Thomas Stearns Eliot

T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965)

Poet - Playwright - Critic

HIGHLIGHTS

- American by birth (Missouri)- Studied at Harvard University - 1910: Paris - Sorbonne - 1914: England - 1927: He acquired British citizenship

MODERNISM

Lorem ipsum

1922: The waste land (poem)

Lorem ipsum

OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE

Sources

MODERNISM

The WASTE LAND is a modernist poem. It's built in free verse (no structure) it represents the spiritual sterility of the modern world and the fragmentation of the Western civilisation. MODERNIST THEMES AND MOTIFS: - inability to communicate - lack of love - spiritual corruption The people in The Waste Land do not talk to one another (monologue)

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum

Sources

1922: THE WASTE LAND

The year 1922 represented a turning point for culture. It also marked: - the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses - the creation of the BBC - the founding of a small production company by a young animator called Walt Disney. THE WASTE LAND expresses the desolation of the post-war world: it expresses both the psychological effects of war on humanity (depression and cynism) and the artist's difficulty in writing about the tragedy of war. Humanity is almost dead: "He who was living is now dead/ We who were living are now dying"

Sources

OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE

Defined by Eliot himself as "A set of objects , a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion" that a writer seeks to evoke in the reader.

Poetry must be objective and impersonal. Eliot doesn't describe an emotion but presents the object(s) and the action(s) in such a way that the emotion is produced in the reader.

Lorem ipsum

UNREAL CITY - The Waste Land. Here the modern metropolis (London) is depicted as a universal symbol of decay, spiritual death and desolation. In Italy: E. MONTALE

Lorem ipsum

Sources