聊城大学外国语学院美国文学史与选读课件 Lecture23.pptVIP

Thomas Stearns Eliot 1888-1965 Life of T. S. Eliot Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888 in a traditional Calvinist family Paternal grandfather founder of Washington University and founder of Unitarianism Undergraduate (1906-1910) at Harvard; graduate (1911-1914) work at Harvard under the supervision of George Santayana and Irving Babbitt; Oxford (1915-1916) Beginning writing poetry as a college student Life of T. S. Eliot Greatly influenced in 1908 by British metaphysical poetry like that of John Donne in the 17th century (its irony, witty metaphors); by French symbolists like Jules LaForgue and Charles Pierre Baudelaire (their indirect, implicit symbols as in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) Works before 1909 basically victorian (Genteel tradition) Life of T. S. Eliot Settlement in London in 1915 1915, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Waste Land published on Criterion Eliot edited, proofread by Ezra Pound A British citizen in 1927 and beginning writing poems about religions, different from earlier poems about the decadence of western spirit and culture Important Poetic Works The Waste Land (1922) Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) Poems (1920) Ash-Wednesday (1930) The Four Quartets (1934-1942), philosophical and religious meditative poems Murder in the Cathedral (1935) T. S. Eliot’s Literary Criticism Tradition and the Individual Talent (1917): anti-romantic; poetry and earlier poetic works Selected Essays: 1917-1932 (1932) The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) On Poets and Poetry (1957) Objective correlative New Criticism (analysis of each poem for imagery, allusion, ambiguity) Eliot’s Literary Features Symbolism: ordinary objects, events, etc. having symbolic significance Mysterious in content; distorted spiritual world in western world after WWI Rich in (biblical, literary, cultural, humanistic, archeological) allusions No fixed poetic form and meter Changing language style: spoken, written, simple, complicated Lyric or satirical or c