T_S_Eliot

Area of Study Essay DUE TUESDAY 10TH AUGUST 2010 What key issues have you explored in you area of study (power)' Responsibly exercising power means the individual must be aware of the potential outcomes that can result from it TEXT USED -Kill the possum -The road not taken by Robert frost T.S Eliot 1. Write a one page biography of T.S Eliot’s life. Include his personal history, as well as his significant works In a letter to Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote, "I am very dependent upon women (I mean female society)."[13] Less than four months later, Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambridge governess. They were married at Hampstead Register Office on June 26, 1915.[14] After a short visit alone to his family in the United States, Eliot returned to London and took several teaching jobs, such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. 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.[15] In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."[ By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932-1933 academic year, he accepted and left Vivienne in England. Upon his return, he arranged for a formal separation from her, avoiding all but one meeting with her between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. Vivienne was committed to the Northumberland House mental hospital, Stoke Newington, in 1938, and remained there until she died. Although Eliot was still legally her husband, he never visited her.[22] From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat with his friend John Davy Hayward, who gathered and archived Eliot's papers, styling himself "Keeper of the Eliot Archive."[23] Hayward also collected Eliot's pre-Prufrock verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written in Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's papers, which he bequeathed to King's College, Cambridge in 1965. On January 10, 1957, Eliot at the age of 68 married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, who was 32. In contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. They kept their wedding secret; the ceremony was held in a church at 6.15 a.m. with virtually no one in attendance other than his wife's parents. Since Eliot's death, Valerie has dedicated her time to preserving his legacy; she has edited and annotated The Letters of T. S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land. In the early 1960s, by then in failing health, Eliot worked as an editor for the Wesleyan University Press, seeking new poets in Europe for publication.[24] was born in St. Louis, Missouri, of an old New England family. He was educated at Harvard and did graduate work in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and Merton College, Oxford. He settled in England, where he was for a time a schoolmaster and a bank clerk, and eventually literary editor for the publishing house Faber & Faber, of which he later became a director. He founded and, during the seventeen years of its publication (1922-1939), edited the exclusive and influential literary journal Criterion. In 1927, Eliot became a British citizen and about the same time entered the Anglican Church. 2. What was important about T.S Eliot’s work' How did critics respond to his work' In detail, please explain why. 3. Write one A4 page on each of the following areas explaining the influencing contexts of Eliot’s time: Social Context - Political context- Historical context- 4. What is modernism' What was significant about this period' Genre of art and literature that makes a self-conscious break with previous genres Modernism is a time in our history when traditional values began to change and literature became an outlet for the troubled and rebellious souls. Modernism attempted to rethink science, art, culture, ethics, philosophy and psychology. It attempted to the find new or hidden meaning in the human experience and had to deal with coming to terms with new ideas. Actually, the word ‘modernism’ refers to the characteristics of the modern time and it is a new thought or practice which is called as modernism. Time after the 20th century, the modernism deliberated departure from tradition to modern. Modernism is a artistic and cultural movement with its roots in mid-19th century France, generally defined by new forms of art, architecture, music and literature emerging in the decades before 1914 as artists rejected 19th century artistic traditions such as romanticism. Modernity actually refers to the modern age. It is the changed world, everything is changed from traditional to modern; traditional culture changed to modern culture. After Second World War the concept of modernism developed, reengineering, change, such term aroused. Firstly Europe culture entered in to the modernity, the style, living standard everything changed. We can give the example of fashion; it’s also an important part of the modernity. Modernism changed in every area, such as culture, fashion, industry, business. It gave opportunities to investors, engineers and designers and also provided the employment opportunities. It has a disadvantage too, it made people lazy, I mean people wants more facilities. Computer age made people not more creative. From the above discussion we can summarize the term modernism; 1.As a term modernism refers to an experimental style of visual arts, literature and music. 2. Modernist work are often called avant-grade or unconventional and are preoccupied with formal issued rather than content 3. Several factors that contribute to Modernism are the losses of certainty and optimism in human progress and anxiety about future.