美国文学-T.S.Eliot.ppt

单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,*,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,(,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。,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”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.,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 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,earning 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 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 dont 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 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 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,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 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 Esm Valerie Fletcher,who was 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,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.,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 Prufrock,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 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 most famous work,written when he was 34,Contents,1.,Assessment,2.,Synopsis:Five sections,3.,Two allusions,4.,Theme,5.,Language&Form,6.,Symbolic meaning of“waste land”,1.,Assessment,The Waste Land,Eliots,most important,single poem,has been hailed as a l,andmark,and a,model,of the 20th-century English poetry,comparable to Wordsworths,Lyrical Ballads.,expressed his horror at the spiritual turmoil of modern Europe.,On one level it describes,cultural and spiritual crisis,reflected in its use of,fragmentation,and,discontinuity,.,“NAM,sibyllam quidem Cuimis eg ipse oculis,meis vidi in ampulla pendere,，,et cum illi pueri dicerent:,;repondebat illa:,.”,For Ezra Pound,il 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 sections,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 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,l,sterail,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 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“April 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 and 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,Eliot 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 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 at 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 contemporary 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 of 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,Sailor 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.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 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 the 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 replacement 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 and 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 frustration in a meaningless and boring world,5.,Language&Form,modernist poetry,irregular verse,at times free,at times reminiscent of the blank verse of Eliots plays,English original with passages in other languages,a series of fragmentary,dramatic monologues,a dense chorus of voices and culture historical quotations,that fade one into another,At Ezra Pounds suggestion,the poem was reduced to half the length of earlier drafts(the poem bears a dedication acknowledging Pound as il miglior fabbro,“the better craftsman”),complex scholarly annotations:,Special credit is given to the work of,the anthropologist James Frazer,The Golden Bough,Jessie Westons treatment of the Grail legends,From Ritual to Romance,6.,Symbolic meaning of“waste land”,The“waste land”in the poem as,1.modern culture having drifted away from its spiritual roots,2.trope(,比喻,)of destructive repetition controlling human history,3.loss of touch with cycles of life and nature,4.images of,desolation,sterility,dryness,waste,5.image of a society that feeds upon itself and also lies mired in its own waste.,social significance,The Waste Land,is a poem concerned with the,spiritual breakup of a modem civilization,in which human life has lost its meaning,significance and purpose.,The poem has developed a whole set of,historical,cultural,and,religious,themes.,It is often regarded as being primarily a reflection of the 20th-century peoples,disillusionment and frustration in a sterile,(,贫瘠的）,and futile,(,无用的,),society,.,3.,The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock,1.The Work,2.The characteristics,3.Theme,started in 1910,published in Chicago in 1915,the poem that made his name,regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement,LET us go then,you and I,When the evening is spread out against the sky,Like a patient etherised upon a table;,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:Dramatic 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 so 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.,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 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 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-impor