Week 16 TS Eliot 英国文学导论Word

　　Thomas Stearns Eliot

　　(1888-1965)

　　American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic

　　arguably the most important English-language

　　poet of the 20th century

　　a major innovator in modern English poetry a leader of the modernist movement famous above all for his revolutionary poem The Waste Land (1922)

　　Thomas Stearns Eliot

　　The Nobel Prize in Literature 1948 ―for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry‖

　　T.S. Eliot receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, December 1948.

　　“Only those who will risk goingtoo far can possibly find out how far one can go. ”

　　---- T. S. Eliot.

　　I. Biography

　　Born in USA of a bourgeois

　　family originally from NewEngland, who had moved to St.

　　Louis, Missouri and lived thereduring the first 18 years of his T. S. Eliot (1938) by Wyndham Lewis

　　life.

　　He began to write poetry when he was 14 under the influence of Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam

　　He said the results were gloomy and

　　despairing, and he destroyed them.

　　Education

　　Smith Academy in Saint Louis, US (1898 to 1905) studied Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German.

　　Milton Academy in Mass., US for a preparatory yearHarvard University, a B.A. and M.A. in philosophy (1906 to 1909)

　　the Sorbonne in Paris, France 1910-1911, studied philosophy Oxford University, UK

　　Eliot was awarded ascholarship to Merton College, Oxford in 1914

　　Eliot did not settle at Merton, and left after a year.

　　He specifically identified as Anglo-Catholic, proclaiming himself ―classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion.‖

　　In 1932, Eliot left Vivienne in England and

　　went back to Harvard.

　　Upon his return, he arranged for a formal

　　separation from her.

　　Vivienne was committed to a mental hospital in 1938, and remained there until she died.

　　Although Eliot was still legally her

　　husband, he never visited her.

　　In 1957, TS Eliot married EsmValerie Fletcher, who was 32.

　　II. Aesthetic views

　　1. A poem should be an organic thing in itself. Once it is finished, the poet will no longer have

　　control of it. It should be judged, analyzed by itself without the

　　interference of the poet’s personal influence.

　　2. Modern life is chaotic, futile, fragmentary, so poetry should reflect this

　　fragmentary nature of life this kind nature of life should be

　　projected, not analyzed

　　3. The poet should draw upon tradition: use the past to serve the resent and future borrow from authors remote in time, alien in

　　language, diverse in interest use the past to underscore what is missing from

　　the present

　　III. TechniquesUse of 1. disconnected images/symbols 2. literary allusions/references 3. highly expressive meter and rhythm of free verses 4. metaphysical whimsical images/whims 5. flexible tone

　　IV. Poetry

　　The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 阿尔弗雷德 普鲁弗洛克的情歌 , 1915

　　The Waste Land, 荒原 , 1922The Hollow Men, 空心人 , 1925 Ash Wednesday, 圣灰星期三 , 1930 Four Quartets, 四个四重奏 , 1944

　　His belief:

　　poetry should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language

　　such representation necessarily leads to difficult poetry.

　　In rejecting the poetic values of the English romantics and Victorians, Eliot, along with William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound, set new poetic standards equal to those established by James Joyce and Marcel Proust in fiction.

　　The Waste Land Contents1. Assessment 2. Synopsis: Five sections 3. Two allusions 4. Theme 5. Language Form 6. Symbolic meaning of “waste land”

　　1. Assessment

　　The Waste Land, Eliot’s most important single poem, has been hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th-century English poetry, comparable to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.

　　expressed his horror at the spiritual turmoil ofmodern Europe.

　　On one level it describescultural and spiritual crisis, reflected in its use of fragmentation and discontinuity.

　　―NAM

　　sibyllam quide

　　m Cuimis egō ipse oculismeis vidi in ampulla pendere,et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβνλλατιθελειζ; repondebat illa: πθαν εινθελ ω.‖ For Ezra Pound

　　il miglior fabbro.

