美国文学 T.S.Eliot.ppt

1、Thomas Stearns Eliot,(1888-1965),American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century,a major innovator in modern English poetry a leader of the modernist movement famous above all for his revolutionary poem The Waste Land

2、(荒原,1922),Thomas Stearns Eliot,The Nobel Prize in Literature 1948 “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry”,T.S. Eliot receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, December 1948.,The vast accumulations of knowledge or at least of information deposited by the 19th century have be

3、en responsible for an equally vast ignorance. TS Eliot,“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. ” - T. S. Eliot.,伦敦4月11日电 英国有一只猫每个月都会自己去搭公交车，而且都在同一站上车，在同一个地方下车，让当地民众感到十分惊奇。 据英国每日邮报10日报道，这只白色猫咪会搭乘英国331路公交车，而且都只搭乘一站就下车。这一有趣的现象最早是由该路公交车司机最早发现的。司机已经为它取了“Macavity”

4、的名字，取自艾略特的诗歌，意为神秘之意。,I. Biography II. Poetry 1.The main features 2. The Waste Land 3. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 4. Four Quartets III. Drama VI. literary critic essays,Drawing of Eliot by Simon Fieldhouse,广州商学院2007年英美文学,True or False 10. The famous poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

5、 was written by Ezra Pound.,I. Biography,born in USA of a bourgeois family originally from New England, who had moved to St. Louis, Missouri.,T. S. Eliot (1938) by Wyndham Lewis,lived in St. Louis during the first 18 years of his life,Education,Smith Academy in Saint Louis, US Milton Academy in Mass

6、., US Harvard University, a B.A. and M.A. in philosophy the Sorbonne (索邦大学) in Paris, France Oxford University, UK,From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German.,He began to write poetry when he was 14 under the influence of Edwar

7、d Fitzgeralds Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam He said the results were gloomy and despairing, and he destroyed them.,After graduation, Eliot attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts for a preparatory year. He studied philosophy at Harvard from 1906 to 1909, earni

8、ng his bachelors degree after three years, instead of the usual four.,Eliot moved to Paris, where from 1910-1911, he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. He attended lectures by Henri Bergson.,Eliot was awarded a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford in 1914 Eliot did not settle at Merton, and left a

9、fter a year.,He wrote: “I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls . Oxford is very pretty, but I dont like to be dead.,In a letter in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote, “I am ve

10、ry dependent upon women.” Less than 4 months later, Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambridge governess. They were married at Hampstead Register Office in June, 1915,The philosopher Bertrand Russell took an interest in Vivienne while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars

11、have suggested that she and Russell had an affair, but the allegations were never confirmed.,worked first as a teacher then worked as a clerk for Lloyds Bank wrote poetry in his spare time,George Orwell and T.S.Eliot,It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of Ezra Pound, who recognized

12、his poetic genius at once assisted in the publication of his work in a number of magazines, most notably “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in Poetry in 1915.,Prufrock and Other Observations his first book of poems published in 1917 immediately established him as a leading poet of the avant-garde

13、,Eliots reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions with the publication of The Waste Land in 1922 now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the 20th century,In 1927, Eliot converted to Anglicanism from Unitarianism became a British citizen,He specifically ide

14、ntified as Anglo-Catholic, proclaiming himself “classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic sic in religion.”,Eliot renounced his citizenship to the United States and said: “My mind may be American but my heart is British.”,In 1932, Eliot left Vivienne in England and went back

15、 to Harvard. Upon his return, he arranged for a formal separation from her.,Vivienne was committed to a mental hospital in 1938, and remained there until she died. Although Eliot was still legally her husband, he never visited her. In 1957, Eliot at the age of 68 married Esm Valerie Fletcher, who wa

16、s 32.,TS Eliot with his second wife Valerie.,II. Aesthetic views,1. A poem should be an organic thing in itself. Once it is finished, the poet will no longer have control of it. It should be judged, analyzed by itself without the interference of the poets personal influence.,2. Modern life is chaoti

17、c, futile, fragmentary, so poetry should reflect this fragmentary nature of life this kind nature of life should be projected, not analyzed,3. The poet should draw upon tradition: use the past to serve the resent and future borrow from authors remote in time, alien in language, diverse in interest u

18、se the past to underscore what is missing from the present,III. Techniques,Use of 1. disconnected images/symbols 2. literary allusions/references 3. highly expressive meter and rhythm of free verses 4. metaphysical whimsical images/whims 5. flexible tone,IV. Poetry,The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufroc

19、k, 阿尔弗雷德普鲁弗洛克的情歌 , 1915 The Waste Land, 荒原 , 1922 The Hollow Men, 空心人 , 1925 Ash Wednesday, 圣灰星期三 , 1930 Four Quartets, 四个四重奏 , 1944,His belief: poetry should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language such representation necessarily leads to difficult poetry.,In

