The document provides biographical information about the poet T.S. Eliot. It states that Eliot was born in the United States but spent most of his life in England after moving there in 1914. Some of his most famous works include The Waste Land, which had a significant influence on 20th century literature. The document also analyzes Eliot's poem "Morning at the Window," noting that it presents images of poverty in modern London through objective descriptions without explicit expressions of emotion.

1. ***************************
Presented by
Prof.R.R.Borse,
Asst.Prof.,
Eng.Dept.,
B.P.Arts,S.M.A.Sci.,K.K.C.Comm.College,Chalisgaon
Mail- ravindraborse1@gmail.com

2. About T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 and died in 1965. He was a
British poet, playwright, essayist, publisher, and literary critic. T.
S. Eliot was born in the United States, and spent the first eighteen
years of his life in St. Louis. He attended Harvard University, and
earned both an undergraduate and a graduate degree before going
to the Sorbonne. In 1914, he moved and settled in England. A year
later, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood, but he divorced her after
some years and remarried in 1956 to Valerie Fletcher. T. S. Eliot
became a British citizen in 1927.

3. When T. S. Eliot moved to London, he came under the influence
of Ezra Pound, who convinced him of his literary talent and
helped him publish several poems. His first poetry, Prufrock and
Other Observations, collection was published in 1917 and
established him as a leading poem of the avant-garde literary
movement of that time.
In 1922, he published The Waste Land. The Waste Land is
considered to be one of Eliot’s masterpieces and one of the most
influential works of the twentieth century. T.S. Eliot’s reputation
grew to immense proportions and, in the following years, he
established himself as one of the dominant figures in English
poetry and literary criticism.
In 1948 he received the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize in
Literature.

4. ‘Morning at the Window’ was written by T. S.
Eliot in autumn 1914 and published in Eliot’s
first collection, Prufrock and Other
Observations, three years later.
‘Morning at the Window’ presents a distinctly
modern view of London, focusing on everyday
details and, following Baudelaire’s lead,
elevating them ‘to the first intensity’. The result
is a wonderful short poem.

5. Morning at the Window' is an imagist poem that
presents an image of poverty.
The picture is that of a slum where people lead
miserable lives.
The speaker is at the window. He may be a visitor
of a certain house in the area where poor people
live.
The images that come to his eyes are 'object
correlatives' or objects corresponding certain
ideas and emotions in the poet's and the reader's
mind.

6. The images in the poem correlate with the idea
of poverty and feelings of sympathy.
But the poem only presents them just the
objective image, rather than romantically
expressing his feelings and emotions.
There is also a balance between feelings and
ideas in the sense that the image arouses not
only feelings in the reader but also provokes
thoughts and ideas.

8. First Stanza
“They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
(…)
Sprouting despondently at area gates.”
The first stanza sets the scene and the setting of the poem. The lyrical voice
starts talking about a “They”. Thus, the lyrical voice appears to be an observer
who looks at this scene with distant sight (“They are rattling breakfast plates in
basement kitchens”). The images that the lyrical voice describes are object
correlatives, meaning that the objects and situations depicted correspond to
certain ideas and emotions in the lyrical voice’s and the reader’s mind. Then,
the lyrical voice will state that he/she is in the street and aware of what goes on
around him/her: “And along the trample edges of the street/ I am aware of the
damp souls of housemaids/Sprouting despondently at area gates”. The lyrical
voice shows images of poverty in modern London and describes them as
everyday scenes, without describing individualities or moralizing his/her
surroundings. This first stanza presents a very human, but distant picture;
everyday life is narrated but not in individual depth. The lyrical voice chooses
to narrate what he/she observes, and focuses on his point of view.

9. Second Stanza
“The brown waves of fog toss up to me
(…)
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.”
The second stanza furthers on the characteristics and occupants of the modern
city. The lyrical voice describes the air and its pollution (“The brown waves of fog
toss up to me”), being a consequence of the industrial and modern city. Just like
the air comes to him in a particular way, he/she sees people in the streets
accordingly. Notice how they are described: “Twisted faces from the bottom of
the street,/ And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts”. People appear to be
sad and dirty; nothing in this portrait of modern London seems to be cheerful or
positive, as poverty reigns in the streets. Furthermore, the lyrical voice describes
a possible attempt to revert the picture in the city, but it is useless (“An aimless
smile that hovers in the air/And vanishes along the level of the roofs”). This
stanza, and the entire poem, present a distinctly modern view of a city, most
probably London, by focusing on the small details of everyday life and elevating
them to “quasi-transcendent qualities”.

15. • The poem is a set of striking images of poverty; the
poet says nothing but shows them. The poor people
are rattling (making a sound) breakfast plates early in
the morning.
• It is an obligation for poor people to go to work early
and work till late. Sun or shower, frost or fog, they
have to set out early. The image brings to mind similar
images of poverty.
• The speaker says that he is aware of the condition of
the households' minds and souls, or their psychology.
He doesn't describe that. Such housemaids are
appearing one after another at the city gate. Maybe
they come from villages. They have no identity,
dignity and meaningful life. They are 'despondent', or
extremely sad.

16. • The speaker seems to go along, or else look further away waves of "brown"
fog which come up to him. This is perhaps because the city air is so
polluted.
• Twisted faces of depressed people pass by. A passerby has tears in the eyes.
The speaker takes another glance and sees her dirty skirt. Another person
comes up and tries to smile, but fails.
• The smile vanishes among the city roofs. All these disjointed images can be
put together to build up a general picture of the poor people's plight.
• The focus is on poor servant girls whose souls themselves are "damp" (moist
and dirt).
• The poet evokes our emotion without telling his emotions. He arouses pity
without telling his pity for the people.

17. • Eliot asserted that poetry must present
'objective correlatives' or objects and events
that will correspond to certain emotions in the
reader's experience.
• The poet need not express his personal
emotion. This idea of poetry is anti-romantic.
For instance, when we encounter objective
images of poverty, we understand it.
• The image of a child on top of a burning house
would need no explanation!

18. • The theme of the poem "Morning at the Window" is
poverty. The poem presents a very human picture of
poor people in the city slum.
• The poem presents a set of typical images that
suggest poverty, depression, misery and squalor in
the slums (poor and dirty areas of the cities) where
the poor live.
• The poet also mentions the state of the souls of the
housemaids. So the poem thematically includes the
issues of poverty, depression and squalor in the lives
of poor people in the city.

19. • The form of the poem, although unrhymed,
follows the Spenserian stanza.
• That means that the poem has nine lines,
ending with an Alexandrine.
• This type of form was used by Edmund Spenser
to write The Faerie Queene, one of his most
recognized works in which heroic deeds are
narrated in an idyllic pastoral fairyland.
• Yet, Eliot uses this form to convey impressions
of a modern city, most probably London.

20. • ‘Morning at the Window’, although unrhymed,
adopts the basic shape of the Spenserian stanza –
namely, nine lines ending with an alexandrine.
(Traditionally, an alexandrine is a longer 12-syllable
line, often containing a word like ‘along’, as Eliot’s
does, to point up that it is a longer line than the
standard pentameter one.)
• This was the stanza form used by Edmund Spenser
(c. 1552-99) throughout his Elizabethan epic poem
The Faerie Queene.

21. Thank You…!