T.S Eliot and Modernism

T.S. full name is Thomas Stearns Eliot. He had written a total of 68 poems, dramas, etc. in total (Wikipedia). There are many influences, but I think that Vivienne Haigh-Wood, Eliot`s first wife, Ezra Pound, his mentor and religion are one of the biggest influences on T.S. Eliot.

Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.

“Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering” (“Dalai Lama Quotes”). T.S Eliot lived during the times of World War 1, which inspired Eliot to relate his poems to the life of disappointed European citizens after the war. He included thoughts about the social and political views of Europeans during this big time in world history, which comes during the Victorian Era. The poems “Preludes” and “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” by T.S. Eliot uses figurative language, such as metaphor and imagery to convey how solitude affects human behavior.

Unlike other forms of literature, poetry can be so complex that everyone who reads it may see something different. Two poets who are world renowned for their ability to transform reader’s perceptions with the mere use of words, are TS Eliot and Walt Whitman. “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” by TS Eliot, tells the story of a man who is in love and contemplating confessing his emotions, but his debilitating fear of rejection stops him from going through with it. This poem skews the reader’s expectations of a love song and takes a critical perspective of love while showing all the damaging emotions that come with it. “Song of myself”, by Walt Whitman provokes a different emotion, one of joy and self-discovery. This poem focuses more on the soul and how it relates to the body. “Song of myself” and “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” both explore the common theme of how the different perceptions of the soul and body can affect the way the speaker views themselves, others, and the world around them.

T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” illustrates the fear of the fragmentation of society today. In the poem, Eliot creates the persona of Prufrock. Prufrock is speaking to an unknown listener. The persona of Prufrock is Eliot’s interpretation of Western society and its impotency. His views on society is seen as a modernistic point of view, which idolizes the ideas to regress back to a classicist era. Eliot illustrates his contempt for the modern society by illustrating fragmentation with synecdoche, characterization of Prufrock, and allusions to literary traditions throughout the narrative. In his poem, Eliot clings to the idea of a classical society in which he is witnessing fall apart.

Elliot is seen as one of the most influential modernistic poet of all time. Elliot’s poems evidently highlight the real face of modern man and modern existence by exploring the social realms that society is placed under in a desolately described, modernistic world. TS Elliot describes the industrialised world in both J Alfred Prufrock and Preludes as a disjointed, dehumanised world where mundane activities are ever-present in people’s lives. Elliot focuses on using the character’s viewpoint through the stream of consciousness as a means of highlighting the major concerns of modernism. His poems J Alfred prufrock and Preludes disclose the major concerns of modernism associated with the backdrop of the bleak, industrialised world, that is

T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” illustrates the poet’s fear of the fragmentation of modern society. In the poem, Eliot creates the persona of his speaker, J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock is speaking to an unknown listener. The persona of Prufrock is Eliot’s interpretation of Western society and its impotency at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. His views are modernistic, which idolize the classical forms while incorporating new ideas about psychology and the subconscious. Eliot illustrates his contempt for the faithlessness of modern society by illustrating its fragmentation with synecdoche, characterization of Prufrock, and allusions to literary traditions throughout the narrative. In his poem, Eliot illustrates his view of a great tradition that he is witnessing as it falls apart.

T.S. Eliot was an outstanding author and an exemplary representation of the ideas of modernism. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," despite being one of T.S Eliot 's earliest publications, still manages to remain one of the most famous. He uses this poem to not only draw out the psychological aspect of members of modern society, but also to draw out the aspect of the time that he lived in. The speaker of this poem is a modern man who feels alone, isolated, and incapable of making decisive actions for himself. Prufrock desires to speak to a woman about his love for her, but he hesitates the entire way there. In this poem, the theme I have chosen is fragmentation, which we can see throughout the entire structure of the work. It 's evidenced by not only his writing style, but the use of space and time and the personality of Prufrock.

