Rascal Flatts - These Days - MP3
Collective Soul - Simple - MP3
Cox 10
Works Cited
Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot." American Writers. Eds. A. Walton Litz and Molly Weigel. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. 51-71.
Camden, Raymond. Home Page. 15 April 2003 .
Ellman, Richard. "The First Waste Land." Modern Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 55-66.
Hodgins, Francis, and Kenneth Silverman, eds. "T. S. Eliot." Adventures in American Literature. Orlando: Harcourt, 1985.
Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycroft, eds. Twentieth Century Authors. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1942.
Smith, Grover. "The Structure and Mythical Method of The Waste Land." Modern Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 97-113.
Unger, Leonard. "T. S. Eliot." Encyclopedia Americana. 1989 ed.
Aaron H. Cox
Mrs. Smith
AP English III
14 May 2003
T. S. Eliot and the Waste Land
Author and poet T. S. Eliot was born on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis,
Missouri (Kunitz 420). His full name was Thomas Stearns Eliot, his first and
middle names taken from his mother's maiden name (Camden). Eliot was born
into a prominent family line. He was the second son of Henry Ware Eliot (1841-
1919), named after the famous Unitarian (Kunitz 421). Eliot's father was the
president of the Hydraulic Press Brick Company of St. Louis (Ellman 58). His
mother however was the writer of the family. Charlotte Stearns Eliot (1843-
1930), Eliot's mother, was a descendant of Isaac Stearns, one of the original
settlers of the Bay Colony in 1630 with John Winthrop. Eliot's mother wrote a
biography on William Greenleaf Eliot and "Savonarola", for which Eliot created
the introduction. Eliot's peculiarity may have been the product of his mother's
genetics, who was a daughter of a commission merchant and trader of Boston and
described as "a woman of keen intellectual interests" (Kunitz 421).
Eliot's grandfather was the Reverend William Greenleaf Eliot, D. D. (1811-
1887), the same Eliot his mother wrote of. His grandfather was a graduate of the
Harvard Divinity School in 1834 and established the first Unitarian church and
Washington University in St. Louis, which he refused to have named after him
(Kunitz 420-421). Many other relatives influenced the prestige of Eliot's family,
including Charles W. Eliot, who was a president of Harvard University, and the
Reverend Andrew Eliot, D. D. (1718-1778), who spoke much against
Epicopalianism and though he was elected president at Harvard University,
remained in the pulpit. The Eliot family reputation of religion went so far back
as Cordwainer Andrew Eliot (1627-1704) of Somerset, Boston, who was a
"selectman" and "town clerk", and condemned the Salem witches with one of the
Hawthornes (Kunitz 420).
Though Eliot came from a prominent family his early childhood is vague.
It is known that he spent his first 18 years in St. Louis and that he studied at
Smith Academy at Washington University and spent a year at Milton before
entering Harvard. In 1806 Eliot entered Harvard with a focus on literature. Eliot
read and admired the works of Dante, Dryden, Ezra Pound, Elizabethan writers.
Though highly intelligent, Eliot was an eccentric member of the Harvard student
body. Several classmates of his are quoted as saying Eliot was "extremely
reticent, sensitive, and reserved" and "violently eclectic, never popular." His
main interests are listed as writing, lectures, smoking a pipe alone, and practicing
proper speech. One classmate described Eliot, saying "his remarks were quiet,
witty, precise, but not precious. He smoked a pipe, liked to be alone, carefully
avoided slang, and dressed with the studied carelessness of a dandy" (Kunitz 421).
Eliot may have certainly been a boring associate in school, but he was
forever a busy-body. He was admitted to both Harvard literary clubs, the Stylus
and the Signet. He wrote for the "Harvard Advocate" from 1907 to 1910, and
edited the same from 1909 to 1910. And associate is credited with identifying
Eliot as "English in everything but accent and citizenship", not knowing the later
irony of his words. Starting in 1908, Eliot read the works of Corbiere,
Baudelaire, Symon's The Symbolist Movement In Literature, and the works of the
French poet Jules LaForge, his primary influence in his writing (Kunitz 421).
