Thomas Stearns Eliot ( )
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 ( 《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 19 th century have been 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” 的名字，取自艾略特的诗 歌，意为神秘之意。
Biography I. Biography Poetry II. Poetry 1.The main features 2. The Waste Land 3. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 4. Four Quartets Drama 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” was written by Ezra Pound.
Biography 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., 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 Edward Fitzgerald’s 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, earning his bachelor's degree after three years, instead of the usual four.
Eliot moved to Paris, where from , 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 after 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 don't like to be dead."
In a letter in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote, “I am very 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 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 Lloyd’s 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 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
Eliot's 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 identified 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 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 Esmé Valerie Fletcher, who was 32.
TS Eliot with his second wife Valerie.
II. 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 poet’s personal influence.
2. Modern life is chaotic, 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 use the past to underscore what is missing from the present
III. 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 TThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 阿尔弗 雷德 · 普鲁弗洛克的情歌, 1915 TThe Waste Land, 荒原, 1922 TThe Hollow Men, 空心人, 1925 AAsh Wednesday, 圣灰星期三, 1930 FFour 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 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 d‘Avignon ( 亚维农的少女 ， 1907)