Modernism v Romanticism

Question 1

“The grimy scraps of withered leaves about your feet”

“You heard the sparrows in the gutters”

Answer 1

Literary Device / Technique:

• Symbolism
• In Romantic writing, the singing of birds and the coming of leaves is meant to symbolise spring

Link to theme / effect:

• Eliot has moved these natural images to the squalor of the urban
• This symbolises the victory of the modern over the romantic world

Question 2

“I do not think that they will sing to me”

“Till human voices wake us and we drown”

Answer 2

Literary Device / Technique:

• Poem contains fragments of sonnet form
• The three final stanzas are rhymed as the conclusion to a Petrarchan sonnet

Link to theme / effect

• The conclusion contains bleak, anti-romantic content, subverting the traditional sonnet
• Demonstrates modern disillusionment with romantic ideas as merely a fantasy that distracts from the reality of life

Question 3

“The moon has lost her memory”

“A washed out smallpox cracks her face”

Answer 3

Literary Device / Technique:

• Allegory
• In Romantic poetry, the moon was seen as a symbol of innocence and love

Link to theme / effect

• In the modern world, the moon has lost her romantic identity
• Represents the decay of the connection between man and the transcendent

Question 4

“Here we go round the prickly pear, prickly pear, prickly pear. Here we go round the prickly pear at five o’clock in the morning”

Answer 4

Literary Device / Technique:

• Allusion
• This a distortion of the children’s song ‘Here we go round the Mulberry bush”

Link to theme / effect

• The original rhyme is a fertility song
• The prickly pear is a cactus that grows in the desert
• This suggests that rather than a place of beauty and wonder, the world is surrounded by desolation

Question 5

“Six hands at an open door, dicing for pieces of silver, and feet kicking the empty wine-skins”

Answer 5

Literary Device / Technique:

• Synecdoche
• Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver
• The Roman soldiers diced for his robes at the Cross
• Jesus is alleged to have turned water into wine

Link to theme / effect

• Romanticism often praises man, and believes that his motivations are ultimately good
• Eliot questions the sincerity of people’s faith
• Similar to Preludes, man has been reduced to the mundane parts of his body
• The eyes, mind and heart (all things needed for belief) are noticeably absent