Name: Sharma Utkarsh K.

Roll No.: 19PEN032

Sub.: PEN4801 (Special Author: T. S. Eliot)
Exam Name: ESE

Q.1. (A) What is poetic drama? Discuss its main characteristics.

Poetic drama is not merely a drama, which is written in verse, because prose may also be
its effective medium. It is, in fact, a blending of the poetic and dramatic elements in a fruitful
union. Here, poetry is an integral part of the play, twined with plot, character, and their interplay,
not an element of isolated beauty of lyricism for its own sake, as is the case with splendid
lyricism in some parts of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, for example. At the same time, the dramatic
elements must be capable of sustaining the poetic grace and intensity.
Verse drama is any drama composed in verse to be spoken; poetic drama is another
potential general concept. For a long time, verse drama was Europe's main mode of drama (and
was also important in non-European cultures). Greek tragedy and Racine’s plays are written in
verse, as is almost all of Shakespeare’s drama, and Goethe’s Faust. Verse drama is particularly
synonymous with the gravity of tragedy, offering an aesthetic justification to compose in this
style as well as the real reason that verse lines are easier for actors to memorize precisely. Verse
drama fell almost entirely out of style in the second half of the twentieth century, with dramatists
writing in English.
T. S. Eliot emphasized vigorous and bold use of all devices proper to the form of verse
drama, emphatic melody, alliterative values, arresting imagery. Eliot's famous plays include
Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party. The dialogue is so shaped
that the audiences are not made conscious of the fact that they are listening to the verse at all.
The drama floats on moving words and musical rhythms. The choruses were formal and fluid.
The poetic drama reached its glorious peak in Elizabethan England when the general
conditions of society and richness of language combined with the whole nation's insatiable
craving for amusement, edification, and the writer's intimate relationship with the stage to
establish the stage as a national institution. The fame, though, did not last long, and its demise
was hastened by the victory of puritan fanaticism, which rang its death-knell. When it was
revived again in the Restoration era. The circumstances had changed, and the heroic catastrophe
in rhyming couplet was nothing more than the indignation and brutality of its ghost. A sort of
artificial respiration was given to it in the blank-verse tragedies which followed. They, on the
other hand, were unable to support its survival, and it died with a single flash of life in Otway's
Venice Preserved.
Verse drama is particularly synonymous with the gravity of tragedy, offering an aesthetic
justification to compose in this style as well as the real reason that verse lines are easier for
actors to memorize precisely. In the second half of the twentieth-century verse, drama fell almost
completely out of fashion with dramatists writing in English (the plays of Christopher Fry andT.
S. Eliot may be the culmination of a long tradition). The dramatic verse appears in a poetically
written dramatic work, such as a play. The dramatic verse has a long history dating back to
ancient Greece.
The English Renaissance was the pinnacle of theatrical verse in the English-speaking
world, with writers like Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare inventing
new methods for both dramatic structure and literary style. While some plays, such as A
Midsummer Night's Dream, have expanded rhymed verse passages, the bulk of the dramatic
verse is written in blank verse; there are also prose passages. Dramatic verse began to decline in
popularity in the nineteenth century when the prosaic and conversational styles of playwrights
such as Henrik Ibsen became more prevalent and were adapted in English by George Bernard
Shaw. Verse drama did play a part in the evolution of Irish theatre.

Q.2 (B) Discuss some of the elements of poetic drama in Murder in the Cathedral.

T.S.Eliot (1888-1965) was the most prominent figure in the literary world during the
interwar period. Sweeney Agonists, The Rock, Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion,
The Cocktail Party, Prufrock, and Other Observations, The Wasteland, The Hollow-Man, and
other poems by him are well-known.
Murder in the Cathedral was written by T.S. Eliot for the Canterbury Festival in 1935.
The Rock was seen by George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, who admired Eliot and invited him to
compose a play for the festival. Thus, the play premiered in 1935. The play is about the
martyrdom of Thomas Becket, one of the greatest English saints who served as Archbishop of
Canterbury from 1162 to 1170. He was killed in his own Cathedral by knights claiming to be
faithful to the king. The allure of such a story for a dramatist is obvious, there is great conflict
between human and divine power, His death contains a strong central figure as well as a number
of complex spiritual issues.
Murder in the Cathedral is referred to as a "poetic play" or "verse drama" since the
dialogues are written in verse. Poetic play ensures that all of the lines match on a metrical grid
and follow a verse pattern. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are partly written in iambic
pentameter and a proportion of the lines fit that rhythmic grid. While Eliot's poetic lines are more
unique, longer, and less frequent, the plays are still written in verse. Here, we take an example
from the play. Before his death, Becket said the lines :
“It is not in time that my death shall be known.
It is not of time that my decision is taken.
If you call that a decision,
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
 I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.”
According to Eliot, the poetic form was the aptest form of expression in the theatre. In his view,
though Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekov were true poets, however, they hampered with the limits
of prose. Yeats and Hofmannsthal, on the other hand, preserved the ancient and conventional
connection between drama and poetry.
The subject matter of Murder in the Cathedral, according to Eliot in ‘Poetry and Drama,'
was well adapted for verse drama. That suggests it should be entirely in verse, but Eliot explains
two prose parts in the play: The Knight's speech and Becket's sermon.
In this excellent and superb text, Eliot attempted to mix his poetic talent with the genre of
drama. It is clear to see the vast impact of poetry on this play, as only two parts are written in
verse: Thomas's Christmas sermon and the Knights' so-called "apologies" to the crowd. Apart
from this, the rest of the characters speak in verse which is very powerful and is poetic in its
intensity. For example following line from the Chorus's opening speech:
Now I fear disturbance of the quiet seasons:
Winter shall come bringing death from the sea,
Ruinous spring shall beat at our doors,
Root and shoot shall eat our eyes and our ears,
Disastrous summer burn up the beds of our streams
And the poor shall wait for another decaying October.
There is no set rhyme scheme for these lines, and no set, regular rhythm, but it is clear
from their cadence and their flow that poetry is the medium that Eliot chooses to use to have his
characters express their thoughts, feelings, and emotion. The use of verse exclusively for the
majority of characters' phrases, as well as the strong images that their words used to paint
detailed pictures for the viewer of what is occurring in the play, is one manner in which Eliot
brings out the creative features of the poetic genre. Internal rhyme is used in "Root and shoot," as
well as alliteration in "burn up the beds," only two literary devices that illustrate the play's use of
poetry within the overall genre of drama.