　　“是的，我自己亲眼看见古米的西比尔吊在

　　一个笼子里。孩子们在问她：西比尔，你要什么，她回答说： 我要死。” 献给埃兹拉 庞德 最卓越的匠人

　　2. Synopsis: Five sections

　　The poem is 433 lines long and is divided into 5 sections, which are not logically constructed or connected.

　　Section I. The Burial of the Dead (葬礼)

　　Section II. A Game of Chess (对弈)Section III. The Fire Sermon (火诫) Section IV. Death by Water (水里的死亡) Section V. What the Thunder Said(雷的说话)

　　Section I: ―The Burial of the Dead

　　deals chiefly with the theme of death in life

　　The inhabitants in the modern Waste Land,who have lost the knowledge of good and evil,

　　live a sterile[lsterail], meaningless life.

　　In the last passage of the section, Eliot connects the ―unreal city‖ with the city of the dead modern London with Dante’s Hell

　　claimed that those who have no faith of religion are actually living dead. To bury the dead is to bury a memory, which brings no hope of growth or renewal.

　　The first section, as the section title indicates, is about death. The section begins with the words ―April is the cruellest month,‖ which is perhaps one of the most remarked upon and most important references in the poem.

　　Those familiar with Chaucer’s poem The Canterbury Tales will recognize that Eliot is taking Chaucer’s introductory line from the prologue—which is optimistic about the month of April and the regenerative, lifegiving season of spring—and turning it on its head.

　　Just as Chaucer’s line sets the tone for The Canterbury Tales, Eliot’s dark words inform the reader that this is going to be a dark poem. Throughout the rest of the first section, as he will do with the other four sections, Eliot shifts among several disconnected thoughts, speeches, and images.

　　Collectively, the episodic scenes in lines 1 through 18 discuss the natural cycle of death, which is symbolized by the passing of the seasons. The first seven lines employ images of spring, such as ―breeding / Lilacs,‖ and ―Dull roots with spring rain.‖

　　In line 8, Eliot tells the reader ―Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee.‖ The time has shifted from spring to summer.

　　And while the reference to Starnbergersee—a lake south of Munich, Germany—has been linked to various aspects of Eliot’s past, to Eliot’s readers at the time the poem was published, it would have stuck out for other reasons, given that World War I had fairly recently ended.

　　Section II: ―A Game of Chess‖giving a rather concrete illustration of the sterile situation A picture of spiritual empti

　　ness is presented with the reproduction of a contemporary pub conversation between two cockney women. The discussion is constantly interrupted by the pub keeper’s ―Hurry up please its time.‖

　　Section III, ―The Fire Sermon,‖expresses a painfully elegiac feeling by juxtaposing the vulgarity and shallowness of the modern

　　with the beauty and simplicity of the past.

　　What was once ritualistic meaningful

　　is now despairing empty

　　section IV, ―Death by Water‖

　　the drowned Phoenician(腓尼基人) Sailor is an emblem(象征)

　　of futile(无意义的) worries over

　　profit and loss, youth and age.

　　With the curative and baptismal power of the water images, the drowned Phoenician Sailor also recalls the rebirth of the drowned god of the fertility cults, thus giving an instance of the conquest of death.

　　Section V, ―What the Thunder Said‖

　　The title appears to be derived from an Indian myth, in which the supreme Lord of the Creation speaks through the thunder.

　　3. Two allusions

　　a. the Holy GrailThe quest for it makes up an important segment of the Arthurian cycle

　　b. the Fisher KingThe tale involves a king who is lame in one leg (a euphemism for impotency) which in turn causes the land to become barren (infertile).

　　a. the Holy Grail

　　Eliot alludes to various ancient religions as well as to the Holy Grail, finding in them the common thread of the mythic cycle of the death and resurrection of gods.

　　a medieval legend

　　the dish, plate, or cup used byJesus at the Last Supper, said to possess miraculous powers

