Essay on “The Hippopotamus” by T.S. Eliot

Eliot uses allusions and imagery to make several references to characters—both real and fictional—to vicariously show how Prufrock feels. The first allusion is an epigraph from Dante’s Inferno:

By looking through a critical lens at T Stearns Eliot’s poetry in light of his 20th century, modernist context, much is revealed about his personal and the rapidly evolving societal beliefs of that era. Through his repeating motif of time and fragmentation throughout his poems, Eliot reveals the prevalent feelings of isolation while in society along with the need to hide one’s feelings and emotions in this degrading society. His exploration of the use of ambiguity and stream of consciousness by Eliot, which is a characteristic of modernist artists, allows his work to resound over decades while being interpreted and differently understood by every audience that encounters them.

Furthermore, Hughes uses the rhetorical device of allusion when he writes about his aunt’s bringing him to the church for a special meeting. When he writes, “Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, ‘to bring the young lambs to the fold’’’ (1), he attempts to correlate his invitation to salvation to a Biblical parable. Along with his reference to the Bible, he conveys the church member’s excitement with vivid imagery. He illustrates the church’s setting as being infuse with “all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell”, and he also describes the preacher’s sermon as a “wonderful rhythmical sermon” (3). Conjointly, Hughes presents imagery of the churchgoers and alludes to a Biblical story in order to demonstrate the magnitude of the religious enthusiasm of the members of the church.

Upon a visit to Mr. Irwine’s abode in Chapter 5 of Adam Bede, George Eliot’s audience encounters a seemingly trivial interaction between Captain Arthur Donnithorne and his godmother, Mrs. Irwine. The chapter’s title being “The Rector,” one does not necessarily expect to find much significance in Arthur’s brief discussion with his godmother, and, when compared to Arthur’s exchanges with Mr. Irwine and Hetty Sorrel in the same chapter, their conversation can even border on forgettable; however, it is in this brief interaction that Eliot’s audience catches a glimpse of one of the text’s scarce interactions between upper-class individuals, the interaction itself absolutely doused in rhetorical devices which ultimately undermine the upper-class characters in the scene, revealing their hypocrisy and their inability to properly articulate the world they live in. This is accomplished through Eliot’s use of irony in the contradictory nature of Mrs. Irwine’s paradoxical

Also, Eliot uses other text such as that, which is in the lines, "But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet- and here's no great matter" (777); as an allusion to indicate his inability to convey his message. He explains that even though he has prayed (perhaps for society) and wept and fasted, he

4. One of the most demanding aspects of this poem is its allusions, as Eliot expected his readers to be as well educated as he was. Some allusions are fairly accessible. The allusions to Michelangelo—an artist most people are familiar with—in line 14 and again in line 36 help us imagine the women Prufrock is talking about. The function of the less accessible allusions—such as “works and days of hands” (l. 29)—may serve a different purpose. Why might Eliot have included such esoteric allusions? How do they affect your reading of the poem?

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land explores modernism, specifically focusing on the troubling of binaries and the breakdown of the traditional. The boundaries between life and death, wet and dry, male and female, and more are called into question in Eliot’s conception of modernity and the waste land. The blurring of gender boundaries—significantly through Tiresias and the hooded figure scene in “What the Thunder Said”— in the poem lends itself to Eliot’s suggestion that traditional masculinity breaks down and decays in the waste land. Traditional masculinity is further challenged through Eliot’s criticism of hyper-masculinity and heterosexual relations in the modern era through allusions to the myth of Philomela and the “young man carbuncular” scene in “The Fire Sermon.” Along with this, Eliot stages scenes charged with homoeroticism to further challenge ideas of traditional masculinity. Homoerotic scenes such as the “hyacinth girl” scene in “The Burial of the Dead” and the Mr. Eugenides scene in “The Fire Sermon” suggest an intensity and enticement towards male-male relations, while also offering a different depiction of masculinity than is laid out in the heterosexual romance scenes. Through scenes depicting queer desire and homosexual behavior, Eliot suggests that masculinity in the modern era does not need to be marked by aggression and

Eliot is not solely criticising modern life in the poem, it also serves as a reflection of Eliot’s social context and his own life, a product of its time.

Also, Eliot uses other text such as that, which is in the lines, "But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet- and here's no great matter" (777); as an allusion to indicate his inability to convey his message. He explains that even though he has prayed (perhaps for society) and wept and fasted, he still can not send the true message that has encompassed himself and his soul.

Eliot is vague in his suggestion of Prufrock’s audience, only referring to the listener once using “you and I;”(1) however, by analyzing Eliot’s intertextual inclusion of the passage from Dante’s Inferno and Prufock’s

T.S. Eliot in the twentieth-century wrote what is today widely-regarded as one of the most important text of modernist poems, “The Waste Land.” This poem evaluates many aspects of ancient and contemporary culture and customs, and how the contemporary culture has degraded into a wasteland. In “The Waste Land,” Eliot conjures, through allusions to multiple religions and works of literature in five separate sections, a fragmented and seemingly disjointed poem. Eliot repeatedly alludes to western and eastern cultural foundation blocks to illustrate the cultural degradation prevalent in the modern era of England. One specific eastern example is brought up in the third section of the poem, which T.S. Eliot names “Fire Sermon,” an allusion to

Q5 "Much of what Eliot writes about is harsh and bleak, but he writes about it in a way that is often beautiful". Comment fully on both parts of this assertion.

In this discussion of Eliot’s poem I will examine the content through the optic of eco-poetics. Eco- poetics is a literary theory which favours the rhizomatic over the arborescent approach to critical analysis. The characteristics of the rhizome will provide the overarching structure for this essay. Firstly rhizomes can map in any direction from any starting point. This will guide the study of significant motifs in ‘The Waste Land.’ Secondly they grow and spread, via experimentation within a context. This will be reflected in the study of the voice and the language with which the poem opens. Thirdly rhizomes grow and spread regardless of breakage. This will allow for an

This quote is a proposition for gay sex at a hotel, a sort of thing that was considered very immoral at the time. Eliot thought that emptiness in culture was giving way to sexual immorality. This point is brought up again a few lines later;

This time Eliot does not quote another piece of text, however, he does consciously foregrounds that he uses the opening to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (Bennett and Royle 5). This profusion of intertextuality, even before “The Waste Land” is well and truly on