‘The Hollow Men’ is a poem which succeeds in part because of its suggestive symbolism. T. S. Eliot uses a tight and interrelated group of symbols, including deserts, rats, twilight, fading stars, and the hollow/stuffed men themselves, to summon a decaying civilisation, usually interpreted as representing Europe after the end […]
Tag: T. S. Eliot
The Imagery and Symbolism of ‘Prufrock’
T. S. Eliot’s 1915 poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ is full of mysterious and ambiguous symbols and images, each one loaded with meaning, or, in many cases, multiple meanings. But what are the key images of ‘Prufrock’, and what is notable about Eliot’s use of symbolism? The […]
The Meaning of ‘Poetry Is Not a Turning Loose of Emotion, but an Escape from Emotion’
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the meaning of one of T. S. Eliot’s most famous statements about poetry ‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.’ […]
A Summary and Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’
‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’ is an essay by T. S. Eliot; it began life as an address Eliot gave to the Shakespeare Association on 18 March 1927 before being published on 22 September of that year. Although it is Eliot’s poetry that has endured, and his reputation as […]
The Meaning and Origin of ‘I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Dust’
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the origins of a famous line from The Waste Land Among many haunting lines in T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land, ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’ stands out for its sinister […]