Eliot gives retrospective attention to ‘poetry’ and ‘drama’ for development as a playwright. Also,
Throughout his life, he has often found himself writing variations on the theme of literary drama.
In the words of Eliot, Good poetic drama is not simply a play translated into verse, rather it is a
play wholly conceived and composed in terms of poetry, embodying a pattern like that of music.

Murder in the Cathedral also contains a clear example of poetic play, a genre that had not been
commonly used in nearly 300 years. The play's deft use of ritualized structure, linguistic
imagery, and shifting flows of metrical rhythm gives it an inherently poetic spirit that focuses on
the theme seen in singleness. Poetry in the play is not merely decorative. It helps in presenting
the characters' personae as the factual correlative to their minds, while the symbolism sorts out
the thematic ramifications. Its long speeches shine with rhetoric while still building up the mood,
with the starting choric speech being a perfect example. Eliot emphasized that instead of limiting
the emotional range, the use of verse enlarges the appeal of the play and can reach the most
varied audience.
Q.3. (A) How is contemporary literature connected to the past according to Eliot’s essay
“Tradition and the Individual Talent”?

Tradition and the Individual Talent was first written through two parts of the Egoist in
1919 and then, in 1920, became part of T.S. Eliot's full-length collection of essays on poetry and
criticism, The Sacred Wood.
Eliot starts Tradition and the Individual Talent by suggesting that talent is shown by the
poet's consideration of their place within the historical sense of literature. The essay contends
that poets should use their experiences of past authors to impact their writing. He states that "we
shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual part of his work may be those in
which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.'

Eliot explains that writing with history in mind should not suggest imitating, since this
would result in repetition, and "novelty is better than repetition." He describes tradition as
something that can only be obtained by the labor of learning past literature and becoming
objectively mindful of what strategies and material are valuable. The poet should be mindful of
the parallel order of literary tradition, which dates back to the classics. According to Eliot,
tradition is the collective knowledge and practice of literature over the centuries, and it is
essential for great achievements in poetry.
Eliot contends that when separated from the literary canon, no writer or work of literature
has meaning or importance. To evaluate a work of art or literature, it must be compared to
previous ones. He argues the history is continually evolving as new works are added to the
literary corpus. He argues that the writer should conform to literary tradition and be influenced
by the context, but that in doing so, the author's writing modifies the work by which they have
been informed. It is important for the poet to be conscious not only of their own place at the
moment, but also of their importance in comparison to past literature. By integrating the
traditional text's presence into their writing, the new author brings value to the traditional text.
Eliot recognizes that a modern work of literature, as original, modifies the literary tradition in a
minor way. The past and present have a two-way connection; the present can influence the past,
and the past can influence the present.
Eliot then admits that understanding the past as a whole is unlikely. To acquire a strong
sense of history, one must objectively investigate the past, concentrating on works of art that are
regarded as valuable. He describes that the capacity to identify deviation from a sense of
tradition is defined as being critically aware of patterns and techniques that have become
characteristic of a specific generation, phenomenon, or even author. An author with a strong
sense of the tradition should also be aware that the major literary trends do not come exclusively
from the most well-known poets, but must also be aware of trends developed by lesser-known
poets.
While current poets' work is measured and contrasted with that of previous posts, this
does not decide if the work of the present is superior to that of the past. Standards and principles
are recognized to have changed. The comparison is made in order to analyze the new work,
creating a deeper understanding of the text. Only by comparing the conventional and individual
elements will the traditional and individual aspects be determined. Eliot claims that art never
improves. He claims that great authors like Shakespeare and Homer remain important despite
shifts in philosophy. He acknowledges that artists work with a variety of materials and that their
work is a culmination of different eras, so measuring a qualitative change in any school of art is
difficult.
Overall the essay is flawed not in the expression of Eliot's arguments but in the rigidity of
rules he places on a creative process, which should be free from rules and allowing for complete
creative freedom.
In Tradition and the Individual Talent, Eliot stated that “the most individual parts of [the
authors] work may be those in which the dead poets assert their immortality most vigorously.”
When you consider this in conjunction with his point that seasoned and mature poets converse
with literary culture in their work, it's no surprise that The Waste Land is rife with literary
allusions. T.S. Eliot's use of literary history to support his assertions is unique; nevertheless,
thoughts, personality, and personal knowledge are hidden within The Waste Land. When
examined from a biographical point of view, these aspects become clear. The Waste Land is
frequently read as an attempt to put Tradition and Individual Talent into practice, but the
remainder of this essay will concentrate on how Eliot fails to separate his personal experiences
from the creative process.

