1. Nick DiPreta Alex Wysota
T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)
Nick DiPreta
Alex Wysota

2. Biography Born St. Louis Missouri as Thomas Stern Elliot
Philosophy Major
Schoolmaster and bank clerk
Founder/Editor 17 years of literary journal Criterion
Received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948

3. Why Is He So Important? The Nobel Prize in Literature 1948
Poetry should represent the complexities of society, creating complex poems
Expressed disillusionment of a younger post WWI generation
“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’” – T.S. Eliot
-(Image) Lyn Chase and Helen Burns unveiling T.S. Eliot’s 22-cent stamp at a ceremony inaugurating a series of poet stamps put out by the U.S. Postal Service
-Transmuted his affinity for the English metaphysical poets of the 17th century (most notably John Donne) and the 19th century French symbolist poets (including Baudelaire and Laforgue) into radical innovations in poetic technique and subject matter.
-His poems in many respects expressed the disillusionment of a younger post-World-War-I generation with the values and conventions (both literary and social) of Victorian Era.
-As a critic, he had a colossal impact on contemporary literary taste, giving views that, after his conversion to orthodox Christianity in the late thirties, were progressively more based in social and religious conservatism.
-Objective Correlative - a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, that draw out particular emotions

4. The Purpose of Preludes
Preludes is divided into 4 parts.
Each part represents a different part of day
Eliot’s Preludes served to show the negativities in city life
Eliot’s disillusionment in society become obvious as Preludes continues to show a day in the city.

5. Preludes (I) The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps. z
The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps.
-The speaker is describing what he sees “The winter evening settles down.”
-Lets his readers smell what he smells, the odor of “steaks in passageways.” It is the dinner hour, “six o’clock.”
-Colorfully describes the end of the day as “burnt-out ends of smoky days,” comparing end of the day to the butt of a cigarette.
-Signifies loneliness and melancholy.
-Rainstorm blows up: “now a gusty shower wraps / The grimy scraps.”
-“Grimy scraps” indicates the ugliness of the speaker’s surroundings
-“A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.” Is the cab-horse really “lonely” or is the speaker projecting his own feelings onto the animal?
-The haphazard rhymes parallel the speaker’s stream of consciousness remarks
Literary Devices Used
Elegy – A sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet’s meditations upon death or another solemn theme.
Enjambment – The continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next.

6. Preludes (IV)
His soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block, Or trampled by insistent feet At four and five and six o’clock; And short square fingers stuffing pipes, And evening newspapers, and eyes Assured of certain certainties, The conscience of a blackened street Impatient to assume the world. I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing. Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

7. Picture Bibliography
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