Module B Notes PDF

Preview

Summary

Study Notes on Module B critical study of text, with analysis on T.S. Eliot's poetry....

Description

Module B: Critical Study of Text

T.S. Eliot Poetry

"man is a social being; he is real only because he is social and can realize himself only because it is as social that he realizes himself.”

“But what a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely a reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning-or without forgetting, merely changing.” (T.S. Eliot)

“our civilisation comprehends great variety and complexity, this variety and complexity, playing upon refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.” (T.S. Eliot)

1

Critics  “His poetry is about the difficulty of conceiving anything. Never merely expressive of ideas successfully shaped in the mind, his poems enact the mind’s effort even to form an idea.” (Richard Poirier) 

“Eliot also accepted a criterion of the contemporaneity…that history is, under all the appearance of change, a unity; that the modern is not absolutely new.” (Harvard)

** Prufrock’s alienation and isolation drive him into melancholia, a condition characterised by ‘an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard’, leaving him in a state of exploration of the futility of the mundane. ** Thomas Stearns Eliot’s enduring poetry is indicative of his oeuvre’s distinctive concernment and articulation of knowledge and truth. Thesis Development Thesis point 

Literature is both derivative and manifest of the ethos which defines a period. Aesthetic engagement with the ideological and moral facets of anthropic patterns helps to develop new definitions of man in his world and the truths of such existence.



Reality exists as a product of perception, and hence, is derivative of belief. Eliot’s self-conscious narration manifests in the ability to dwell in a state of openness and uncertainty. Mimetic quality of art, reflecting the subjective truths of its conception.



Explanation

-

-

-



Eliot’s moralising aesthetic purpose, to suggest an idea of reality, and to invoke individual reassessment.

-

-

2

Negative capability Ability of a composer to place themselves within, or retract themselves from the text Semblance of stability A widened aesthetic distance parallels the uncertainty and alienation of modern society. Mimetic of one’s attempts to interpret and comprehend the abstract world around them. Decay of modern society Fragility of the self as a product of identity. Paradigm of the self – increasing awareness of personal identity as a metaphysical fiction. Rumination (a deep thought) The modernist position creates a certain subjectivity – an either destructively ruminatory self-consciousness, or a liberating maker that frees thought from its limiting material context. ‘Memoria, praeteritorum, bonorum’ –



Distinguishing the subject from the object creates a reality

-

-

-



Eliot suggests reality exists as an approximate construction, essentially practical in its nature. That is, reality is a function of pre-conscious self-interest. Attempts at objectivity merely result in confusion for one must comprehend the internal from the point of view of the external.



Consciousness is not a multiplicity of states, but a pure, undifferentiated duration. In fact, the plurality of conscious states is not observable as bound to individual sentience and in response to abstract impositions.

-

rosy retrospect. The self is defined relationally (in relation to other selves and forms) We come to interpret our own experience as the attention to a world of objects. One only has the capacity to distinguish between lived truths. Blurring between subject and object resonates in subjective interpretation Liminality (quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a right of passage – liminal quality of modernist poetry constructed through fragmentation) (social change) Supraliminal (adequate to provoke a response or induce a sensation) Subliminal (below the threshold of sensation of consciousness – perceived by or affecting someone’s mind without being aware of it.)

Textual integrity Ability to transcend material influences and context. Reactionary nature of the self

Theory Theory Jean-Paul Sartre

3

Explanation - Existentialism – ‘the absurdity of the world’ - To be aware of existence as it is when it has been stripped of the prejudices and stabilising assumptions lent to us by routine. - Freedom of man (Eliot seeks to exploit this by employing the flaneur figure, witnessing society extraneously.) - In recognising the freedoms of man, he will confront the ‘angoisse’ (anguish) of existence – everything is possible as nothing has any Godgiven or pre-ordained purpose. - Man should not live in ‘bad faith’ – a state when we tells ourselves have to be a certain way. (conformity) - Believed capitalism to be a system designed to create a sense of necessity, which doesn’t exist in reality. (dictates action) - Fluidity of existence - Belief that life is not inherently meaningful and does not have any pre-

Aristotelian dialectics

-

-

Solipsism

-

ordained logic ‘existence precedes essence’ Dialectic and rhetoric as intellectual martial arts Morality, imposed belief Distinction between demonstration and dialectical reasoning as the distinction between reasoning which proceeds. Premises which are true and primary or of such a kind that we have derived our original knowledge of them from premises which are primary and true. Reasoning which reasons from generally accepted opinions Limitations of logic Aristotle intends to teach one how to think

Extreme form of subjective idealism that denies that the human mind has any valid ground for believing in the existence of anything but itself.

“I cannot transcend experience, and experience must be my experience. From this follows that nothing beyond myself exists, for what is experience is the self’s state.” Teleology

-

Relating to or involving the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purposes they serve rather than of the cause of which they arise. Relating to the doctrine of design in the material world. Finality – a reason or explanation of something as a function of its end, purpose or goal E.g. social being, defined by one’s purpose imbued – man is defined in relation to the meaning that religion imposes upon him – paradigm of the self.