20、rejecting the poetic values of the English romantics and Victorians, Eliot, along with William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound, set new poetic standards equal to those established by James Joyce and Marcel Proust in fiction.,Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles dAvignon (亚维农的少女，1907),i. The Waste Land,his mos

21、t famous work written when he was 34,Contents,1. Assessment 2. Synopsis: Five sections 3. Two allusions 4. Theme 5. Language repondebat illa: .” For Ezra Poundil miglior fabbro.,“是的，我自己亲眼看见古米的西比尔吊在一个笼子里。孩子们在问她： 西比尔，你要什么，她回答说： 我要死。” 献给埃兹拉庞德最卓越的匠人,The poem is 433 lines long and is divided into 5 secti

22、ons, which are not logically constructed or connected.,2. Synopsis: Five sections,Section I. The Burial of the Dead Section II. A Game of Chess Section III. The Fire Sermon Section IV. Death by Water Section V. What the Thunder Said,Section I: “The Burial of the Dead,deals chiefly with the theme of

23、death in life The inhabitants in the modern Waste Land, who have lost the knowledge of good and evil, live a sterile, meaningless life.,sterile lsterail adj.1不能生殖的2贫瘠的3枯燥无味的,Salvador Dal: The Persistence of Memory,In the last passage of the section, Eliot connects the “unreal city” with the city of

24、the dead modern London with Dantes Hell claimed that those who have no faith of religion are actually living dead. To bury the dead is to bury a memory, which brings no hope of growth or renewal.,The first section, as the section title indicates, is about death. The section begins with the words “Ap

25、ril is the cruellest month,” which is perhaps one of the most remarked upon and most important references in the poem.,Those familiar with Chaucers poem The Canterbury Tales will recognize that Eliot is taking Chaucers introductory line from the prologuewhich is optimistic about the month of April a

26、nd the regenerative, life-giving season of springand turning it on its head.,Just as Chaucers line sets the tone for The Canterbury Tales, Eliots dark words inform the reader that this is going to be a dark poem. Throughout the rest of the first section, as he will do with the other four sections, E

27、liot shifts among several disconnected thoughts, speeches, and images.,Collectively, the episodic scenes in lines 1 through 18 discuss the natural cycle of death, which is symbolized by the passing of the seasons. The first seven lines employ images of spring, such as “breeding / Lilacs,” and “Dull

28、roots with spring rain.”,In line 8, Eliot tells the reader “Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee.” The time has shifted from spring to summer.,And while the reference to Starnbergerseea lake south of Munich, Germanyhas been linked to various aspects of Eliots past, to Eliots readers a

29、t the time the poem was published, it would have stuck out for other reasons, given that World War I had fairly recently ended.,Section II: “A Game of Chess”,giving a rather concrete illustration of the sterile situation A picture of spiritual emptiness is presented with the reproduction of a contem

30、porary pub conversation between two cockney women. The discussion is constantly interrupted by the pub keepers “Hurry up please its time.”,Section III, “The Fire Sermon,”,expresses a painfully elegiac feeling by juxtaposing the vulgarity and shallowness of the modern with the beauty and simplicity o

31、f the past.,What was once ritualistic meaningful is now despairing empty,section IV, “Death by Water”,the drowned Phoenician(腓尼基人) Sailor is an emblem(象征) of futile(无意义的) worries over profit and loss, youth and age.,With the curative and baptismal power of the water images, the drowned Phoenician Sa

32、ilor also recalls the rebirth of the drowned god of the fertility cults, thus giving an instance of the conquest of death.,Section V, “What the Thunder Said”,The title appears to be derived from an Indian myth, in which the supreme Lord of the Creation speaks through the thunder.,3. Two allusions,a.

33、 the Holy Grail b. the Fisher King,a. the Holy Grail,Eliot alludes to various ancient religions as well as to the Holy Grail, finding in them the common thread of the mythic cycle of the death and resurrection of gods.,a medieval legend the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, said

34、to possess miraculous powers,Joseph receives the Grail from an apparition of Jesus sends it with his followers to Great Britain uses the Grail to catch Christs blood while interring(埋葬) him a line of guardians to keep it safe in Britain,The quest for the Holy Grail makes up an important segment of t

35、he Arthurian cycle.,b. the Fisher King,he found in a book by Jessie Weston, From Ritual to Romance a mythic figure whose loss of power or fertility produces a corresponding blight(枯萎, 凋零) or drought(干旱) in his kingdom,the land be restored to fertility only through: the death of this king his replace

36、ment by a new, young, and vigorous knight,Meditation on the state of Western civilization, especially regarding the sense of depression waste futility of the post-World War I era,4. Theme,(1) presents physical disorder and spiritual decadence in the modern western society,(2) reflects disillusion an

37、d despair of a whole post war generation, anguish, menace, sterility had been afflicting all sensitive members of the postwar generation.,(3) concerns with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning,(4) reflects the 20th century peoples disillusion and fr

38、ustration in a meaningless and boring world,5. Language ,1. Explanation of the Title,original title of this poem: “Prufrock Among the Women”.,Eliot took the last name of the title character from a sign advertising the William Prufrock furniture company, a business in Eliots hometown.,Type of Work: D

