2. BIOGRAPHY
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis,
Missouri, in 1888. His family was descended from
one of the original Puritan settlers, and his parents
were wealthy and fond of culture. He studied at
Harvard, Paris and Oxford universities, thus giving a
cosmopolitan bent to his education. In 1925 he
married the British ballet dancer Vivien Haigh -Wood,
despite his parents’ worries about her mental
stability. Though an American by birth, his cultural
background was at first English and then European.
In fact, he discovered John Donne and the English
Metaphysical poets; he learned Italian by studying
Dante, whom he devoted one of his most celebrated
essays in 1929. Here Eliot stated Dante was the poet
who best expressed a universal situation and praised
him “clear visual images”, “the lucidity” of his style
3. POETRY STYLE
He use stream-of- consciousness to
show the chaos in of the modern man’s
thinking. In addition, he uses many
techniques such as imagism, repetition,
fragmentation and other modernist
techniques. All these techniques help
depict the modern life for the reader and
reflect its status in real manner. That is
why one can easily say that Eliot is
considered as one of the most influential
modernist poets in English literature.
4. THE WASTE
LAND
Throughout this time Vivien was in poor
health and Eliot was under considerable
emotional strain. He spent some time in a
Swiss sanatorium, in Lausanne, undergoing
psychological treatment and here he
finished “The Waste Land”, dedicated to
Ezra Pound.
Based on various legends, it portrays
London as a sterile, waste land, and
expresses the depression and cynicism of
the postwar period. The poem is built
around several symbols, the most important
of which are drought and flood, representing
death and rebirth. The highly allusive
manner and numerous references make the
poem difficult to understand. It's true
originally lies in its presentation of man’s
spiritual crisis and in its variety of style,
rather than in its literary apparatus. In
writing The Waste Land Eliot was
influenced by Dante, the English
Metaphysical poets and the French
5. LIFE AND WORKS
This poem is more lyrical in spirit, and the style is
relaxed and musical with its repetition and assonance.
Eliot finally decided to separate from his wife, who was
committed to a mental asylum, where she died nine
years later in 1947. Her death, however, created a
terrible sense of guilt within the soul of the poet and
unhappiness led him to write in a letter of his: “I have
always known hell- it is in my bones”. In the Thirties
and Forties, Eliot’s essays became more concerned
society. His growing social concerns led him towards
the theatre, and he became one of the chief exponents
of poetic drama. In 1932 he wrote a fragment,
Sweeney Agonistes, in 1934 a play, The Rock, and in
1935 a modern miracle play, Murder in the Cathedral,
on the well-known conflict between Henry II and
Thomas Becket. The latter play was notable for the
moving speeches of the Chorus in the traditional Greek
manner. The Family Reunion, a modernization of
the story of Orestes was not equally successful.
6. THE END
C R E AT E D B Y: AL E S S I O T R O Z Z I
C L AS S : 5 ° D