Textual Integrity         

  

Deliberate elimination of all merely connective and transitional passages, building up the tonal pattern of meaning through the immediate juxtaposition of images without overt explanation. Moral dialogism (offends moral sensibilities) (dialectics of morality) Subjunctive mood (used to explore conditional or imaginary situations) Cynicism Eliot’s moralising dialectic substantiates his poetic transition. – successively deeper and deeper penetration of the world of psychological donnees Intellectual and moral milieu Poetical sensibilities Morally sonorous rhetoric The spiritual states with which the poetry is concerned are each conceived dynamically, not as a tension: as a stasis comprehending a tension: as a tug of antitheses. Each such state is dramatically defined antitheses it includes birth and death, redemption light and darkness, rest and movement. These antitheses are both poetic symbols and moral modes. Desiccated, tentative, poignant, ignobility Use of allusions and multiple associations – futility of progression evidenced in allusion. Accumulation of brief, episodic snapshots

Influences

4

   

Learned from the French symbolists how an image could be precise in what it referred to physically and at the same time endlessly suggestive in the meanings it set due to its relationships with other images. From the metaphysical poets: ability to combine wit and passion (allusiveness, irony) Jacobean Dramatists: flexible blank verse, overtones of colloquial verse Romantic element to his poetry (evocative and suggestive) is combined with a dry allusiveness and a colloquial element.

Context      

5

Challenged the ego-based Romanticism of the age. Poetry became more than self-expression, more impersonal. Eliot believed the poet must concentrate on a “practical sense of realities” rather than being rapt by their own experiences. Tangles of liberalism, cultivation of the ego and pervasive cynicism – historical narrative of decline “disassociation of sensibility” – separation of intellect, emotion and spiritual existence driven by the Renaissance. Undermines the progressionist view of history with the belief that technology should not be mistaken for the moral or intellectual improvement of human beings. (subversion to dominant liberalism)

Preludes – 1917       

Presage to change or development Stagnation Desolation of the modern reality. Destruction of the individual identity Explores a conflict between naturaistic intellect and the futility of modern thought. Affirms the need for faith over spiritual vacillation Ontological fervour/angst/apprehension

Quote “With the other masquerades/ that time resumes”

Technique

“You dozed, and watched the night revealing/ the thousand sordid images/ of which your soul was constituted”

-

“Infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing” “Assured of certain certainties” -

2nd person

Allusion Tautology Paradox

“Gathering fuel in vacant lots”

“one thinks of all the hands/ that are raising dingy shades/ in a thousand furnished rooms”

6

Synecdoche

Analysis - Concerns ideas of conformity - Division between the public and the private self (imposition of socio-cultural norms.) - Oblivion - Falsity, ambiguity - Identity as a construct - Flaneur – question of purpose - Indeterminacy of time - Uses disorder of sound to reinforce visual images. - Directionless - Allusion the Christ - captures the predetermined patterns of existence. - Lack of a whole truth - spiritual vacancy and physical decay. - The alienation of the individual among the unthinking masses is responsible for the sordid city life. - Idea that the realities of life continue as ideas become outdated. (Satre – existence precedes essence, Descartes – Cogito ergo sum) - Universalises experience - Estranged identity - Disconnect from society - Propagates a listless mood - Synecdoche emulates fragmentation of

“broken blinds and chimney pots.” “His soul stretched tight across the skies/That fade behind a city block.”

-

modern society Subverts Romantic view of the individual to the society. Those living within only see fragments of the truth. Spirituality and sense of self is lost and destroyed by urban life. Struggle for meaning Consumed by the environment

Theme - Subverts the perception of progressive technology given to the Victorian era - Captures the cyclical monotony existing in a 24-hour day (purposelessness) - Eliot adopts the role of the flaneur, going inside the mind of modern man. - Poet and the reader become representative of the masses. - Synecdoche culminates in a person (capacity of false truths to construct a perceptible reality) - Contrast between the Romantic opening and the banal actions which follow - Condemnation of the urban life plays upon the Victorian trope of the city. - The ending has an unresolved ambiguity and irony Form/Structure/Technical analysis - Rhyme scheme creates parallelism, absence seeks meaning (major function of the rhyme scheme is helping link what appears to be random observations into an area of association.) - The poem is seemingly made up of disparate images, reflecting the activities and perceptions of the flaneur. (collects perceptions of society through his own subjective perception) - The putative objectivity and detachment of the speaker are deceptive. - Whilst mostly traditional, Eliot undermines the structure in subtle ways to highlight certain ideas of disillusionment. The rhyme scheme in addition can never fully eventuate to provide a sense of certainty. - Caesura creates fragmentation of the sentence - Second person denotes ambiguity surrounding spiritual aesthetic and consciousness. - Images on ceiling in prelude 3 progress to his soul spread across the sky in prelude 4 representing the capacity in individuals to be consumed by the zeitgeist. (Christ-like depiction) - Nocturne: sounds of the city, threatening and sordid (musicality of the city night) - Structured on a 24-hour day, capturing the cyclic monotony and meaningless mechanic modus operandi that society endures. Key Idea - The abstract and real life of perception - Material aesthetic and spiritual wasteland

