mod b eliot Flashcards
THE LOVE SONG OF J ALFRED PRUFROCK TOPIC SENTENCE
In the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Eliot comments on the drab contemporary bourgeois existence ruled by internal conflict, contemplating the deleterious effects of modernity on individuals’ lives
Framed as a late-night stroll through a nocturnal cityscape, the poem in reality offers an examination of the eponymous persona’s psyche as he struggles to locate a stable sense of certainty
PRUFROCK MODERNIST IRONY
- Eliot establishes what Habib entails as the modernist ironic double self- the dichotomy in seeking refuge from bourgeois society yet actively engaging in its values
PRUFROCK CONTEXT
- In response to the uncertainties catalysed by rapidly changing cultural upheavals of the early 20th century, Eliot’s context reflects contemporary creation of the modern anti-hero, where an atmosphere of cultural decline has led to inept and abject existences rather than thriving in past grandeur
- Prufrock does not find himself in a space that allows for heroic action in the modern age. Prufrock characterised by his indecision, self-double, and lac of confidence – consumed by own fears anxieties and unable to take meaningful actions
- Anti-hero status emphasised through his awareness of his own inadequacies, as he is constantly analysing himself, unable to break free from the cycle of self-double and anxiety that plagues him
- Prufrock trapped in the chaos of modern times, the fragmented and shallow/ superficial world around him (liberal bourgeois)
PRUFROCK ANTI-HERO STATUS
Anti-hero status emphasised through his awareness of his own inadequacies, as he is constantly analysing himself, unable to break free from the cycle of self-double and anxiety that plagues him
- Prufrock trapped in the chaos of modern times, the fragmented and shallow/ superficial world around him (liberal bourgeois)
prufrock:
- implies how these women are fungible, that their commentary on the celebrated artist is merely a façade to suggest sophistication
- they offer no substance of interaction beyond falsehood, flowing in and out of a room with identical and generic conversation = SUPERFICIAL
‘in the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo’
- Non sequitur is repeated twice
PRUFROCK: - Hyperbolic language critiques the seemingly colossal feat for the modern anti-hero to pursue the dominant values of the world due to paralysing feelings of abjection
‘do I dare disturb the universe?’
PRUFROCK: the questions dotting the poem accentuates the anti-hero’s tendency to isolate due to feeling sof inadequacy, but simultaneously highlights Eliot’s ceitique of the modern man’s failure to escape the society which constantly denigrates
‘oh do not ask ‘what is it?’, ‘so how should I presume?’ ‘and should I then presume?’
- Motif of questions: highlight Prufrock’s indecision and paradoxical critique of and want to be accepted by dominant society
Prufrock frames his failure to adopt societal dominant archetype: Prufrock finds it more fitting that he be separated from the species than to continually find himself inadequate to the measure of social roles
‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas’
- Striking, dehumanising synecdoche
although Prufrock attempts to escape sombre contemporary society, his fantastical drowning with mermaids highlights the inevitable failure of this attempt to find individuality and solace
‘.. sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown till human voices wake us, and we drown’
prufrock form
- circular poem: does not reach any solution similar to Habib’s concept of modernist irony
- draws on intertextuality: by looking at literature to derive meaning, in the metaphysical worlds, the bible, Shakespeare. He is looking for meaning in philosophy and religious text echoes Eliot’s search for meaning which encourages the reader’s similar search for meaning
- stream of consciousness dramatic monologue –> Eliot innovates on the form as he uses fragmented language. We are following the tangents of the psyche like Dalloway, it is about the psychology and exploring complex, rhetorical questions
HOLLOW MEN TOPIC SENTENCE
In the Hollow Men, Eliot laments the inability to access profound metaphysical and religious beliefs due to liberal bourgeois corruption and modern naturalistic intellect
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Hollow Men dialectical composition and modernist irony - NO QUOTES JUST OVERALL
The poem draws on modernist irony in its discussion of the discord between the divine and the rational, reflected in its dialectic composition between Dante’s Divine Comedy and James Frazer’s Golden Bough
- Frazer’s text emphasising the evolution of human societies from superstitious beliefs to enlightened belief in the scientific – is conflated with the Dantean attempt for spiritual salvation, in which the poem reflects the bleak pyrrhic victory in the trumping of one voice over the other
hollow men dialectical composition QUOTES AND ANALYSIS
‘Mistah Kurtz – he dead’
- Epigraph
- Intertextual reference Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and interlayered Dante’s Inferno to emphasise the absence of spirituality in modernity (Conrad’s text explores the depths of the human capacity for evil and dehumanisation that accompanies it)
- utilises the reference as symbols of perverted moral n religious principles
‘…. From prayers to broken stone’
- Furthers the liminal space created within juxtaposition in the above quote ^^ (we are the hollow men we are the stuffed men leaning together)
- suggests religion as a concept of the past, drawing upon Frazer’s capturing of religion as a relic of the distant past.