Q.4. (A) Discuss with examples some of the modernist elements in “The Waste Land”.

The Waste Land, a poem by TS Eliot that has come to be known as the representative poem
of the Modernist canon, expresses a widespread sense of discontent about the current state of
affairs in modern society, especially in post-World War II Europe, and is symbolized by the
Holy. The Golden Bough, by JG Frazer, discusses the Grail legend and fertility stories: A Study
of Magic and Religion (1890) and Jessie Weston‘s From Ritual to Romance (1920).
Originally named "He Do the Cops in Different Voices;" Centered on the legend of the
Fisher King and the hunt for the Holy Grail in the Arthurian cycle, The Waste Land depicts
contemporary London as arid waste land. Though the mythical Fisher King's waste land offers
salvation through the curing of his impotency, Eliot's waste land does not seem to offer any such
possibility. Much of The Waste Land's symbolism indicates these ancient fertility rituals, but
they are still messed up, particularly in the case of the fortune-teller Madame Sosostris. The
poem proceeds through five parts — “The Burial of the Dead”, “A Game of Chess”, “The Fire
Sermon”, “Death by Water” which “What the Thunder Said” — and is a profoundly moving
depiction of sterility and destruction, built around the metaphors of drought and flood, reflecting
death and regeneration. Irving Babbit's vision of the unity and multiplicity of reality, as well as a
desire to return to the Renaissance image of a "complete" man with "unification of sensibility,"
Pound's Imagism and fragmentation strategies, the French Symbolists' use of sensual imagery,
and an eye for terrifying and anti-aesthetic detail, all influence Eliot's work.
Despite the fact that Spring is responsible for bringing new life, April is referred to as the
cruelest month in the first line. This is a reference to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
which begins with a description of April's "sweet showers." This line, according to Professor
Amy Green, indicates that the speaker in the poem may have feared the natural process of life
and death. Line 5 supports this by stating, "Winter held us warm," contradicting the concepts of
death and loneliness synonymous with winter by implying that it instead provides comfort and
security.
In Gerald Lucas’s “Utopian Fiction”, it is noted that modernism was greatly influenced
by Nietzsche’s pronouncement that “God is dead” along with theories from thinkers like Charles
Darwin and Karl Marx. The chaos and destruction caused by man in World World I are reflected
in the modernist American literature produced during the time. Modernism is considered a quest
for order in the midst of chaos.
In “Burial of the Dead”, the text is presented in first-person although “The Wasteland
Lecture” suggests that more than one speaker is present (Green). The use of personal pronouns in
the poem demonstrates a denial of an omnipresent entity, upholding the Modernist notion that
there is no God. This point of view also glorifies the significance of the individual.

In “Utopian Fiction,” Lucas notes that modernists such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound
created works that undermined and destroyed the hegemony of the past, such as nation, church,
and family, and attempted to find meaning within the person.
The structure is another feature we find in stanza one of "The Burial of the Dead."
Pericles Lewis observes that Eliot employs old English literary techniques such as line form,
sparse use of end rhyme, and the use of syllables in each line. Eliot also employs alliteration,
which is the repetition of consonant tones, as seen in winter/warm, lilacs/land, and
forgetful/feeding, an Old English literary practice.
Some of the most critical imagery of the poem is introduced in this first section of the
poem. The line, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust…(Line 30)” could allude to several
things according to Prof. Green. It could refer to the biblical reference "Dust thou art, and to dust
thou shalt return," but it could also allude to the fear of famine and the terror instilled by the loss
of life caused by a shortage of water, which supports the theme of catastrophe. The sexual
symbolism introduced by the hyacinth girl in this section is furthered explored in the
conversations that take place during section two “A Game Of Chess.”
In line 55 of "Burial of the Dead," we meet Madame Sosostris, a tarot-reading false prophet
who warns others of "death by water." Later in the poem, in section "IV," Eliot refers to this
theme. Death By Water.” It is here where the audience realizes that society has been led to
believe a lie, and the only way to find peace (hope for utopia)is through the dreaded death by
water (Green).
In the final section of "Burial of the Dead," the narrator has a conversation with a ghost
named Stetson about a corpse that was buried in a garden. This is significant for several reasons.
The sprouting of life from the corpse will reflect the expectation that life would resurrect from
the wasteland, a motif that will be revisited in "V. What the Thunder Said."