Modernism: T.S. Eliot

The modernist movement in literature is one of the most important movements due to its dedication to modern life and reality of the time. The movement happened during the late 19^th and early 20^th century in accordance with the Great Depression. During this time the world was getting smaller and people realized how insignificant they were compared to the world. Literature of the time focuses on this alienated feeling and uncertainty. It also focuses on the breakdown of stability as is what happened in the Great Depression and during the World Wars. Modernist works tend to use a lot of allusions or references to something by implication in their works. One great poet of the time was T.S. Eliot. He was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic.

T.S. Eliot was a Harvard man, an Oxford man, so in general, an educated man. He got his name going in literary circles with his poem called The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. It was considered a masterpiece and T.S. Eliot was officially a significant man of the twentieth century. He proceeded to write other great modernist pieces such as the Hollow Men which people still analyze and study today. Eliot was destined to be great. As a young child he showed off his first poem and it was immediately published in a local newspaper. This trend continued throughout his career. In 1948 he obtained a Nobel Prize in literature and that toped his literary career. They say that T.S. Eliot found his inspiration in the book called The Symbolist Movement in Literature by Arthur Symon. Eliot found this book in the Harvard library and it changed the way he looked at his literature. The poetry of Jules Laforge was in this book and the voice that the poems had took Eliot by the heart. Later when Eliot did a post-graduate program in England, he met his wife and settled in Europe. He furthered his modernization during the war and his poetry was becoming better and better. However, he did not publish many poems compared to other remarkable poets. But his poems were so incredible that the few that came out, came out as great pieces of literature. In the Hollow Men, one can see where T.S. Eliot allowed his faith to come into his literature. The Hollow Men is one of his great pieces ever. T.S. Eliot had many great works and overtime his life modernized his work and his poetry modernized literature.

URL used:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/life.htm