39、ramatic Monologue,Prufrock： a modernistic poem in the form of a dramatic monologue,dramatic monologue,a form invented and practiced principally by Robert Browning Alfred Tennyson Dante Rossetti other Victorians,A dramatic monologue presents a moment in which a narrator/speaker discusses a topic in s

40、o doing, reveals his personal feelings to a listener,During his discourse, the speaker intentionally and unintentionally reveals information about himself. The main focus of a dramatic monologue is this personal information, not the speakers topic. A dramatic monologue is a type of character study.,

41、The Speaker/Narrator,a balding, insecure middle-aged man, who expresses his thoughts about the dull, uneventful, mediocre life he leads as a result of his feelings of inadequacy his fear of making decisions,Unable to seize opportunities or take risks (especially with women), he lives in a world that

42、 is the same today as it was yesterday and will be the same tomorrow as it is today. He does try to make progress, but his timidity and fear of failure inhibit him from taking action.,Setting,The action takes place in the evening in a bleak section of a smoky city. probably St. Louis, London, or any

43、 city anywhere,Characters,(1) J. Alfred Prufrock (2) The Listener (3) The Women (4) The Lonely Men in Shirtsleeves,(1) J. Alfred Prufrock,the speaker/narrator a timid, overcautious middle-aged man neurotic （神经质的） self-important, illogical incapable of action an interesting tragic figure,He escorts h

44、is silent listener through streets in a shabby part of a city, past cheap hotels and restaurants, to a social gathering where women he would like to meet are conversing. However, he is hesitant to take part in the activity for fear of making a fool of himself.,a man caught in a sense of defeated ide

45、alism and tortured by unsatisfied desire dare not to seek love because even if he could find it, it would not satisfy his needs,He compares himself with Hamlet. As a result of his timidity he has become incapable of action of any sort.,(2) The Listener,An unidentified companion of Prufrock. The list

46、ener could also be Prufrocks inner self, one that prods him but fails to move him to action.,(3) The Women,Women at a social gathering. Prufrock would like to meet one of them but worries that she will look down on him.,(4) The Lonely Men in Shirtsleeves,Leaning out of their windows, they smoke pipe

47、s. They are like Prufrock in that they look upon a scene but do not become part of it.,The smoke from their pipes helps form the haze over the city, the haze that serves as a metaphor for a timid catwhich is Prufrock.,Themes,a. Loneliness and Alienation b. Indecision c. Inadequacy d. Pessimism,a. Lo

48、neliness and Alienation,Prufrock is a pathetic man whose anxieties and obsessions have isolated him. an ironic contrast between a pretended “love song” and a confession of the speakers incapability of facing up to love and to life in a sterile upper-class world,b. Indecision,Prufrock resists making

49、decisions for fear that their outcomes will turn out wrong.,c. Inadequacy,Prufrock continually worries that he will make a fool of himself and that people will ridicule him for his clothes, his bald spot, and his overall physical appearance.,d. Pessimism,Prufrock sees only the negative side of his o

50、wn life and the lives of others.,Style,Conversational Language Combined With the Stylized Language of Poetry Variations in Line Length and Meter Shifts in the Train of Thought Shifts in Topics Under Discussion,Shifts From Abstract to Concrete (and Universal to Particular) Shifts From Obvious Allusio

51、ns or References to Oblique Allusions or References,VI. Four Quartets,Eliots last major poetic sequence, written in four sections from 1935 to 1942 he believed to be his finest achievement religious in a very broad sense more personal than the previous poems exquisitely lyrical and musical in struct

52、ure,theme,based on the Christian dogmas of incarnation and resurrection concerned with the quest for the immortal element, the stillness within time or history Man, disillusioned and hopeless in his early poetry, now finds reconciliation in God.,III. Drama,Murder in the Cathedral, 大教堂谋杀案, 1935 -his

53、best-known play The Family Reunion, 家庭聚会, 1939 The Cocktail Party, 鸡尾酒会, 1950 The Confidential Clerk, 1954 The Elder Statesman, 1958,Major achievements in drama writing,He was one of the important verse dramatists in the first half of the 20th century. Besides some fragmentary pieces, Eliot had writ

54、ten in his lifetime five full-length plays.,All the plays have something to do with Christian themes. His three later plays are also concerned with the subject of spiritual self-discovery but in the form of a sophisticated modern social comedy.,Eliots major achievement in play writing has been the c

55、reation of a verse drama in the 20th century to express the ideas and actions of modern society with new accents of the contemporary speech.,literary critic essays,Tradition and Individual Talent The Sacred Wood (1920),VI. literary critic essays,considered by some to be one of the greatest literary critics of the 20th century,During his literary career, he wrote a large number of essays, articles and book reviews. His essays are mainly concerned with cultural, social, religious, as well as literary issues. In particular, Eliot strongly influenced the school of New Cri