T. S.

Eliot
English Literature Since Romanticism
Spring 2024
Eliot’s poetic method
• “The poets must become more and more
comprehensive more allusive, more indirect,
in order to force, to dislocate if necessary,
language into his meaning” (Norton 651)
• Emphasizes clear and precise images (651)
• Unlike the Romanticists, focuses on the
poetic medium instead of the poet’s
personality (651)
• But contains Romantic elements e.g.
laments over loss and fragmentation (652)
Eliot’s poetic method
• Symbolist-Metaphysical (Norton 654)
• Influenced by French symbolists (652)
• Juxtaposition of images without overt
explanation (652)
• Mutual interaction of the images (652)
• Eliminates all merely connective and
transitional passages (652)
• Mingles ancient and modern voices, high and
low art, Western and non-Western references
(652), formal with the conversational (653)
• Oblique references (652)
Eliot’s themes
• The Waste Land: aspects of cultural decay
in the modern Western world (Norton 653)
• “The Metaphysical Poets”: Reestablishment
of unified sensibility (no segregation of
intellect and emotion seen in 18 and 19
centuries) (653)
• Religious themes, searching for spiritual
peace (653)
• “classicist in literature, royalist in politics,
Anglo-Catholic in religion”: his conservative
attitude (653)
• Anti-Semitic remarks (653)
 “Tradition and the Individual
Talent”
Topic 1: Relation of the poem to other poems
• Tradition cannot be inherited but must be obtained by great
labor (Norton 684-685)
• The whole of the literature of Europe from Homer has a
simultaneous existence (685)
• The writer’s sense of his place in time (685)
• No poet has his complete meaning alone. His significance is
the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets. (685)
• The conformity between the old and the new: when new
work arrives, the whole existing order must be altered (685)
 “Tradition and the Individual
Talent”
• Poets must be judged by the standards of the past. It is a
judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured
by each other. (Norton 685)
• Tradition as the mind of Europe (686): tradition is
accumulative and beyond the personal
• Criticism should be directed at the work, not the poet. (686)

Note: Eliot’s view of tradition is elitist and narrow because he

only considers canonical authors and high art (e.g. Homer,
Shakespeare).
 “Tradition and the Individual
Talent”
Topic 2: Relation of the poem to its author (Norton 687)
• Impersonal theory of poetry (687)
• Platinum as a catalyst (the poet’s mind), which transforms
oxygen and sulphur dioxide into sulphurous acid (687)
• The poet’s mind is a receptacle storing and transforming
emotions and feelings. (687)
• The greatest poetry has the most intense process of
transforming emotions, not the most intense emotions (687).
• Metaphysical theory of the unity of the soul: the poet has a
particular medium to express, not a personality to express
(688)
 “Tradition and the Individual
Talent”
• The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to
use the ordinary and old ones and make them universal.
(689)
• Argues that Wordsworth’s statement “emotion recollected
in tranquility” is imprecise (689)
• The emotion of art is impersonal (689)
• Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from
emotion. -> the goal is to create universal poetry
• Poetry is not the expression personality, but an escape from
personality. ->impersonal theory of poetry
 “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock”
• Setting: urban (e.g. lines 6-7, 15-16), unromantic, not fit for
a conversation with a lover
• Dramatic monologue:
1. A character’s (not poet’s) confession
2. Shows character’s development
3. Implied listener
• Prufrock: an unreliable narrator; a neurotic (e.g. lines 55-
56), isolated, modern man who is overeducated, eloquent but
indecisive in action (like Hamlet)
• “you and I” (line 1): imagined dialogue, but he’s talking to
himself
 “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock”
• “there will be time”: postpone asking the question in line 10
• Refrains that implies anxiety: “so how should I presume?”
• The “ragged claws” (crab) in line 73: a scavenger figure in
Eliot’s poetry that paradoxically produces art by sustaining
itself on garbage (garbage represents modern life)
• Line 80: consummate their relationship (what line 10 refers to)
• Line 92: i.e. to have sex; see note 7
• Lines 97-98, 104, 109-110: communication issue
• Line 111: echoes “Do I dare”; Prufrock is worse than Hamlet
• Line 131: drown in his thoughts; a love poem ends with
suffocation -> art has no place in modern life; poetic genius
can’t triumph over chaos
 “The Waste Land”

• Eliot’s “mythical method”: use

myths to 1) construct a parallel
between past and present and 2)
provide shape and significance to
futility and anarchy (Norton 659)
• Inspirations from the Grail legend
(Rossetti’s 1874 painting on the
right), ancient fertility myths, the
story of the Fisher King (659)
• Theme: the modern Waste Land
caused by WWI and the need for
regeneration. Also reflects Eliot’s
personal issues
 “The Waste Land”

• Juxtaposition of images, tones, accents, fragmentary

episodes
• Inorganic allusions that defy unification: disorienting,
reflecting lack of unity of the world
• Eliot’s way of finding his voice is to coopt other’s voices
(myths and various allusions, London accents and language
etc.).
• Second stanza of Part 1: apocalyptic scene of the Waste
Land
• Last stanza of Part 1: recurrent “unreal city” e.g. Paris,
London; city is the true Waste Land
 “The Waste Land”

• First stanza of Part 2: a noble lady awaits

• Part 2: two extremes of modern sexuality: barren, neurotic,
isolated, self-destructive vs. fecund, rampant, rapid aging,
lacks culture
• Starting from the second stanza of Part 2: conversations
between two women in the English vernacular at a bar in
London
• Line 159: “bring it off ”: abortion->recurrent theme of
suffering, violence, and trauma
 “The Waste Land”

• Title of Part 3: fire of lust and other unearthly passions

• Line 187: rat is a scavenger
• Second stanza of Part 3: the Waste Land is full of rats and
garbage
• Lines 212-214: failed homosexual tryst
• Lines 218-219: Tiresias is a key figure of this poem; he sees
the past and present; his sexual ambiguity represents
decadence that comes with civilization. See also note 3 on
Norton 666-667
• Part 4: failed elegy that offers no solace; see note 1 on
Norton 669
 “The Waste Land”

• Lines 328-329: the living-dead

• Title of Part 5 c.f. line 342: no rain despite the thunder
• Lines 395 and 400: the rain isn’t very helpful
• Line 400: thunder anticipates rain
• Lines 401, 411, 418: note 3
• Lines 424-426: the Fisher King
• Last line: refuses closure. Not sure if the Waste Land is
rejuvenated by the rain.
• In Eliot’s modern Waste Land, there is no way to heal the
Fisher King and regain fertility because there is no unifying
narrative in the modern world.
 Homework

• Beckett, Waiting for Godot