Thomas Stearns Eliot: A Modernist Poet's Life and Literary Style, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Thomas Stearns Eliot: A Modernist Poet's Life and Literary Style e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Thomas Stearns Eliot BIOGRAPHY - born in St Louis (Missouri) in 1888 - studied philosophy at Harvard - he went to France and to Oxford (where he met Ezra Pound > they became close friends) - after a year at Oxford, he decided to stay in England > he married Vivien > English girl with a psychiatric disease (she was put into an asylum during the last years of her life) > no happy marriage > in 1927 he became a British citizen - he published The Waste Land in 1922 after editing the poem together with Ezra Pound > he wrote it in a Swiss sanatorium (his mental and physical health had started to deteriorate under the pressures of his life) > he expresses what he felt about his life and marriage > not only a poem about post-war confusion and desolation > period in which he couldn’t find values around himself > then he converted to the Church of England in 1927 > found an answer to his questioning - in 1948 he received the Nobel Prize for literature - he died in London in 1965 STYLE - considered the leading poet of Modernism > he said that “the beginning of the modern poetry was the metaphysical poetry” (17 th century) > use of conceit, intellectual and difficult images > es John Dunn with “Valediction: a forbidden mourning” (image of the compass) - use of fragmentation > no narration immediately understandable > he wants to reproduce the chaos of modern civilization > the meaning is in the whole, not in the fragmented part - use of images, association, references, techniques like the OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE (description of something that evokes a certain emotion), juxtaposition and repetition > Joyce and Eliot: subjective vision of reality but achieved through an objective technique (stream of consciousness and objective correlative) > great intellectual > he wrote a very difficult poem > he left notes in which he explains what’s under his own poetry THE WASTE LAND structure: - 434 lines divided into five sections - 1. “The Burial of the Dead” > sterility vs fertility, life vs death - 2. “A Game of Chess” > present squalor vs past splendour - 3. “The Fire Sermon”