Critical exerps Eliot and Hardy Flashcards
What does Conrad Aiken say about structure in Eliot?
“Mr Eliot uses free rhyme very effectively, often musically; and with the minimum of sacrifice to form conveys a maximum of atmosphere.”
What does Conrad Aiken say about characters in Eliot (studies)?
“Both poems are psychological character-studies, … introspective, self-gnawing.”
What did Times Literary Supplement say about Eliot (analytical)?
“The ‘observations’ poems – seems to be a purely analytical treatment, verging sometimes on the catalogue, of personal relations and environments, uninspired by any glimpse beyond them and untouched by any genuine rush of feeling.”
What did Literary World say about Eliot (cleverness)?
“A case of missing the effect by too much cleverness. All beauty has in it an element of strangeness, but here the strangeness overbalances the beauty.”
What did New Statesman say about Eliot (witty)?
“He has a keen eye as well as a sharp pen, and draws wittily whatever his capricious glance descends on.”
What did May Sinclair say about Mr Eliot’s genius?
“Mr Eliot’s genius is in itself disturbing. It is elusive; it is difficult; it demands a distinct effort of attention.”
What did M.M say about how Eliot deals with life?
“Eliot deals with life, … in the darkness, in the early sunlight, and in the fog.”
What did Edgar Jepson say about Eliot’s writing style (music)?
“It is musical with a new music, and that without straining after newness.”
What did William Carlos Williams say about Prufrock?
“Prufrock the nibbler at sophistication, endemic in every capital.”
What did Paulin say about Hardy and death?
“Often the voices of the dead return to life in his lines.”
What did Steinberg say about mortality and Hardy?
“mortality is not a distant concept but something immediate and ever-present.”
What did Steinberg say about time and Hardy?
“He equates time to a godlike force deliberately or arbitrarily undoing the lives and works of all humans.”
““Time is presented as a cage in which humans are trapped.”
What did Steinberg say about belief and Hardy?
“When the speaker feels angriest and most in doubt of gods existence, he wants desperately to believe.”
What does Noyes say about Hardy and pessimism?
“the poetry of Thomas Hardy is the very voice of pessimism”
What does Leavis say about Hardy and nature?
“Hardy‘s greatness lies in the integrity with which he accepted the conclusion, enforced, he believed, by science, that nature is indifferent to human values.”
