Learning Paths » 5B Interacting
NOTES OF 4TH APRIL 2012
Extract from The Cambridge Introduction to T. S. Eliot
Mr Eliot takes as an ideal model of society Dante’s age because in that period of time people were unified by the same religious ideal.
He compares Dante’s time to his own time to underline the fragmentation of the Modern Age’s society.
In consequence of the fragmented society, culture became fragmented too; whereas the culture shapes the individual, from a fragmented cultural it raised a fragmented human being.
Eliot lives in a society whose values have fallen down; he identifies the social decay aspect and tries to find an artistic form (especially throughout literature and poetry) to convey the fragmentation of society and the feelings coming from it.
The key words for his work are ORDER, IDEAL, TRADITION and MYTH. Throughout them Eliot gives shape, unity and order to the disintegration of values.
The artistic forms resulting from his purpose are the FRAGMENTED POETRY and the DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE.
The poetry style used by T.S. Eliot could be defined as an impersonal poetry, valid for everyone and contrasting with Romantic poetry, which was an individual work expressing feelings and thoughts of one single man.
Otherwise, in Eliot’s opinion poetry has to be the poetry of the human being.