Modernism in 20th century Poetry: T.S.

ELIOT

The beginning of the 20th century was marked by a paradigm shift (= change of pattern,
perspective), a series of changes in literature, art, culture, society, economy and politics. It
bought about it a reexamination of the social, economic, and physical bases of society, a
process intensified by the WWI and the developments in science.

Modernism was a cultural trend (the 1st half of the 20th century) perceived as a sense of
breakdown with the traditional conventions (replacement of the moral with the
AESTHETIC), highly innovative and experimentative. It was a period of REMARKABLE
LITERARY PRODUCTIVITY, rich in quantity and quality.

T. S. ELIOT

He was one of the major modernist poets in England and also an extremely influential
critic who promoted the CLOSE READING (the critic should focus on the poem, not on the
poet/biography). He also states that the modernist poet must develop the consciousness of the
past (tradition) and he should continue to develop it. His influence both as poet and as critic
makes a major shift in poetic taste and poetic practice. Eliot shapes his literary tradition around
those writers whom he sees as feeding his particular concept of “Modernism” (Shakespeare, John
Donne, Dickens, Virgil, Dante and Baudelaire).

His great and most important poem is “The Waste Land”(1922) and he dedicated to
Ezra Pound. The poem is divided in 5 sections:

1. The Burial of Dead

2. A Game of Chess
3. The Fire Sermon
4. Death by Water
5. What the Thunder said

and reflects a waste land, a panorama of futility, a fragmented world, which is pointless and
stops making sense. Eliot uses many different voices in the poem and they play an important
role because all of them express the ANXIEY and AGONY of Europe after the WWI
(everything that humanity invented as used for destruction and self destruction, both on a huge
scale because there were innocent people who died without participating in the war). In the
poem, there is also a CONFRONTATION OF THE PAST WITH THE PRESENT, where
memory is important because helps remember better times instead of their poor and devastating
present which is emerged in DESTRUCTION, DECAY and DEATH. Eliot introduces all
kinds of references to TRADITION and RELIGION (rituals, myths). For instance, he
superimposes the myth of the Fisher King in order to organize this panorama of
fragmentariness. His term “mythical method” is employed here, which is a “way of ordering,
of giving shape and a significance to this immense panorama of futility and anarchy”.

He also describes London, populated by ghosts. London accrues the cultural resonance
not simply of its own Elizabethan and Dickensian past, of Baudelaire’s Paris, but also decayed
metropolises of the Jewish and Greek Empire; like them all, it shares in CORPUPTION. In
this urban wasteland a QUEST FOR HEALING, FERTILITY, POWER and MEANING is
pursued. The most striking effects in the poem are achieved through the play of jarring
juxtaposition, inconsistency of perception, multiplicity of narration, and fluidity of time and
place.