TSEliot.ppt

1、T. S. Eliot,T. S. Eliot (1888-1965),Thomas Stearns Eliot( 1888-1965) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26 ,1888.,American-English poet, playwright, and literary critic, a leader of the modernist movement in literature. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. His most fa

2、mous work is THE WASTE LAND, written when he was 34. His poetry was noted for - its fresh visual imagery, its flexible tone and highly expressive rhythm.,His Works,The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917)- the first poem The Waste Land (1922)- the spiritual crisis of postwar Europe. It is composed

3、 of 5 sections. The Hollow Men (1925)-showing the pessimism as The Waster Land Ash Wednesday (1930)-something relative to religion Four Quartets (1943)- indicating that the poet turned conservative Murder in The Cathedral (1935)- his best play among 7. Cocktail Party (1950) - play,Eliot s early poet

4、ical works :,The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock The Waste Land - express the anguish and barrenness of modern life and the isolation of the individual ,particularly as reelected in the failure of love.,The Waste Land （荒原）,The Waste Land, his masterpiece, was an epochal epic published in 1922. It re

5、vealed the spiritual crisis of postwar Europe. It reads like the manifesto of the “lost generation” and established Eliots position as the leader not only of American poetry, but of a whole generation of writers later to be identified as “Waste Land Painters” like Hemingway and Faulkner.,The Waste L

6、and consists of five discontinuous segments, each composed of fragments incorporating multiple voices and characters, literary and historical allusions, bits and pieces of contemporary life, myths and legends. The central theme-desperation Although it gestured toward religious belief ,The Waste Land

7、 was not an affirmative or religious poem; the desperate quest for regeneration in a cacophonous, desolate landscape remains unfulfilled.,The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is an early poem but is marked by an assurance in phrasing that has made many of its lines

8、 almost proverbial in our century. It is a dramatic monologue spoken by oneJ. Alfred Prufrock, whose very name seems to combine the dignity and absurdity of his social and private selves.,The Love-Song of J. Alfred PrufrockBy T.S. Eliot,Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out again

9、st the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwh

10、elming question. . .Oh, do not ask, What is it? Let us go and make our visit.,In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening

11、 Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.,And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slide

12、s along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and ti

13、me for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea.,I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and

14、 brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.,“The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” is a poem full of images, symbols and allusions. The title of the poem is ironic in that the “Love Song” is in fact about the absence of love. It depicts a timid middle-aged man going or thinking of going to propose

15、 marriage to a lady but hesitating all the way there. It takes the form of soliloquy, an interior monologue like that of Brownings. Whether the man actually leaves his spot at all remains a question. Most probably he stays where he is all the while, allowing his imagination to run wild. He is the image of an ineffectual sorrowful, tragic 20th century Western man, possibly the modern intellectual who is divided between passion and timidity, between desire and impotence.,Eliots poetry is difficult to read. For one reason, the images and symbols seem very much disc