Presentation on a Short Poem Written by T. S. Eliot-Cousin Nancy

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Presentation on a Short Poem Written by T. S. Eliot-Cousin Nancy

First, let me talk something about T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot is considered to be one of the most prominent poets,

critics and playwrights of his time and his works are said to have

promoted to "reshape modern literature". He was born in 1888 in St.

Louis Missouri and studied at Harvard and Oxford. It was at Harvard

where he met his guide Ezra Pound, and under the encouragement of

Pound, Eliot expands his writing abilities and publish his first poem:

the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot became an Englandcitizen in

1925 and received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. In 1965, he

died in London, and his ashes were interred at the church of East

Coker, England, the home of his ancestor, and also the name of second

of Four Quartets, on the memorial tablet are inscribed: in my

beginning is my end, in my end is my beginning, famous line in this

poem.

His most famous work included some poems, the waste land, 1922, Ash

Wednesday, 1930, Four Quartets, 1936, some plays: murder in the

cathedral, 1935, the cocktail party, 1950, and some essays including

tradition and the individual talent, 1917, the use of poetry and the

use of criticism, 1933, etc. the further I want to mentioned here is

his old possum's book of practical cats, a group of lively and

humorous poems, which was later adapted, and became a famous Broadway

musical: Cats. It is these poems that bring me into the world of

Eliot, and I think this kind of works can also make him more

accessible.

Now we come into the poem itself.

The poet use 2/3 of his poem to portray an image of a modern girl,

c...

... middle of paper ...

..." rebellion?

"The barren New Englandhills" with "upon the glazen shelves kept

watch"

Q:if we considered the New Englandhills as the symbol of the

traditional culture, why is it barren? And why are shelves glazed?

Maybe a kind of objective observation here, since the shelves of

Nancy's family are really glazed, or we can say that the tradition is

well kept, though antique, locked away in the shelves.

(The need for an "impersonal" or objective poetry in which the life of

the writer is dissolved into his art) In the title of the volume,

"observation" indicated the writing technique, the purpose of the

poems, and also the attitude of the poet, he observe, like an

objective spectator, observing everything, forever observing, includes

himself in the observation, and wrote down what he observed into his

poems.

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