By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The American-born poet, playwright, and critic T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) is one of the most important and influential writers of the twentieth century. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Eliot was educated at Harvard before moving to Britain, where he settled, becoming a UK citizen in 1927.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘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 of the First World War.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
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 dreamlike imagery which is threaded through Eliot’s poem is a big part of the poem’s power, so it’s worth stopping to consider how Eliot loads each of these symbols with significance.
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.’ This statement from T. S. Eliot is one of his most famous critical pronouncements, but what Eliot meant by ‘escape from personality’ in particular has often been misinterpreted. Let’s take a closer look at the essay in which Eliot’s statement appears.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘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 a perceptive and provocative critic has dwindled slightly since the 1920s, this short essay demonstrates the precise qualities that made Eliot such an original and valuable thinker.