T.s eliot theory of impersonality

Literary Criticism II
ENG- 332
Lecture No: 14
“T.S Eliot’s Theory of Impersonality in Poetry”
Course: Literary Criticism II- ENG- 332 – Instructor: Siraj Khan, Lecturer in English, Department of English KUST- Email: siraj.khan@kust.edu.pk
By: Siraj Khan
Lecturer in English
KUST

Outlines
Poet’s Biography
Impersonal Theory
 Two Folded Theory
Addressing
Emotions and Feelings
Tradition & Individual
Examples
Conclusion
Topic:
Course: Literary Criticism II ENG- 332 – Instructor: Siraj Khan, Lecturer in English, Department of English KUST- Email: siraj.khan@kust.edu.pk
T.S Eliot’s Theory of Impersonality in Poetry

T. S Eliot
(September 26, 1888– January 04, 1965 )
 Born in St. Louis in 1888
 Moved to London just before WWI: eventually became a
British Subject
 New Criticism
 Scholar (Languages, Philosophy)
 America- born British Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic,
Dramatist, Publisher and editor
 Nobel Prize Winner
 Objective Criticism
 The Waste Land (1922)
 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
 Tradition and Individual Observation
Topic:
T.S Eliot’s Theory of Impersonality in Poetry

Impersonal Theory
• Continual Surrender of himself
• The personality of the artist is not important; the important
thing is his sense of tradition. A good poem is a living whole
of all the poetry that has ever been written. He must forget his
personal joys and sorrows, and he absorbed in acquiring a
sense of tradition and expressing it in his poetry.
• Thus, the poet’s personality is merely a medium, having the
same significance as a catalytic agent, or a receptacle in which
chemical reactions take place. That is why Eliot holds that,
“Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not
upon the poet but upon the poetry.”
Topic: T.S Eliot’s Theory of Impersonality in Poetry

Two Folded Theory
• The Relation of the Poet to the Past
• The Relation of the Poem to its Author
• The past is never dead, it lives in the present. “
no poet or no artist has his complete meaning
alone”. His significance, his appreciation is the
appreciation of his relation to the dead poets
and artists.”

Uses of Impersonality of T.S Eliot’s Poetry
• “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape
from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an
escape from personality.” Thus Eliot does not deny
personality or emotion to the poet. Only, he must
depersonalise his emotions.
• There should be an extinction of his personality. This
impersonality can be achieved only when poet surrenders
himself completely to the work that is to be done. And the
poet can know what is to be done, only if he acquires a
sense of tradition, the historic sense, which makes him
conscious, not only of the present, but also of the present
moment of the past, not only of what is dead, but of what is
already living.

 “ we can only say the a poem in some case, has
its own life; that it parts from something quite
different from a body of neatly covered
biographical data. That the feeling or emotion
or vision in the mind of the poet” ( The
Sacred Wood)
 The Poet and Poetry are two separate things.
 Focuses attention not upon the poet but upon
the poetry.
 The work of art is to be regarded as an
organism, alive with a life of its own.
Poet and Poetry are Different Entities

Addressing
 Eliot uses the first person singular pronoun in most of his poems. For instance, Eliot’s “ The
Waste Land” encompasses the first-person singular pronouns ( I, my, me) enormously, except
the fourth section of the poem “Death by Water” which does not involve any of the first-person
pronoun.
 In “Ash Wednesday” the first-person pronoun singular pronouns are present from the opening
lines. But the speaker in Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” refers to the poet himself indirectly as the
poem reflects his religious vision of life and God, but Eliot utilizes the persona as mask to avoid
self expression.
 In Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”, the first-persons are used three times. Similarly, in Eliot’s early
poetry collections Prufrock and Other Observations and Ariel Poems, the first-person singular
pronouns are found in many poems. Exploring impersonality in Eliot’s poetry through tracking
the use of the first-person singular pronouns is not highly reliable because the poet may use a
technique of a “ persona” as the speaker in the poem.
 In Eliot’s “ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot (1957) says” The first voice is the voice
of the poet talking to himself or to nobody. The second is the voice of the poet addressing an
audience, whether large or small. The third is the voice of of the poet when he attempts to create
a dramatic character speaking in verse; when he is saying, not what he would say in his own
person, but only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another
imaginary character.

• T. S Eliot’s “The Waste Land” begins, with a description of a
cruel spring, cruel to disturb, dull, dry land content to sleep, to
die. Life and, surely, personality are the moisture missing in this
waste land. But why, then, am I haunted from the first line with
personality? There are several reasons, but one of them is that
the base of personal pronouns awakens a sense of personal
engagement. First the reader seems to be involved in “you” and
“us” and “we”. The reader needs not involve himself – the
personal pronouns clearly refer to others instead. It doesn’t
matter. The sense of participation persists. Besides, a personal
aside:
• “Corne in under the shadow of this red rock”
This line justifies the reader in his presumption.
Examples

More Examples
“If you came this way.
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from….”
“Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,
Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,…”

GOOD LUCK

T.s eliot theory of impersonality

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