Poetry, by its formal definition, describes intense literary work that expresses feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm. In poems such as “The Light Comes Brighter”, “Gold Glade”, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, poets used certain literary devices--such as imagery, personification, symbolism, and rhyme scheme--in order to develop an abstract but simultaneous concrete idea of their internal thoughts and emotions. In “Gold Glade”, Robert Penn Warren portrayed a vivid memory of a young boy’s adventurous spirit. The Gold Glade, originally depicted as a simple artifact within the wilderness, symbolized the dream and passion held dearly by the identifiable character within his boyhood. T.S Eliot 's “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” followed an insecure man as he reflected upon his most extensive regret: having little power and confidence when it came to making decisions and dating. T.S Eliot conspicuously introduced a complex interpretation of a simple concept and sentiment. In Theodore Roethke’s “The Light Comes Brighter”, a familiar sense of clarity showed the upcoming change in seasons. By shifting into a new season as the poem proceeded, Roethke helped convey his thoughts and stance on the influence of nature in human culture. His peculiar word choice brought forth a new and interesting perspective on the effect caused by the environment’s cycle. Through all four poems, the discussion of human emotion tested the apprehension and

When discussing the greatest poetic minds to ever put their genius to use, it is nearly impossible to not mention Thomas Stearns Eliot. Eliot used his works to develop and display his emotions and his morals by writing complex themes and descriptive scenes that are all based on simple situations that either Eliot himself had lived through, or that someone he knew closely had. By doing so, Eliot was able to convey some of the core human emotions well enough to leave the reader unsure on how he or she feels about the topic themselves. Often times, the only way to express emotion, was through his works. The analysis of the life, and the writings of Thomas Stearns Eliot reveal the possible influences in his works, and the facts behind what led

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During the time period of modernism, society saw a massive shift, especially from the everyday life of people in the cities. With improvements being made in transportation and technology this shifted the way of life to a much faster pace, shrinking the distances between people around the world thus creating a more rapid pace of life. The emphasis on radical innovations left many people will feelings of despair, a sense of meaninglessness, and hopelessness. With the ever growing developments to society, a lack of traditional and cultural norms and beliefs in closely held faiths were strained. These concepts were much illustrated in the literature of the time. Literary figures such as T.S Eliot flawlessly depicted the perception of the troubles of the “modern man” in his poem The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, while also integrating the new way of looking and appreciating life will all the good and bad components, ideas brought forth by the forerunners of modernism.

Constructed in free verse, “The Applicant” involves a narrator who talks to an unknown male character who is “applying” to be the husband of an ideal woman. The woman is ideal in the sense that she is subservient and conforming to the standards set for women in the society during the 1960s, the decade in which this poem was written. The poem pans out in parallel with her demolishing marriage as well as the feeling of imprisonment that is secreted from this poem through the narrator’s passive-aggressive demanding tone. The tone of this poem feeds the reader’s understanding of marriage as an institution rather than a viaduct of raw human emotions. The poem initially unravels in an interview-manner, “First, are you our sort of person? (1)”. The first two stanzas represent the male as the applicant and reveal that his application is for a wife who fulfills society’s expectations. Plath delivers the idea of an incomplete, imperfect man through a peculiar usage of false appendages. The poem flows as Plath connects the male figure with female body parts, such as “rubber breasts” (5), in order to “retrieve the female body, particularly the female breast, from objectification by the male gaze” (641) as Diane Middlebrook puts it in her essay, “What Was Confessional Poetry?”. Here, Plath already secretes the idea of

T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is inhabited by both a richly developed world and character and one is able to categorize the spaces in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to correspond to Prufrock’s mind. Eliot uses the architecture of the three locations described in the text to explore parts of Prufrock's mind in the Freudian categories of id, ego, and super-ego; the city that is described becomes the Ego, the room where he encounters women his Id and the imagined ocean spaces his Super Ego.

All words, phrases and sentences (or just simply images) which make up this poem seem to, in Levi-Strauss’ words, “be a valeur symbolique zero [and the signifier] can take on any value required ”, meaning that the images Eliot uses do not have one fixed signification and consequently conjure up thought-provoking ideas that need to be studied (qtd. in