‘the eyes are not here, there are no eyes here’
- Reference to Dante’s Eyes of Beatrice
- reference of the eyes – which symbolise the possibility of salvation – establishes the purgatorial limbo (comparison between Dantean and Frazer), symbolically emphasising how Eliot is ironically both the ‘hollow’ men rejective of religion and the man privileging spiritual yearning over intellect
- the inability to locate the pair of Beatrice’s eyes as the narrator is ‘sightless’ demonstrates Eliot’s waning faith, reflective of the mere absence of possibility for salvation in a modern world corrupted
‘…. Gathered on this beach of the tumid river’
- middle stanza where all the hollow men are sturkc in purgatory commands Eliot’s focus o nt he liminal
- form (in the middle of the poem_ as well as the environment symbolic of established boundaries focuses on the liminal, picturing Eliot waiting to cross between the deathly river in escape of the repetive emptiness of existence through the offer of salvation
- while the imagery of limbo emphasises how the lingering within modernist rationalism – coinciding with the Golden Bough’s rejection of religion as an irrational relic – have destroyed the possibility of faith, Eliot underscores how Dantean attempts for spiritual salvation is not even palpable in the corrupted contemporary world
hollow men liminal quotes
‘we are the hollow men we are the stuffed men leaning together’
- Antithesis
- underscores how although modern society is filled with commodities, the ‘stuff[ing] of liberal bourgeois values – as critiqued across his oeuvre - renders us ultimately hollow and without substance
‘…. Gathered on this beach of the tumid river’
- middle stanza where all the hollow men are sturkc in purgatory commands Eliot’s focus o nt he liminal
- form (in the middle of the poem_ as well as the environment symbolic of established boundaries focuses on the liminal, picturing Eliot waiting to cross between the deathly river in escape of the repetive emptiness of existence through the offer of salvation
- while the imagery of limbo emphasises how the lingering within modernist rationalism – coinciding with the Golden Bough’s rejection of religion as an irrational relic – have destroyed the possibility of faith, Eliot underscores how Dantean attempts for spiritual salvation is not even palpable in the corrupted contemporary world
hollow men: figuring as an anti-Lord’s prayer concludes the poem with the bleak pyrrhic victory of Eliot’s naturalistic intellect over his desire for belief
‘For Thine is Life For Thine is The
- Anti-lord’s prayer through fragmentation
- Creates an effect of speaker unable to express themselves
hollow men: bookends the beginning in a profound manner, where the framing through resonating ideas reinforces how a world without faith and spiritual purpose is ultimately bleak, emphasising the effects in the waning of Dantean spirituality
this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper’
-Constructs an image of an anti-climax
hollow men:
- biblical allusion turns imageries of salvation unattainable as the star is ‘distant
- the classical text of Christian belief through reference to nativity star highlights how religious ‘fading’ worldviews cannot be digested by Eliot due to his liberal bourgeois destitution
‘…. More distant and more solemn than a fading star’
- Biblical allusion (Star of Bethlehem)
HOLLOW MEN FORM
- FORM: dialectic/ intertextual
- FORM: 5 sections - they do not progress, sense of circulatiry
- a lot of repetition, deat of lexical diversity (doesn’t use a lot of words, liek 148)
- inability to believe mixed with a desire to do so, the repetition there shows a sense of entroy and decay –> the language being so repetitive creates a sense of drudgery that affirms Eliot’s sense of the decay of his spiritual life. While it is richly intertextual it is also repetitive to the point of stagnation, this is deliberate
- circular journey
JOURNEY OF THE MAGI TOPIC SENTENCE
Eliot’s Journey of the Magi draws on modernist irony as it traces his ambivalent complex spirituality, exploring the coalescence between the hopeful obtainment of Christian faith and the simultaneous yearning for the worldly comforts of modernist secularism
JOURNEY OF THE MAGI KIERKEGAARDIAN LENS
- Eliot adopts a Kierkegaardina lens, where Christian belief acts as a form of radical rebellion through a conscious resignation of reason and logic
o despite Eliot’s self-definition against and rejection of orthodox bourgeois balues, this Kierkegaardian ‘leap of faith ‘into the spiritual is difficult amongst a modernist world defined by rationality
o internal turmoil shows Eliot echoing the Kierkegaardian concept of infinite resignation, where satisfaction is found in the rejection of dominant societal values, in which responsive hostilities only enhance feelings of purpose and meaning
JOURNEY: arduous journey through belief
Title of the work ‘Journey of the Magi’
- allegory for arduous journey of Eliot through modernity
‘for a journey, and such a long journey’
- repetition
- falling cadence
- repetition shows jadedness and exhaustion through his turmoil
falling cadence represents intellectual exhaustion
JOURNEY; highlight the hostility met by those hwo undertake an unconventional path
the ways deep and the weathers sharp, the very dead of winter’
- pathetic fallacy
JOURNEY:
demonstrates Eliot’s growing ambivalence
- internal turmoil shows Eliot echoing the Kierkegaardian concept of infinite resignation, where satisfaction is found in the rejection of dominant societal values, in which responsive hostilities only enhance feelings of purpose and meaning
‘temperate valley… smelling of vegetation… running stream and a water-mill’
- fertile land and pastoral environment symbolise beauty Eliot finds in his faith despite hardships
JOURNEY: Eliot defamiliarizes what is normally known as the joyous and hopeful Christian narrative, disturbing the orthodoxy with a Kierkegaardian sense that it requires infinite resignation of the worldly satisfaction to attain true Christian faith
‘and the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, and the cities hostiles… towns unfriendly… charging high prices’
- defamiliarization
- palimpsest of Biblical imageries pertaining to the nativity scene and Golgotha, collapsing temporality in the coalescence of the birth and death of Jesus, and the Christian end of the world