　　Joseph

　　receives the Grail from an apparition of Jesussends it with his followers to Great Britain

　　uses the Grail to catch Christ’s blood while interring(埋葬) him a line of guardians to keep it safe in Britain

　　b. the Fisher King

　　he found in a book by Jessie Weston, From Ritual to Romance

　　a mythic figure whose loss of power or fertilityproduces a corresponding blight(枯萎, 凋零) or

　　drought in his kingdom

　　the land be restored to fertility only through: the death of this king his replacement by a

　　new, young, and vigorous

　　knight

　　Meditation on the state of Western civilization, especially regarding the sense of depression waste futility of the post-World War I era

　　4. Theme(1) presents physical disorder andspiritual decadence in the modern western society (2) reflects disillusion and despair of a whole post war generation, anguish,

　　menace, sterility had been afflictingall sensitive members of the postwar generation

　　(3) concerns with the spiritualbreakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning (4) reflects the 20th century people’s

　　disillusion and frustration in ameaningless and boring world

　　5. Language Form

　　modernist poetry irregular verse, at times free, at times reminiscent of the blank verse of Eliot’s plays

　　English original with passages in other languages

　　a series of fragmentary dramatic monologues

　　a dense chorus of voices and culture historical quotations, that fade one into another

　　At Ezra Pound’s suggestion, the poem was reduced to half the

　　length of earlier drafts (thepoem bears a dedication

　　acknowledging Pound as ilmiglior fabbro, ―the better

　　craftsman‖)

　　complex scholarly annotations: Special credit is given to the work of the anthropologist James Frazer, The Golden

　　Bough Jessie Weston’s treatment of the Grail legends,

　　From Ritual to Romance

　　6. Symbolic meaning of “waste land”The ―waste land‖ in the poem as

　　1. modern culture having drifted away from its spiritual roots

　　2. trope(比喻) of destructive repetition controlling human history

　　3. loss of touch with cycles of life and nature

　　4. images of desolation sterility dryness waste

　　5. image of a society that feeds upon itself and also lies mired in its own waste.

　　social significance

　　The Waste Land is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modem civilization in which human life has lost its meaning, significance and purpose.

　　The poem has developed a whole set of

　　historical, cultural and religious themes.

　　It is often regarded as being primarily a

　　reflection of the 20th-century people’sdisillusionment and frustration in a sterile(贫瘠的)and futile(无用的) society.

　　3. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

　　started in 1910

　　published in Chicago in 1915the poem that made his name

　　regarded as a masterpiece ofthe modernist movement

　　LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised(被麻醉)upon a table;

　　1. Explanation of the Title

　　original title of this poem: ―Prufrock Among the Women‖. Eliot took the last name of the title character from a sign advertising the William Prufrock furniture company, a business in Eliot’s hometown.

　　A dramatic monologue presents a moment in which a narrator/speaker discusses a topic in so doing, reveals his personal

　　feelings to a listener

　　During his discourse, the speaker intentionally and unintentionally reveals information about himself.The main focus of a dramatic monologue is this personal information, not the speaker’s topic. A dramatic monologue is a type of character study.

　　The Speaker/Narrator

　　a balding, insecure middle-aged man, who expresses his thoughts about the dull, uneventful, mediocre life he leads as a

　　result of his his

　　feelings of inadequacy fear of making decisions

　　Unable to seize opportunities or take risks

　　(especially with women), he lives in a worldthat is the same today as it was yesterday

　　and will be the same tomorrow as it is today.

　　He does try to make progress, but his timidity

　　and fear of failure inhibit him from takingaction.

　　Setting

　　The action takes place in the evening in a bleak section of a smoky city. probably St. Louis, London,

　　or any city anywhere

　　Characters

　　(1) J. Alfred Prufrock (2) The Listener (3) The Women

　　(4) The Lonely Men in Shirtsleeves

　　(1) J. Alfred Prufrock

　　the speaker/narrator a timid, overcautious middleaged man neurotic (神经质的)

　　self-important, illogicalincapable of action

　　an interesting tragic figure

　　He escorts his silent listener through streets ina shabby part of a city, past cheap hotels and

　　restaurants, to a social gathering wherewomen he would like to meet are conversing.

