Linguistic Analyses of Eliot's Poems
Abstract
Thomas Stern Eliot (1888-1965) is one of the important poets and the most influential critics of English literature. He attempts to re-educate his readers through the use of languages and various other techniques. Many differences in interpretation exist for Eliot’s complex poetry. In this discussion I shall be examining Eliot 's use of a range of linguistic devices. The discussion will focus on how T. S. Eliot employs the medium of language to parallel and reflect his observation of the recurring and repetitive patterns of the life and death process. This paper evaluates the complex linguistic structure of The Waste Land, The Hallow Man, and The Four Quartets.
Introduction The controversy whether or not poetic language is different from common everyday language started with I.A. Richards’s determining book, principal of Literary Criticism (1930), wherein he mentions two use of language. He argues that a statement is used either as a reference to a cause, true or false, or for the sake of producing emotional attitude. The former he calls the scientific use of language and the latter the emotive. He considers poetry as the supreme form of emotive use of language. Different norms operate in a social and poetic discourse. Deviation from the established norms of a linguistic system is not necessarily a requirement for poetic effect. Various linguistic items form an organic whole within the main body of a poem as these items have meaning within the broader context of the poem. So, the poetic use of language is quite different from the social use because in the former the sound effects, such as assonance, alliteration, rhyme, meter, and even the onomatopoeic expressions are combined with lexical and syntactic arrangement to establish a specific code, whereas the later does not require all these delicacies for the transfer of message. T.S. Eliot’s choice of exotic words, the argot, and slang or vernacular words
Thomas Stern Eliot (1888-1965) is one of the important poets and the most influential critics of English literature. He attempts to re-educate his readers through the use of languages and various other techniques. Many differences in interpretation exist for Eliot’s complex poetry. In this discussion I shall be examining Eliot 's use of a range of linguistic devices. The discussion will focus on how T. S. Eliot employs the medium of language to parallel and reflect his observation of the recurring and repetitive patterns of the life and death process. This paper evaluates the complex linguistic structure of The Waste Land, The Hallow Man, and The Four Quartets.
Introduction The controversy whether or not poetic language is different from common everyday language started with I.A. Richards’s determining book, principal of Literary Criticism (1930), wherein he mentions two use of language. He argues that a statement is used either as a reference to a cause, true or false, or for the sake of producing emotional attitude. The former he calls the scientific use of language and the latter the emotive. He considers poetry as the supreme form of emotive use of language. Different norms operate in a social and poetic discourse. Deviation from the established norms of a linguistic system is not necessarily a requirement for poetic effect. Various linguistic items form an organic whole within the main body of a poem as these items have meaning within the broader context of the poem. So, the poetic use of language is quite different from the social use because in the former the sound effects, such as assonance, alliteration, rhyme, meter, and even the onomatopoeic expressions are combined with lexical and syntactic arrangement to establish a specific code, whereas the later does not require all these delicacies for the transfer of message. T.S. Eliot’s choice of exotic words, the argot, and slang or vernacular words
Bibliography: Conflicts in Consciousness: T.S. Eliot’s Poetry and Criticism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. T. S. Eliot. Four Quartets. London: Faber and Faber. 1986 T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. Williamson, George. A Reader’s Guide to T.S. Eliot: A Poem by Poem Analysis. New York: Octagon Books, 1979.