In 1909 Eliot began to write more noticeable works, such as his
"Conversation Galante", which was called "imitations of or adaptations from
LaForge". From 1909 to 1910 Eliot wrote "Portrait of a Lady" and began one of
his most famous works on Prufrock, which he completed in 1911. In 1910 Eliot
was elected "Class Odist" and wrote an "Ode" for the "Harvard Advocate" in its
June 24, 1910 issue. It was also that same year in which Eliot would graduate
Harvard. Although Eliot graduated at the top of his class alongside John Reed,
Heywood Brown, Hamilton Fish, Jr., Walter Lippman, and Suart Chase, he did
not receive his Ph. D. His undergraduate studies had taken him three years, and
he achieved his M. A. in his fourth. His final papers had made the difference in
keeping him from his doctorate. He wrote about F. H. Bradley and Meinong's
Gegenstandstheorie. His papers were said to only have been accepted because they
were "unreadable" (Kunitz 421).
After graduation from Harvard, Eliot received a scholarship to study
abroad, and so he traveled to France and to Germany from 1910 to 1911
(Camden). When World War One became and inevitability Eliot moved to
Merton College at Oxford where he would study philosophy (Kunitz 421). While
there he would also write short satirical poems and from 1911-1914, during which
he returned to Harvard, worked on his thesis on the philosophy of Francis Herbert
Bradley (Camden).
In 1915 Eliot makes a move to London, England, where he would write
and publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in June of that same year
(Camden). A month later in July (Camden) Eliot married his first wife Miss
Vivienne Haigh-Wood of London (Kunitz 421). A close friend of the couple,
Bertrand Russell, wrote the following in a letter in July of 1915, describing a
dinner with the Eliots:
I expected her to be terrible, from his mysteriousness; but she was not so
bad. She is light, a little vulgar, adventurous, full of life-an artist I think he
said, but I should have thought her an actress. He is exquisite and listless;
she says she married him to stimulate him, but she find she can't do it.
Obviously he married her in order to be stimulated. I think she will soon
be tired of him. He is ashamed of his marriage, and very grateful if one is
kind to her. (Ellman 58)
Russell goes on to say that "she is a person who lives on a knife-edge, and will
end as a criminal or a saint-I don't know which yet. She has a perfect capacity for
both" (Ellman 59). Despite his strange marriage, Eliot continued to work, and
from 1915-1916 he completed his thesis on Bradley while teaching and criticizing
books in London. In 1917, Eliot published another work in his Prufrock series,
"Prufrock and Other Observations" (Camden). From 1917-1920 Eliot was the
assistant editor of the "Egoist" (Kunitz 421) and by 1920 he finished his collection
of French quatrains, "Gerontion".
In 1921, Eliot hit an all-time low when he was visited by his mother and
sister Marion in the summer. Vivienne's health was failing and the two were in
financial trouble, causing Eliot to have a nervous breakdown. Eliot took a three-
month break at Margate and a sanitarium at Lausanne (Bush 60). After finally
recovering, Eliot went back to work. From 1921-1922 Eliot worked as a
correspondent for the "Dial" and as a correspondent fro the "Revue Francaise" in
1922 (Camden). In 1922 he created the "Criterion" which would circulate widely
for 17 years without great success. Eliot also worked as editor for Faber & Faber
to pay the bills while running the "Criterion" (Kunitz 422).
From 1922 to the 1940's Eliot wrote numerous minor plays and poems,
including "The Rock" (1934), which he wrote to raise money for building
churches, and the play "Murder in the Cathedral" (1935) for the Canterbury
Festival. Beginning in 1947, Eliot faced a series of highs and lows. His wife
Vivienne died of illness in 1947. Then in 1948 he was awarded the Order of
Merit from King George VI and received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was
then confirmed by the Church of England and given British citizenship. In 1957,
Eliot married his second wife, Valerie Fletcher, about whom little is known
(Camden). In 1964 Eliot is awarded the American Medal of Freedom. Finally,
on January 4, 1965, Thomas Stearns Eliot died (Camden).
While T. S. Eliot wrote an innumerable amount of poems, short stories,
essays, and plays, one work remains his most influential and popular work.
Eliot's "The Waste Land" first appeared in publication in the October of 1922
issue of the "Criterion" and the November of 1922 issue of the "Dial" (Kunitz
421). His first version was exceedingly long, and Ezra Pound advised him to
make several omissions, declaring that Eliot had "written the longest poem in the
English langwidge. Don't try to bust all records by prolonging it three pages
further" (Ellman 57). In the end "The Waste Land was left as a 434 line poem
describing "the barrenness of a standardized civilization". Despite length, "The
Waste Land" was translated into half a dozen languages. Three versions were
most popular, including the French by poet Jean De Menasce, the German by
critic Ernst-Robert Curtius, and the Spanish by Angel Flores (Kunitz 421).
