered in various small groups. These groups were composed of members similar in age. Everyone who entered through the doors was greeted with lots of hugs and welcomes.
The Titanic set voyage on April 1912 to New York. The Titanic and its sister ships, Olympia and Britannic were said to be virtually unsinkable by a magazine article, not the White Star Line. The Titanic was the second ship to set sail on its maiden voyage out of the three sister ships. The Titanic had been built a lot differently than most of the ships back then. For example, a normal ship was built with three funnels but the Titanic had four. The fourth funnel did not serve the same purpose like the other three; its use was for steam to be released from the kitchen. Another example was that the Titanic was the biggest ship at the time. The ship had received ice warnings at least six different times from ships but Captain Smith had ignored
T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” is a dramatic monologue, free verse poem that consists of five parts that could be considered five separate poems. His use of “allegorically abstract text nevertheless achieves a remarkable unity of effect in terms of voice, mood and imagery” (Morace 948). Before the poem starts, there are two epigraphs; “Mistah Kurtz – he dead. / A penny for the Old Guy” (lines 1-2). Eliot alludes to these two epigraphs because their themes are developed throughout his poem. “The first epigraph is from Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” a story …that examines the hollowness and horror of lack of faith, spiritual paralysis, and despair” (Bloom 61), just like the “hollow men” in his poem. The second epigraph “refers to the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day in Britain” (Bloom 61). This is a day that celebrates Fawkes’ unsuccessful rebellion against King James I with his capture in the cellar of the Parliament building, where stored gun powder was supposed to blow up and kill King James I and his family. Once captured, he cowardly turned over his co-conspirators and they all were killed. It is “celebrated with bonfires, fireworks, the burning of scarecrows,
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
Both Browning and Eliot seek to improve upon the nature of the dramatic monologue. Browning emphasizes structure and a separation between the poet and the character which is reiterated by Eliot’s poem. Browning’s influence on Eliot can be seen by the form and structure of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” adding working intrinsically with the theme and subject of the work. However, Eliot deviates slightly from Browning by the portrayal of his characters, and the amount of information that he is willing to share with the reader. The intended message of Browning’s poem is much more apparent than Eliot’s who creates an open ended poem that can be interpreted differently by each reader.