To what extent can ‘Preludes’ by T.S. Eliot be considered a text of beauty and value? ‘Preludes’ by T.S. Eliot, composed between 1910 and 1911, portrays Eliot’s own views and frustrations with the sordid mundanity of urban life. Eliot was the son of a prominent industrialist and later came to resent such a way of life. When he was still a student he suffered with a nervous breakdown and experienced problems with his Christian faith. The poem presents the story of people being spiritually worn out, living in a busy, murky, and detached city. Arguably, ‘Preludes’ is a valuable and beautiful text but this is disputed because of its simplicity and lack of a clear resolution. The poem can be considered valuable, possessing an element of beauty, …show more content…
For language to have value, “the author is considered to have taken care in her or his choice, and the reader takes pleasure in the skill which the author displays.” ‘Preludes’ agrees with this description as the words are clearly carefully selected; this becomes even clearer with the knowledge of the period of time Eliot spent writing the poem. The time he dedicated to writing a considerably short poem shows the amount of time he must have spent with the quality of the words and deeper meanings behind them. The use of language and the way it is phrased is appropriate for its intent. Elegant language is not used because it is not needed- Eliot uses mundane and common words, words that are used and heard every day, to replicate the mundanity of ordinary everyday-life. His descriptions would not be perceived to be beautiful and that was his intent. The descriptions of the gloomy, decaying settings and environment are meant to repulse and draw attention to what is wrong with society. “The burnt-out ends of smoky days” and “The showers beat/ On broken blinds and chimney-pots,” create images of a dirty, decaying urban environment. Eliot attempts to bring to light the decay of city life and, by extent, the decay of the purpose and meaning of individuals in
“Modern critics agree… that the novel has unity that its subject is an exploration of human aspiration and fulfillment by individual and social influences…” as a lining for various themes that Eliot uses through imagery and language. (Doyle 118) Beginning wi...
In this poem, time takes on a distinct meaning. Rather than simply being an external object that lacks control over man, Eliot raises the meaning of this foreign object to a new level. The time provided to the speaker can be equated with his actions. Everyday he is provided a certain amount of time, and day after day he is prepared to "spit out the butt-ends of [his] ways"(Eliot 2461) at the end of the his bland day. The frustration Prufrock builds up is caused by the tiresome repetition of his actions. Furthermore, he feels as though he can not esc...
Form often follows function in poetry, and in this case, Eliot uses this notion whe...
In the poem “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot immediately gives his work a tone of darkness and desperation. Eliot also uses references of works from Dantes, Julius Caesar, and Joseph Conrad. These three men majorly influenced Eliot on his writings spiritually and intellectually. Eliot was going through a rough patch in his life during with his wife during the time that he wrote “The Hollow Men.” He reveals his views on contemporary life and uses the poem as a cry for relief from his personal troubles (“Explanation of: ‘The Hollow Men’ by T.S. Eliot.”) Also, this poem emphasizes how life was after World War 1 (“Eliot, T.S., 452). In “The Hollow Men,” Eliot reveals images of brokenness, darkness, and emptiness through his worldview on a decadent modern society (Gopang 2).
Different speakers in "The Waste Land" mirror the disjointedness of modern experience by presenting different viewpoints that the reader is forced to put together for himself. This is similar to the disassociation in modern life in that life has ceased to be a unified whole: various aspects of 20th-century life -- various academic disciplines, theory and practice, Church and State, and Eliot's "disassociation of sensibilities," or separation of heart and mind -- have become separated from each other, and a person who lives in this time period is forced to shore these fragments against his or her ruins, to borrow Eliot's phrase, to see a picture of an integrated whole.
...s, Colleen. The love song of T.S. Eliot: elegiac homoeroticism in the early poetry. Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot. Ed. Cassandra Laity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. p. 20
suggests that heaven is not real. Another way Eliot makes us think. life is futile is that we feel nothing for the hollow men, they are. emotionally detached from us and we don't care about them or their lives and this suggests that one in the distant future will even know of our existence as many of us make no impression on the world.
Kenner, Hugh. T.S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962.
T.S. Eliot is often considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th Century. Not only were his highly regarded poems such as “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” influential to the literary style of his time, but his work as a publisher highlighted the work of many talented poets. Analyzing his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with psychoanalytic criticism reveals several core issues in the speaker of the poem, and may reflect Eliot himself.
Eliot was also influenced by the French poet, Charles Baudelaire who explored the poetic possibilities of “the more sordid aspects of the modern metropolis.” I believe that this is what Eliot is doing in Preludes; I believe he is exploring the poetic possibilities of the city. In ‘Preludes’, Eliot begins the poem with “The winter evening settles down / With smell of steaks in passageways / Six o’clock.” Here, Eliot has personified the weather and made wide use of sibilance.
...ing lost the sense of Good and Evil, has ceased to be alive” (46). This “living death” is seen very clearly during and immediately after the sexual encounter of the clerk and typist. Eliot uses desolation of environment as well to juxtapose past and present, especially when describing the “unreal city.” The destruction brought about by post-war modernity is rampant also in the description of the Thames River. Finally, Eliot shows the lack of vitality of modern people through their voluntary self-mechanization. The characters of the present in The Waste Land have no motivation to make, or live by, their own choices, and let the machine of life carry them where it may. The result is a stark depiction of the automation, isolation, and despair that define the contemporary world.
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an elaborate and mysterious montage of lines from other works, fleeting observations, conversations, scenery, and even languages. Though this approach seems to render the poem needlessly oblique, this style allows the poem to achieve multi-layered significance impossible in a more straightforward poetic style. Eliot’s use of fragmentation in The Waste Land operates on three levels: first, to parallel the broken society and relationships the poem portrays; second, to deconstruct the reader’s familiar context, creating an individualized sense of disconnection; and third, to challenge the reader to seek meaning in mere fragments, in this enigmatic poem as well as in a fractious world.
T.S Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, is written in the mood of society after World War I. By using these allusions, The Waste Land reflects on mythical, historical, and literary events. The poem displays the deep disillusionment felt during this time period. In the after math of the great war, in an industrialized society that lacks the traditional structure of authority and belief, in the soil that may not be conductive to new growth (Lewis). Eliot used various allusions that connected to the time period and the effect of the war on society in his poem. Aided by Eliot’s own notes and comments, scholars have been able to identify allusions to: the Book of Common Prayer, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles-Louis Philippe, James Thomas, Guillaume Appollinaire, Countess Marie Larsich, Wyndham Lewis, nine books of the Bible, John Donne, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Richard Wagner, Sappho, Catullus, Lord Byron, Joseph Campbell, Aldous Huxley, J.G. Frazer, Jessie L. Weston, W.B. Yeats, Shakespeare, Walter Pater, Charles Baudelair, Dente, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and John Webster—all within the first section of 72 lines, about one allusion every two lines (Lewis). Using various allusions, Eliot was able to connect to the fact that he lived in a modern day waste land as a result of the destruction caused by World War I. Eliot used the allusions to show that death brings new beginnings and change, and love still flourishes.
...lore life and death in his poetry. He portrays significant themes of disillusionment and restoration. Eliot believes in restoring the bad having new beginnings. In conclusion, Eliot revolutionizes poetry to a new level and is one of the most prestigious poets to this day.
T.S Eliot, widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern poetry, has written many great poems. Among the most well known of these are “The Waste Land, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which share similar messages, but are also quite different. In both poems, Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey themes of repression, alienation, and a general breakdown in western society. Some of the best techniques to examine are ones such as theme, structure, imagery and language, which all figure prominently in his poetry. These techniques in particular are used by Eliot to both enhance and support the purpose of his poems.