outline_us_lit

erary and social traditions for themodern poet.As a critic, Eliot is best rememberedfor his formulation of the“objective correlative,” which hedescribed, in The Sacred Wood, as ameans of expressing emotionthrough “a set of objects, a situation,a chain of events” that wouldbe the “formula” of that particularemotion. Poems such as “The LoveSong of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)embody this approach, when theineffectual, elderly Prufrock thinksto himself that he has “measuredout his life in coffee spoons,”using coffee spoons to reflect ahumdrum existence and a wastedlifetime.The famous beginning of Eliot’s“Prufrock” invites the reader intotawdry alleys that, like modern life,offer no answers to the questionslife poses:Let us go then, you and I,When the evening is spreadout against the skyLike a patient etherized upona table;Let us go, through certain halfdesertedstreets,The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-nightcheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants withoyster-shells:Streets that follow like atedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelmingquestion...Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”ROBERT FROSTPhoto © Kosti Ruohamaa,Black StarLet us go and makeour visit.Similar imagery pervades TheWaste Land (1922), which echoesDante’s Inferno to evoke London’sthronged streets around the time ofWorld War I:Unreal City,Under the brown fog of a winterdawn,A crowd flowed over LondonBridge, so manyI had not thought death hadundone so many... (I, 60-63)The Waste Land’s vision is ultimatelyapocalyptic and worldwide:Cracks and reforms and burstsin the violet airFalling towersJerusalem, Athens, AlexandriaVienna LondonUnreal (V, 373-377)Eliot’s other major poemsinclude “Gerontion” (1920),which uses an elderly manto symbolize the decrepitude ofWestern society; “The Hollow Men”(1925), a moving dirge for the deathof the spirit of contemporary humanity;Ash-Wednesday (1930), inwhich he turns explicitly toward theChurch of England for meaning inhuman life; and Four Quartets(1943), a complex, highly subjective,experimental meditation ontranscendent subjects such astime, the nature of self, and spiritualawareness. His poetry, especially64