T. S.

Eliot
(1888 – 1965)

THOMAS STEARNS
ELIOT

FATIMA SALEEM
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
INTRODUCTION
 One of the 20th century’s major poets
 Essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic
 He won 1948 Nobel Prize in literature.
 Born in St. Louis, Missouri and then moved to England in 1914.
 The most remarkable poems
 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
 The Wasteland (1922)
 The Hollow Men (1925)
As a modern poet:
– The Wasteland was published just after world war I.
– It introduced a new tone and sensibility in poetry.
– The poem depicts a cultural and spiritual waste land.
– People, physically and emotionally, living a kind of death
– Fragmented images
– No uniting belief in once transcendent God. Records the collapse in the
values of Western civilization.
– Sterile, unloving relations
– Cultural confusions
– Spiritual desolation
Eliot’s works demonstrate:
– the era’s sense of detachment
– fragmentation
– disillusionment
– lack of connection between individuals
– the stark alienation
– the sordid nature of the city and the industrialized world
– absence of possibility for connection
ELIOT AS A
‘medieval modernist’
– His admiration for the organic and spiritual community of the Middle Ages
– His impersonal conception of art
– His formalist views
– Medieval themes and style
– His use of rhythm and meter. No time for free verse writing
– He continues the tradition of dramatic monologue
– Intellectually more philosophical and complex
– Eliot uses images that shock and bewilder.
– Eliot’s works show nostalgia for the medieval times and a hint of interest in modern life.
– Religious issue was a big medieval theme. It is evident is Eliot’s poetry.
– Combines this medieval theme with contemporary issues of modern times.
THREE PRINCIPAL QUALITIES
OF ELIOT’S WORKS

1. His particular sense of the age in which he lived

2. His conviction that poetry becomes impersonalized
3. His use of quotations, form and allusions which creates a sense of
continuing intertextual communication.
POET AND TRADITION
– A poet should add past in his poetry just to serve the present and future.
– There should be a simultaneous order of past and present.
– Poet should interrelate the present, past and future by images
– Images should be remote in time, alien in language and diverse in interest.
– Past may add what is missing in the present.
– Present may erode what was disturbing in past.
– Eliot appreciated flexible tones in poetry.
OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE
– T.S. Eliot used this phrase to describe:
– a set of objects
– a situation
– a chain of events
– which shall be the base of that particular “emotion”
– that the poet feels and hopes to evoke in the reader
– without any direct statement of that subjective or personal emotion
The Waste Land
– A poem by T. S. Eliot,
– one of the most important poems of the 20th century
– A central work of modernist poetry.
– illuminates the devastating aftereffects of World War I. 
– The five sections of the poem employ multiple shifting speakers and delve
into themes of war, trauma, disillusion, and death.
– The Waste Land is an epic poem. Broken into five main parts with 434 lines
FIVE PARTS
The five parts of The Waste Land are entitled:
1. The Burial of the Dead.
2. A Game of Chess.
3. The Fire Sermon.
4. Death by Water.
5. What the Thunder Said.