T.S. Eliot Essay Examples

T. S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land in 1921, as a response to the devastation he saw in society in the wake of World War 1. Critics at the time were divided: some believed it to be deliberately obtuse and unreadable, others “canonized the poem as the exemplar of a kind of high modernism that…

Modernism was the cultural movement in which innovation and experimentation of art and literature was celebrated and explored as a reaction against the formality and optimism of the preceding Victorian period. Thomas Stearns Eliot was a Modernist literary figure who contributed significantly to the movement in the early to mid 1900s. In Eliot’s “Preludes” and…

Every time I read the opening of Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” I am reminded of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. In Stravinsky’s work, the rebirth offered by spring is presented as being violent and painful, much like Eliot’s “breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land” (Eliot, lines 2-3). Indeed, the opening seven lines…

Form is the metrical and stanziac organization of a poem. T.S. Eliot write the first Prelude in a 13-line stanza. He writes the second Prelude in Cinquains. He uses 15 stanza form in Prelude three. For Prelude four he uses 9-Quatrain-Tercet. I believe that he wrote these Preludes in Traditional writting because it has metrics…

James Joyce’s ‘Eveline’ and T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ both provide an elaborative portrayal of the modernist notions of passivity and uncertainty. The characters of Eveline and J. Alfred Prufrock are each represented as being miserable in their current lives, yet neither possesses the willingness nor courage to effect change. Joyce…

Death has been and always will be an interesting and compelling topic among poets and authors alike. Death sheds a mysterious vale over life and is often avoided or dreaded within people causing diversity among the reactions of modern poetry and thought. Mortality can be treated as a crisis, a destination, with significance or without,…

The ironic character of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” an early poem by T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) in the form of a dramatic monologue, is introduced in its title. Eliot is talking, through his speaker, about the absence of love, and the poem, so far from being a “song,” is a meditation on the…

A reader must attempt to delve deeper and study the context of society, culture, and that of the writer at the time of composition, or they will interpret and push away composed material s meaningless ‘mambo-jumbo’ – which is what works by poets like T. S. Eliot striver to avoid. T. S. Eliot was the…

In his poem Eliot paints the picture of an insecure man looking for his place in society. Froufrou has fallen in with the times, and places a lot of burden on social status and class to determine his individuality. He is ashamed of his personal appearance and looks towards social advancement as a way to…

In his verse form Eliot paints the image of an insecure adult male looking for his topographic point in society. Prufrock has fallen in with the times. and places a batch of load on societal position and category to find his individualism. He is ashamed of his personal visual aspect and looks towards societal promotion…