The critics of "The Waste Land" all had different things to say about Eliot's
greatest work. One said that it "may be considered a summation of all literary
techniques" from his earlier influences (Kunitz). Another, Megror, said that "The
Waste Land" was "the greatest hoax of the century" (Kunitz 421). To others, it
was almost too cryptic and confusing to understand. Grover called it "a
multilayered mixture of allusions and literary thefts...whirlpool...of mythic
concentration" (Smith 112). He also said that "The Waste Land" was one of
Eliot's "adaptations of traditional myth, especially the Grail Legend" (Smith 118).
The poem "fails to combine its parts" and "has no unified structure" because it is
"a poem consisting only of scenes or vignettes or flashes of imagery". "The
Waste Land" was not dull, even though it was called "a mere assemblage" with
"two kinds of unity, the one psychological, the other cultural or mythic". It has
been said that "at all stages ["The Waste Land"] was made of a great variety of
moments of thought and feeling" (Smith 97).
Many believe that Eliot's "The Waste Land" was a reflection upon the
characteristics and tragedies of his life and the modern world as he saw it. It is
compared to Ralph Waldo Emerson's transcendental style, where an insight into
humanity results in absolute disgust for it, or in Eliot's case, modern life (Bush
62). Eliot more or less said that "The Waste Land" was the story of his life, as he
had called poetry "a means to direct emotion rather than let it spill" and said that
his poems were "consequent upon his experiences" (Ellman 57). He went on to
describe "The Waste Land" as "the tragedy of the not naturally bad
but...undeveloped nature...suddenly trapped in the inexorable toils of
morality...and forced to take the consequences of an act which it had planned
light-heartedly" (Bush 62).
One critic said the following of the 434 line 'puzzle poem':
After a thousand explanations, "The Waste Land" is no longer a puzzle
poem, except for the puzzle of choosing among various solutions. To be
penetrable is not, however, to be predictable. The sweep and strangeness
with which Eliot delineated despair resists temptations to patronize Old
Possum as Old Hat. Particular discontinuities continue to surprise even if
the idea of discontinuous form-to which Eliot never quite subscribed and
which he was to forsake-is now almost as familiar as its sober counterpart."
(Ellman 55)
The 'puzzle poem', to those who could understand it, was a great literary feat.
Kunitz called it "a foundation stone and one of the most influential works not only
of contemporary American and English but of world literature" (Kunitz 421).
Perhaps his work was not all for naught.
Event 71 Homework Aaron Cox
Gods of the sea and sky ? what is left except for prayer? ?
I beg you not to let the frame of our ship be shattered.
Unhappy me, what mountains of water roll!
You would think they would touch the highest stars.
5 What abysses go below the yawning flood!
Now you would think they?d touch the black Tartarus.
Now wherever I look, there is nothing, either water or air,
here timid waves, there a threatening cloud,
Coming between the roar and sounding of the winds.
10 None, of the various winds, know what lord to obey.
The helmsman doesn?t know what to avoid nor steer
To find: baffling even his great skills with evil.
Surely we are doomed, nor is there hope for safety,
And while I say these words, waves wash over my face.
(Tristia 1.2.1-34)
15 If anyone there still remembers the Naso,
And my name is left in my city,
May I be placed beneath the stars not touching the sea
my life is in the middle of barbarians.
20 The Sarmatians surround me, a wild tribe, the Bessi and the Getae,
The names of whom are not worthy of my wit!
While the warm wind still blows, we are defended by the river Hister in the middle:
It defends us from war with waves.
(Tristia 3.10.1-8)
And when dark winter shows its icy face,
and the earth is white with marbled frost,
when Boreas and the snow constrain life under the Bears,
those tribes must be hard-pressed by the shivering sky.
Snow falls, and, once fallen, no rain or sunlight melts it,
since the north wind, freezing, makes it permanent.
So another fall comes before the first has melted,
and in many parts it lingers there two years.
The power of Aquilo?s northern gales is such
it razes high towers, and blows away the roofs.
Men keep out the dreadful cold with sewn trousers
and furs: the face alone appears of the whole body.
Often their hair tinkles with hanging icicles,
and their beards gleam white with a coat of frost.
(Tristia 3.10.9-22)
Wine stands exposed, holding the shape of the jar,
and they don?t drink draughts of mead, but frozen lumps.
Shall I speak of solid rivers, frozen by cold,
and water dug out brittle from the pools?
The Danube itself, no narrower than lotus-bearing Nile,
mingling with deep water through many mouths,
congeals, the winds hardening its dark flow,
and winds its way to the sea below the ice:
Feet cross now, where boats went before,
and horses? hooves beat on waters hard with cold:
and across this new bridge over the sliding flood
barbarous wagons are pulled by Sarmatian oxen.
