T.s Eliot Flashcards
What are the key concepts presented in T.s Eliot’s works?
Morality Futilitiy of mundane existence Existentialism Musings of modernity and The threat of the feminine other
How is Morality presented in Eliot’s works?
The concept of death as inevitable and pervading in society is certainly explored throughout Eliot’s poetry. Connect this to an awareness od death due to the casualties of WW1. There are is a scope to connect morality to the philosophical sentiments of modernist such as Nietzsche who famously stated “God is dead”, and with this claim, the hopes of salvation and life after death slowly dissipated
How is the concept of Munadane existence presented within Eliot’s works?
Following the traumas of war experience, the individual found it increasingly difficult to re-integrate into society and routine and all of its mundane intricacies knowing the atrocities which exist in this world. This is a resounding concept; any of us who have lost a loved one, or experienced something deeply traumatic, often find it difficult to find relevance in the triviality of everyday life. This is explored in Eliot’s poetry. You will paradoxical placement between icons of mundanity and the foreboding relevance of death. How can we bother to face the harshness of life when death is imminent?
How is the concept of Existentialism explored throughout Eliot’s works?
Existentialism, in its most fundamental form, captures our inability to decipher the essence of our purpose. This concept is intrinsically connected to morality and mundanity. Along this trajectory, there is a sense of helplessness in our very existence with the knowledge that deaths exist, thus rendering our experience, success and relationships comparatively pointless.
What is meant by musings on modernity?
Eliot’s poetry displays a resistance towards the modern landscape. Be attuned to the smells, images and sounds of the modern landscape Eliot conveys in the poetry. We see the landscape as fragmented and dismantling the possibility of human connection due to its uninviting appeal. Furthermore, the landscape also evokes the tones of incoherence and fragmentation: you will find a nexus which exists between the disparate movement of the mind and the external landscape as fragmentary.
How is the threat of Feminity explored?
Notice in the poems, Eliots personas are weak and passive in the presence of women - they are unsure of how to approach them. Consider this in light of the concept femininity as something which threatens them
What is Prufrock about?
Eliot depicts a long rumination by a persona on the uncertainties of his existence. There are some suggestions through the poem that the persona has failed romantically (or is trying to muster up the courage to say how he feels to a woman), that he feels indecisive to that end, that he feels generally uncomfortable in social situations, that he has a superior intellect but feels alienated because of his heightened perceptions, and that he lives in a decaying, filthy urban landscape.
What are reoccurring techniques used within Prufrock?
- The Imagery of the urban landscape as decaying and dirty-reflection of the modernist context
- The indecision in the tone of the persona- unsure how to proceed, lonely and unsatisfied.
- Used of a fragmented structure, unpredictable metre and rhyme scheme
- The personas pre-occupation with social custom and the preceptions of others
What is the effect of the quote “Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table”
This poem begins with the inclusive language of ‘let us go, you and I’ and follows up with a pleasant image of evening time, but then subverts expectations with a jarring smile of an anesthetised patient. This raises ideas of inertia of subjugation of one’s senses, which Eliot’s persona complains repeatedly
What is the effect of the quote, “the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes”
The long metaphor of yellow smoke as an animal rubbing its back and muzzle and licking its tongue on features such that grimy scents penetrate and dominate every corner of the city and linger
What is the effect of the quote “There will be time, there will be time, to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet”
The image of ‘preparing a face’ suggests that the person has put on a mask to interact with other people: they cannot be themselves. This speaks to modernist broader concerns of a failure to connect, and the modern world as a fractured and dispersed
This also makes the start of the Motif where Eliot uses body parts as Metonymous for the individual into a soulless collection of body parts without composite spiritual whole.
What is the effect of the quote “Do I dare? Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse”
The slowing metre again shows the persona’s increasing uncertainty and reflects his modernist poetic context. ‘Do I dare disturb the universe?’ is a grand rhetorical question which again universities has a sense of spiritual isolation, and implies that he feels inconsequential in amoungst the enormity of the universe.
and the anaphora of ‘decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse’ suggest the futility of his decision-making: whatever he chooses, in a minute he will change his mind. Connect this to Eliot’s broader explorations of mundanity.
What is the meaning behind preludes?
“Preludes take the reader through a 24-hour period in an urban landscape through four vignettes: stanza one details the evening, stanza two the moment of waking, stanza three the morning and stanza four the evening again. Its narrative is circular and thematically symmetrical: its begins and ends with a tone of cynicism and futility and a depiction of the derelict urban landscape.
What are the recurring techniques presented in Preludes?
The motif of constituted body parts- implies that humans are soulless
Use of vignetters with thematic consistency over each stanza- contrasts passage of time unchangeable nature of his persona’s discomfort and alienation
The imagery of debris and physical dilapidation- uses the imagery of decay in the urban landscape as a symbol for the spiritual decay in the Moernist world
What is the name preludes ironic
Preludes suggest something sweet, something to lull you to sleep, but then we get serious of dreary, vulgar images. This irony operates to show the personas cynical registration to his dreamy lot.
Why is the quote “The burnt-out ends of smoky days” significant?
The notion of a ‘burnt out end’ suggests something at its expiry date, even useless. He evokes a sense of dereliction, the physical dilapidation being symbolic of his spiritual affliction
What is the significance of the quote “His soul stretched tight across the skies”
The metaphor of soul being stretched is an uneasy one: the soul is being contorted disfigured. This image carries the connotation of crucifixion, which contradicts the secular nature of the poem. Perhaps Eliot is connecting the persona’s senselessness to the failure of religion
What is Rhapsody about?
The persona takes the reader on a walk through the dark streets of the urban landscape at the darkest hour of the night, from midnight to 4 am. Again, there is a thematic consistency over the course of the night: and again there is a brief indication of hope in the last stanza before the tone reverts to one fertility and complete alienation.
What techniques and motifs are presented in Rhapsody?
Use of positive, Raptors title to ironically contrasting the glum subject matter
use of vignettes
What is significant about the poetic structure of Rhapsody
Beyond the immediate sugestion that the person is restless/insomnia this structural device reveals that with the passing of time, the imagery of dereliction does not waver or diminish
What is the significance of the quote “Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fantastic drum”
The simile of a street lamb beating ‘like a fantastic drum creates a sense of imminent threat, some impending doom in the artificial light of the streetscape- drum play when one meets their destiny. In other words the urban.
What is the significance of the quote, “The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered The street lamp said, regard that women”
Personifying the lamp suggests the personas loneliness the inanimate objects of the urban landscape at night speak to him, they are the only things around
What is the Hollow man about?
The hollow men can be read as a marker for the lack of spiritual fulfilment which is offered by the journey of the magi. The poem is constituted by frequent paradox, marking the false sense of hope offered by the closure of world war one. The poem traces spiritual; anguish and ambivalence, entending the sentiments of the waste land.
What recurring techniques and motifs are presented in a hollow man?
The recurring paradox of ‘stuffed’ which illuminates the spiritual emptiness of the individual
Intertextual engagement with Dantes Inferno symbolically alluding to the movement of the soul and the tensions between purgatory and paradise.
Frequent motifs of death and decay, reflective of the omnipresence of mortality and sentiments of helplessness, connected to the post-war era.
