Module C Draft

T.S Eliot:
Fragmentation- A fragment is a part of a larger work or a poem made to appear discontinuous or
incomplete.
 It was moving away from concepts of wholeness and conclusiveness and diving into interruptions,
isolations, and instability.

reflects a self-aware style of writing which interrupts the passage of time, leaving holes and falls
ambiguities.
Eliot used fragmentation in his poetry to demonstrate the chaotic state of modern existence

Key Themes:
o Alienation
o Time
o Isolation
o Secularity/religion/spirituality
o Urbanisation
o Lack of meaningful conformity
o Emotional/Moral Decay
o Existentialism-Jean Paul Sartre
o Old to new values
o Memory

Theme The Love Song Preludes Rhapsody on The Hollow Journey of the
of J Alfred a Windy Men Magi
Prufrock Night
Time
Existentialism (Jean-Paul
Sartre)
Societal Decay
Modernism
Religion/ Faith/ Secularity/
Nihilism
Isolation/Loneliness/Loss of
Identity
Alienation
Lack of purpose/meaningful
conformity in life
Materialism
introspection
Memory
Urbanisation

Discursive:

Role of media in shaing popular opinions

Imaginative:

Summary of Poems:

Rhapsody on a Windy Night (1911)

- Frequent reference to time (“half past two”)
- a visualisation of an individual's attempts to relocate a sense of stability amid the uncertainty of
modernity
- The opening reference to the time, 'Twelve o'clock. ' Commands our attention and injects the poem
with a tone of certainty.
- Isolation,desolation,futility
Preludes (1911)
- About the drudgery, waste, and isolation of modern urban life
- The unnamed city in which the poem is set is a grimy, dingy place, in which people unthinkingly
partake in monotonous daily routines.
- Title has musical connatations
- critiques the alienating effects of modern urban life
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock (1912)
- In his mind he hears the comments others make about his inadequacies, and he chides himself for
“presuming” emotional interaction could be possible at all
- Poem about fantasising talking to a potential lover
- He seems distant from the world
realises status (“I am not Prince Hamlet”)
- poem dramatizes Prufrock’s state of mind
- He seems to both hate and fear the women and he is far too shy to communicate with any of them.
- Shows The disconnect that exists between our own sense of self and the way others perceive us?

Journey of the Magi (1927)

- the journey of the three wise men so as to witness the birth of Jesus Christ
- long journey but theyd do it again
- set after Eliot converted from Unitarianism to Anglo–Catholicism in 1927
- about birth of jesus but and some critics also say the pains of letting go of one way of life—one faith
—and acknowledging the birth of another.
- Post WW1
- Conversion paralleles conversion to a more modern society
- Unexpectedly, the result of the journey is saddening rather than joyful.
- The birth of Christ establishes a new order that makes it difficult to return to “the old
dispensation”. The poem captures the dilemma faced by anyone whose old beliefs are challenged.
- Draws on nihilistic ideas (rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is
meaningless.)

The Hollow Men (1925)

- a desolate world, populated by empty, defeated people
- can be read as a description of life after death
- represents struggle to find hope
- hope is only present for short part of poem
- post WW1
- ‘The Hollow Men’ is often seen as a sequel to ‘The Waste Land’ (1922) as it continues T.S. Eliot’s
harsh critique of Western culture in the aftermath of WWI.
T.S Eliot Form:

- Wrote in free verse

T.S Eliot Context:

- converted from Unitarianism to Anglo–Catholicism in 1927

- poems written around the turbulence of modernity
- Influenced by French Symbolists of the late 19thC and imagism (imagism is that which presents an
intellectual and emotional complex in an instance of time according to Pound) of Ezra Pound
used imagism to create a sense of immediacy and to convey complex ideas and emotions.
Eliot published Prufrock out of insistence from Ezra Pound, this was his first published poem
- New developments in technology and urbanisation
- Pre and post WW1 and how it affected his writing
- Modernist poet

 Modernity (a period in literary history which started around the early 1900s and continued until the
early 1940s.)
- new

T.S Eliot is a disruptive fastidious iconoclast ( a person who attacks or criticizes cherished beliefs or
institutions.)

Vocab:
- Ennui
- nihilism