T.S. Eliot and Paul Verlaine
The late nineteenth century Symbolist movement in literature was first identified as the primary origin of twentieth century Modernism by Edmund Wilson, in his 1931 work Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930. Wilson's study ranges widely enough to cover the Modernist prose of Proust and Joyce in addition to the experimental prose-poetry of Gertrude Stein, but he makes a particularly strong case for the origins of Modernist poetry in the Symbolists. Wilson, in defining Symbolist tendencies in poetry, is not uncritical in his assessment:
The Symbolists themselves, full of the idea of producing with poetry effects like those of music, tended to think of these images as possessing an abstract value like musical notes and chords. But the words of our speech are not musical notation, and what the symbols of Sym-bolism really were, were metaphors detached from their subjects for one cannot, beyond a certain point, in poet-ry, merely enjoy color and sound for their own sake: one has to guess what the images are being applied to. And
Symbolism may be defined as an attempt by carefully studied means a complicated association of ideas repre-
sented by a medley of metaphors to communicate unique personal feelings. (21-2).
There is perhaps no better illustration of Wilson's description of Symbolism in poetry (for better or for worse) than Paul Verlaine's short lyric "Clair de Lune" from his series Fetes Galantes, where the "idea of producing with poetry effects like those of music" was sufficient to inspire a canonical piano work by Debussy. In attempting...
T.S. Eliot and Amy Lowell The poetic styles of T.S. Eliot and Amy Lowell are so dissimilar, that it comes as something of a shock to realize how much the two poets had in common. Each came from a prominent Boston family, and was related to a President of Harvard University -- Eliot was a distant relation to Harvard's President Eliot, and attended Harvard as an undergraduate: Amy Lowell's brother would
TS Eliot REVISED "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot is indefeasibly a Modernist masterpiece. Yet how do we know it is modernist? Let me count the ways. Modernist poetry is often marked by complicated or difficult disjunctions in tone -- "J. Alfred Prufrock" which is capable of moodily swinging from the depressive lows of "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the
Sketch of T.S Eliot The Life of T.S Eliot Eliot was born in Missouri in 1888. He studied philosophy and logic at various universities including Harvard. After graduating he spent a year at Sorbonne in Paris reading French literature. He then returned to Harvard where he studied epistemological theory, Indian languages and metaphysics. He later transferred to Oxford where he studied Greek philosophy (Kamm 143). During these years of study he also
This is the case with Gabriel in "The Dead" as well. Throughout much of the action of the story, Gabriel appears at a loss as to who he is, which is directly related to how he is perceived. The first time in the story this is noticed is to the beginning, when he gives a coin to Lily out of an unspecified yet apparently selfless motive. Gabriel wants to share
"On receiving news of the war" by Isaac Rosenberg Rosenberg's poem conjures up a physical, metaphorical image of the specter of war. A spirit of a person torn by the red fangs of either death, war, or some diabolical, physically imagined agent hangs over the poem. This dead spirit, representing all of the fallen soldiers, is in neither heaven nor hell (suggesting a crisis of faith in this modernist poem) but
Ernest Hemingway & T.S. Eliot Modernism in Literature: Comparative Analysis of the works of Ernest Hemingway and T.S. Eliot As the world entered the 20th century, world literature have become influenced with the emerging ideology of modernism, a new thinking that promotes the potential of humanity to achieve more than they imagined possible. That is, modernism has promoted the idea that humanity has the potential achieve more than the present state they
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now