B: Critical Study Flashcards
1
Q
Key Values of Eliot’s Poetry
A
Relationships, Modernity (critical of modern world), Isolation, Gender, Literary Tradition, Entropy and Decay, Personal Struggle, Cycles, Faith/Religion, Mental Health, Tradition, Death
2
Q
State of Modern Man Thesis Statements
A
- Eliot’s poetry vividly depicts the ragged state of modern man, which aids my understanding of society and individuals and how to confront and change our emptiness.
- Eliot expresses the contradictions of humanity through his poetry which supports my view of the complexities of humanity. (HM, JM)
- Eliot’s poem represents a modernist view of the world through the exploration of the psyche of the stereotypical modern man of the time. (LS)
3
Q
Personal Struggle Thesis Statements
A
- I learn from Eliot’s exploration of an individual’s personal struggle how to accept some attempts as being failures or not quite the imagined success. (LS, JM)
- Eliot’s depiction of personal struggle and societal paradoxes supports my view of the intricacies of life and individuals.
- Eliot’s representation of the inner argument of individuals substantiates my perspective of the trials you cause for yourself throughout life. (JM, LS).
- Eliot’s poem ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ presents a modernist view of humanity as the speaker’s internal conflict sees him struggle to form genuine relationships in a world where social expectations and time hinder his connectedness with others.
- A modernist view is expressed through the isolation of the speaker from society, gender expectations and relationships with others depicted in Eliot’s poem ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’.
4
Q
Entropy and Decay Thesis Statements
A
- By understanding Eliot’s portrayal of the increasing entropy and decay of individuals and society, I am able to acknowledge society’s flaws and attempt to avoid them. (LS, HM)
- Eliot’s poem exemplifies the modernist obsession with time as well as the application of entropy to human relationships, a typical modernist view of the world. (Love Song)
5
Q
Time, Tradition Thesis Statements
A
- To a large extent, the distinctive voice in Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’ mirrors the despairing tone, jumbled nature of time, personal struggle and changes to tradition reflected in his poetry. Written in first person and featuring stream-of-consciousness style, the poem allows me to directly relate to the Magi’s endeavour and understand the concept of a futile expedition .
- ‘Journey of the Magi’ conveys a bleak tone and discontinuity of time, which I understand to be characteristic of Eliot’s poetry.
- Eliot presents a change to tradition in his poem ‘Journey of the Magi’ through his unbiblical portrayal of the Magi’s journey.
- Eliot’s poem exemplifies the modernist obsession with time as well as the application of entropy to human relationships, a typical modernist view of the world. (LS)
6
Q
Society Thesis Statements
A
- Eliot’s poem shares insight into feelings of isolation and insignificance as individuals inevitable carry out mundane lives. (Preludes)
- TS Eliot’s ‘Preludes’ portrays the key modernist idea that humans are trapped in a world where they must perform their lives in insignificance through his connected use of specific devices. These devices include the short sectional structure, alliteration, metaphor, images of fragmented humanity and a tone of despair.
7
Q
Hollow Men Personal Response
A
Eliot’s poem ‘The Hollow Men’ encourages me to become paradoxically less ‘hollow’ and less ‘stuffed’ through his critique of the state of humanity and his hope for change.
8
Q
Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock Personal Response
A
I relate to Eliot’s poem ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ through the fear I share with the speaker that I will not be accepted or understood by others.
9
Q
Journey of a Magi Personal Response
A
Eliot’s poem ‘The Journey of a Magi’ cautions me that journeys are difficult, feature self doubt and uncertainty of purpose and are sometimes only ‘satisfactory’.
10
Q
Textual Integrity Sentences
A
- The poem’s integrity lies in…
- Eliot’s complex and fragmented structure speaks to the complexity of the human condition and builds the poem’s textual integrity.
11
Q
Love Song Readings
A
- LS - In his video introducing Eliot’s poetry, Victor Strandberg (2017) states that Eliot’s poetry is ‘a quarrel with oneself’, and that the inner conflict of the individual is ‘at the heart of everything that he writes.’
- LS - Love Song referred to as a ‘Psychological character-study, subtle to the point of insoluble idiosyncrasy, introspective, self-gnawing.’ Conrad Aiken
- LS - Love Song ‘a piece of psychological analysis of extraordinary delicacy and brilliance’ Babette Deutsch
- LS - Conrad Aiken (1925) Eliot’s theme was the ‘paralyzing effect of self-consciousness.’
- LS - Enshan et.al (2016) ‘The modernist writer … becomes entranced with depths … the depths of … the self.’
- LS - Sandberg (2017) describes it as a ‘deep-rooted inner quarrel’.
12
Q
Hollow Men Readings
A
- HM - ‘Summarising a civilisation in grave, grateful, and sometimes grievous words.’ Peter Monro Jack, 1944.
- HM - ‘Growing sense of alienation and isolation in a world wherein daily existence is synonymous with living death.’ (Ellis 2009)
- HM - Carl Jung ‘To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light.’
- HM - Enshan et.al (2016) ‘The modernist writer … becomes entranced with depths … the depths of … the shadowed half-people crawling through the injustices of society.
13
Q
Modernism Characteristics
A
- Stream-of-consciousness
- Interior monologue
- Obsession with time
- Development of psychoanalysis
- Changes to tradition
- ‘a way of controlling, or ordering, of giving shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futile anarchy which is contemporary history’ (TS Eliot)
14
Q
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock Quotes
A
- invitation ‘Let us go then, you and I’
- ‘like a patient etherized upon a table’
- ‘Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent’
- repetition ‘in the room the women come and go / talking of Michelangelo.’
- ‘there will be time’ repetition
- ‘there will be time / to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet’ ‘to murder and create’
- ‘Do I dare / Disturb the universe?
- ‘In a minute there is time / for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse’
- repetition ‘so how should I presume?’
- ‘the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase’
- ‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas.’
- ‘I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker’
- ‘That is not it, at all’
- ‘It is impossible to say just what I mean!’
- descending self assessment ‘not Prince Hamlet’ to ‘the Fool’
- ‘I do not think that they (mermaids) will sing to me.’ riding seaward’
15
Q
The Hollow Men Quotes
A
- ‘Mistah Kurtz - he dead’
- ‘A penny for the Old Guy’
- ‘We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men’
- ‘our dried voices … are quiet and meaningless’
- ‘Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion’
- ‘Eyes I dare not meet in dreams’ motif
- ‘such deliberate disguises’
- ‘avoid speech’
- ‘Here we go round the prickly pear’
- ‘prayers to broken stone’
- Final incantatory rhyme ‘This is the way the world ends / not with a bang but a whimper’