7

Rhapsody on a Windy Night – 1911     

Explores the negative consequences of stasis and inaction instigated by self-abrogation that creates an unsettling tension within society, unable to answer the ‘overwhelming question.’ Obscure and enigmatic Generalized logic of dreamwork The objective correlative evokes an atmosphere and state of mind to an almost painful sensitivity of modern life. Anxious poem

Theme - Melancholic lamentation over loss and fragmentation - Explores the complexities of memory, in particular, Henri Bergson’s conceptions of ‘pure’ (image memory – impressions, feelings – prostitute, child) and ‘mathematical’ (habitual memory) time. - Pure memory, recall of impressions/images – feelings and experience (prostitute, child, cat, rusted spring…) - Habitual memory – learnt through repetition of non-reflective, automatic/mechanical actions. (cat eating the rancid butter, child stealing the. Toy, climbing the stairs, opening the door, brushing teeth…) - the collateral effect of initiatives which lead to a loss of self-worth and meaning.

Form/Structure/Technical analysis - Bears hallmarks of modernist literature: a rejection of strict form, emphasis on the subjective experience, unreliable irrational narrator. - The image of the child (discomforting of Romantic and Modernist tropes of the child) - Deliberate elimination of all transitional or connective passages. Building up of the pattern of meaning through the immediate juxtaposition of images without overt explanation - Repetitive structures create confusion (imitates the process of reflection and memory) - Poetic structure of time progression reveals that with the passing of time, no resolution or growth is achieved. Key Idea - Purer abstract truth is revealed through the dissolving of memory (offers insight)

Quote “whispering lunar incantations/dissolve the floors of memory and all its

8

Technique - Metaphor

Analysis - Breaking down of the ego into an analysis of the id. - Uncertainty/meaning

clear relations, its divisions and precisions.” “The last twist of the knife.”

-

Hyperbolic anticlimax

-

“I could see nothing behind that child’s eye”

“the memory throws high and dry/a crowd of twisted things.”

-

-

Metaphor

Leitmotif

-

-

-

Metaphor

“Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.” “Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left/Hard and curled and ready to snap.”

Inversion

-

Metaphor

-

“Twists a paper rose.”

-

“Memory!/You have the key/ …Mount.”

-

“The lamp sputtered.”

-

Truncated/ automated imperative Personificatio n

-

-

9

Realisation and enunciation of decay Blurring of subject and object to represent the futility of modern man. Final moment of self-examination before one returns to the monotony of daily life. Disrupts the Romantic trope of the child (innocence and freedom) to reflect that felt lost to time. Nature versus nurture dichotomy Conformity/conditioning Conformity Memory is a construct of these random and disjointed entities – fragments and plurality of meaning. Strain of reality Repetition of ‘twist’ Manmade replication of the natural Suggests anxiousness Equates life with death Corrosion is the only thing that is not ephemeral. Builds a sense of degradation in the blurring between subject and object. The rusted spring image foregrounds the industrial city environment the poem inhabits. Ambiguity (ability to unlock memory, ability to lock memories away) Challenge of conformity. Distorts the familiar sense of rational judgement thus portraying that certainty is subjective. Suggests loneliness.

The Hollow Men – 1925 -

-

Content, structure, and language which reflect the paradigmatic shifts in ways of thinking in modernism Shifts within the poem reflective of Eliot’s changing understanding of the world. Epistemological crises/ Dilemmas of belief/Ontological stasis Spiritual inadequacy or religious impotence Evaluation and critique of modernity – found it to be lacking Selfhood and identity with a psychoanalytic focus As a modernist, Eliot moved towards more complex representations of experience, using devices such as symbolism, juxtaposition and fragmentation, motif and allusion to present experience and being as layered and complex. Exposed the angst, uncertainty and psychological challenges of the modernist era, using the subconscious as a conduit for meaning. Vacancy contrasts with plenitude

Theme - The hollow men are defined by their inaction – reflects Eliot’s stance on the ontological stasis of society. - The Hollow men expresses the disillusionment with the ‘modern’ world directly with a sense of nihilism and hopelessness - The poem exists in a framework of inevitability, beginning and ending both at a place of death, the ultimate threshold of human existence. This threshold is embodied in the reference to ‘death’s other kingdom’, juxtaposed against ‘death’s dream kingdom’, the former being the threshold itself and the latter, man’s perception of it. In this sense, Eliot posits that all life is liminal – transitory as we fruitlessly engage in a search for meaning. Form/Structure/Technical Analysis - Epigraphs frame the poem conceptually - Vast intertextual references (Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, The Litany of the Blessed Virgin, The Mulberry Bush Nursery Rhyme, The Lord’s Prayer.) - Engages with liminality on a textual, structural and philosophical level - Aesthetic engagement with social and political despair.

“the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.” (extract from Heart of Darkness) Quote

10

Technique

Analysis

“shape without form, shade without colour.”

“we are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men.” “this is how the world ends/not with a bang but a whimper.”

-

-

Allusion Paradox

-

“life is very long”

“For thine is the kingdom/For thine is/Life is”

-

-

Intertextuality

Allusion Aposiopesis Caesura

-

“between the idea and the reality…/falls the shadow.”

...