　　However, he is hesitant to take part in the activity for fear of making a fool of himself.

　　a man caught in a sense of defeated idealism and tortured by unsatisfied desire

　　dare not to seek love because even if hecould find it, it would not satisfy his needs

　　He compares himself with

　　Hamlet.

　　As a result of his timidity he has become incapable of action of any sort.

　　(2) The Listener

　　An unidentified companion of Prufrock. The listener could also be Prufrock’s inner self, one that prods him but fails to move him to action.

　　(3) The Women

　　Women at a social gathering. Prufrock would like to meet one of them but worries that she will look down on him.

　　(4) The Lonely Men in Shirtsleeves

　　Leaning out of their windows, they smoke pipes.

　　They are like Prufrock in that they look upon a scene but do not become part of it.

　　The smoke from their pipes helps form the haze over the city, the haze that serves as a metaphor for a timid cat–which is Prufrock.

　　Themes

　　a. Loneliness and Alienation b. Indecision c. Inadequacy

　　d. Pessimism

　　a. Loneliness and Alienation

　　Prufrock is a pathetic man whose anxieties and obsessions have isolated him.

　　an ironic contrast between a pretended ―love song‖ and a confession of the speaker’s incapability of facing up to love and to life in a

　　sterile upper-class world

　　b. Indecision

　　Prufrock resists making decisions for fear that their outcomes will turn out wrong.

　　c. Inadequacy

　　Prufrock continually worries that he will make a fool of himself and that people will ridicule him for his clothes, his bald spot, and his overall physical appearance.

　　d. Pessimism

　　Prufrock sees only the negative side of his own life and the lives of others.

　　Style

　　Conversational Language Combined With the Stylized Language of Poetry

　　Variations in Line Length and Meter Shifts in the Train of Thought Shifts in Topics Under Discussion

　　Shifts From Abstract to Concrete (and Universal to Particular)

　　Shifts From Obvious Allusions or References to Oblique Allusions or References

　　VI. Four QuartetsEliot’s last major poetic sequence, written in four sections from 1935 to 1942 he believed to be his finest achievement religious in a very broad sense

　　more personal than the previous poems exquisitely lyrical and musical in structure

　　themebased on the Christian dogmas of incarnation and resurrection concerned with the quest for the immortal element, the stillness within time or history Man, disillusioned and hopeless in his early poetry, now finds reconciliation in God.

　　III. DramaMurder in the Cathedral, 大教堂谋杀案, 1935 ---his best-known play The Family Reunion, 家庭聚会, 1939 The Cocktail Party, 鸡尾酒会, 1950 The Confidential Clerk, 1954 The Elder Statesman, 1958

　　Major achievements in drama writing

　　He was one of the important verse dramatists in the first half of the 20th century.

　　Besides some fragmentary pieces, Eliot had written in his lifetime five full-length plays.

　　All the plays have something to do with Christian themes. His three later plays are also concerned with the subject of spiritual self-discovery but in the form of a sophisticated modern social comedy.

　　Eliot’s major achievement in play writing has been the creation of a verse drama in the 20th century to express the ideas and actions of modern society with new accents of the contemporary speech.

　　literary critic essays

　　Tradition and Individual Talent The Sacred Wood (1920)

　　VI. literary critic essays

　　considered by some to be

　　one of the greatest literarycritics of the 20th century

　　During his literary career, he wrote a large number of essays, articles and book reviews. His essays are mainly concerned with cultural, social, religious, as well as literary issues. In particular, Eliot strongly influenced the school of New Criticism.

　　In his famous essay,―Tradition and

　　Individual Talent,‖ Eliotput great emphasis on the importance of tradition both in creative writing and in criticism.

　　Tradition and the Individual Talent

　　In his critical essay, Eliot argues that art must be understood not in a vacuum, but in the context of previous pieces of art: ―In a peculiar sense [an artist or poet]… must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past.‖

　　This essay was one of the most important works of the school of New Criticism. Specifically, it introduced the idea that the value of one work of art must be viewed in the context of all previous work—a ―simultaneous order‖ or works.