I?ll scarcely be believed, but since there?s no prize
for deceit, the witness should be given due credit:
I?ve seen the vast waters frozen with ice,
a slippery shell gripping the unmoving deep.
Seeing was not enough: I walked the frozen sea,
dry-shod, with the surface under my feet.
If such waters had once been yours, Leander,
those straits would not be guilty of your death.
Since the dolphins can?t hurl themselves into the air,
harsh winter holds them back if they try:
and though Boreas roars and thrashes his wings,
there?s no wave on the besieged waters.
The ships stand locked in frozen marble,
and no oar can cut the solid wave.
I?ve seen fish stuck fast held by the ice,
and some of them were alive even then.
(Tristia 3.10.25-50, abridged)
as soon as the Danube?s levelled by dry winds,
the barbarian host attack on swift horses:
strong in horses and strong in far-flung arrows
laying waste the neighbouring lands far and wide.
Some men flee: and, with their fields unguarded,
their undefended wealth is plundered,
the scant wealth of the country, herds
and creaking carts, whatever a poor farmer has.
Some, hands tied, are driven off as captives,
looking back in vain at their farms and homes.
some die wretchedly pierced by barbed arrows,
since there?s a touch of venom on the flying steel.
They destroy what they can?t carry, or lead away,
and enemy flames burn the innocent houses.
(Tristia 3.10.53-66, abridged)
55 And then when there is peace, there is trembling with the fear of war,
And no man is with down-pressed plowshare.
Either seen or is a place feared, when not seen, by enemies;
The land lies idle in unbroken neglect.
You may see without leaves, without trees, the fields:
60 A place where no man fortunate should be!
Although far and wide the world is revealed,
This land is found for my punishment.
(Tristia 3.10.67-78, abridged)
If you were wondering the cause of mhy letters
Written by another hand, I was ill.
65 Ill in an unknown region of the world,
And doubting I should ever be well again.
Neither have I gotten used to the climate, nor have we become accustomed to the water,
And I don?t know how to explain the land.
There is no satisfactory home, nor usable food here,
70 No one, as Apollo who may relieve my illness,
There is no acquaintence, Nor anyone to slowly pass,
The time more quickly, as a friend.
I lie extremely ill amongst the population,
And my mind is affected, with those not here.
75 And all of them come to my mind, but you conquer all, sharing,
It is you who occupies more than half my thoughts.
Absent from this place, my voice speaks your name alone;
No nights comes to me without you, no days.
(Tristia 3.3.1-18)
I keep busy my mind to cheat my sorrows,
80 I try to cheat my cares with words.
What else am I able to do alone on this deserted strand,
What else to try so bad of ills?
If I look at the place, the place is unlovely, than which
Nothing can be in this world can be more sad;
85 Or at the men, they aren?t worth the name of man,
They are wilder than wolves in their savageness.
A few traces exist of the Greek language,
Though it is barbaric from Getic sounds.
There is not one of the population, who by chance
90 Could utter in Latin any colloquial language at all.
I am the famous bard of Rome ? forgive me, Muses! ?
Forced to speak mostly Sarmatican.
(Tristia 5.7.39-56, abridged)
Event 72 Homework Aaron Cox Term Paper Outline
Ovid
Theme: Love
Thesis: Ovid's poetic focus was on the theme of love, which he used to succeed in life and leave his mark in history as a leading Roman writer and classical figure, despite the fact that it may have caused his own emotional and physical downfall.
I. Ovid started his younger years and adult life devoted to the ?fast life? of Rome.
a. Ovid was born into a wealthy equestrian family in Sulmo, in central Italy, and guided toward a career in law.
b. Shortly after beginning his legal career Ovid turned from small posts to writing poetry.
c. Ovid was not a part of the 'inner circle' of Augustan poets associated with Maecenas.
d. Ovid joined the ?fast? crowd with the emperor?s daughter Julia.
II. The Amores
a. The Amores are a collection of erotic poems about Corinna.
b. Examples of the poems show that Ovid cared little in the true sense for Corinna but sought more to cleverly gain a sexual relationship with her.
A. Your essay will be 5 pages in length at minimum with at least 200 words per page or 1,000 words overall. You must use several Latin references from the author's works (these references do not count for essay length). You must have a bibliography of references used.
http://www.island-of-freedom.com/OVID.HTM
http://duke.usask.ca/~porterj/CourseNotes/OvidNotes.html
