Thomas Stearns Eliot, Short Note ( Bullet Points) For PGT English

1. Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on 26 September 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
2. He is one of the leading poets of the Modernist Movement in English literature.
3. Eliot later became a British citizen in 1927.
4. He was educated at Harvard University, the Sorbonne, and Oxford.
5. His poetry reflects spiritual crisis, cultural decay, and search for faith.
6. Eliot worked for Lloyds Bank in London before becoming a publisher.
7. He joined the publishing house Faber and Gwyer (later Faber & Faber).Sh
8. He married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915; the marriage was unhappy.
9. Eliot was deeply influenced by philosophy, especially the works of F.H. Bradley.
10. He was influenced by French Symbolist poets like Baudelaire and Laforgue.
11. His poetry uses allusion, myth, and symbolism extensively.
12. Eliot introduced the concept of the Mythical Method in poetry.
13. His early masterpiece is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
14. This poem shows the theme of alienation and indecision of modern man.
15. The dramatic monologue style is used in Prufrock.
16. His most famous poem is The Waste Land.
17. The Waste Land presents a picture of post–World War I spiritual barrenness.
18. Ezra Pound helped Eliot in editing The Waste Land.
19. The poem is divided into five sections.
20. Use of multiple languages is a feature of The Waste Land.
21. Eliot uses the myth of the Fisher King in The Waste Land.
22. His poem The Hollow Men shows emptiness of modern life.
23. “This is the way the world ends…” is a famous line from The Hollow Men.
24. Eliot wrote the philosophical poem Four Quartets.
25. Four Quartets consists of four long poems.
26. These are Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding.
27. Four Quartets deals with time, eternity, and spiritual salvation.
28. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
29. He also received the Order of Merit from the British government.
30. Eliot wrote important literary criticism.
31. His essay Tradition and the Individual Talent is very influential.
32. In this essay, he talks about the concept of Impersonality in poetry.
33. Eliot believed poetry is not a turning loose of emotions but an escape from emotions.
34. He proposed the idea of the Objective Correlative.
35. This idea appears in his essay Hamlet and His Problems.
36. Objective correlative means expressing emotion through external objects and situations.
37. Eliot also wrote verse dramas.
38. His famous verse drama is Murder in the Cathedral.
39. It is based on the martyrdom of Thomas Becket.
40. Eliot’s poetry often shows religious and Christian themes.
41. He converted to Anglicanism in 1927.
42. Eliot’s later poetry reflects spiritual peace and faith.
43. He used fragmented structure to reflect fragmented modern life.
44. He employed intertextual references from classical and religious texts.
45. His style is intellectual, symbolic, and complex.
46. Eliot influenced many later poets of the 20th century.
47. He redefined the standards of modern poetry and criticism.
48. Eliot died on 4 January 1965 in London.
49. His ashes are buried in East Coker village church.
50.  From England Eliot submitted his thesis on Bradley but did not return to Harvard to take the degree.
51.  By nature, he was shy, rather an introvert. To get rid of his shyness, he took boxing lessons.
52. To come out of the financial difficulties he did the job a school teacher. After leaving this job he joined the foreign department of Lloyds Bank.
53.  His meeting with Ezra Pound in London in 1914 proved to be a turning point.
54.  In 1915, he married Vivienna Haigh, an English girl and settled in London.
55.  From 1917–1919, he worked as the assistant editor of The Egoist.
56.  In 1923, he became the editor of The Criterion.
57. In 1925, he became the director of a new publishing firm Faber and Faber.
58.  In 1927, he became a British citizen.
59.  In 1948, he was given the award of the British Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature.
60.  In 1947, his wife died.
61.  In 1957, he married his private secretary Miss Valerie Fletcher.

 

 

WORKS OF ELIOT

 

* Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917 (This collection includes the important poems like—

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Portrait of a Lady, The Preludes, Rhapsody on a Windy Night, The Boston Evening Transcript, Mr. Apollinax)

 

* Poems of 1920 (Gerontion, Burbank with a Baedeker, Sweeney Erect, A Cooking Egg, Sweeney among the Nightingales)

 

* The Waste Land, 1922 (This collection has five parts—The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water and What the Thunder Said)

 

The Hollow Men, 1925

Ash Wednesday, 1930

Journey of the Magi, 1927

Animula, 1929

Marina, 1930

Choruses from ‘The Rock’

Coriolanus

Triumphal March

Sweeney Agonistes

The Four Quartets 1943 (Burnt Norton 1936, East Coker 1940, The Dry Salvages 1941, Little Gidding 1942)

 

DRAMA

 

The Rock, a Pageant Play

Murder in the Cathedral

The Family Reunion

The Cocktail Party

The Confidential Clerk

The Elder Statesman

 

PROSE AND CRITICAL WORKS

 

The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

The Idea of a Christian Society

Notes Towards a Definition of Culture

Selected Essays

On Poetry and Poets

To Criticise the Critic

 

Popular Essays in Criticism are in The Sacred Woods (1920). Some of them are: Tradition and Individual Talent, Poetry and Drama, The Function of Criticism, The English Metaphysical Poets, The Frontiers of Criticism, The Perfect Critic, Hamlet and His Problems

 

Biography: Charles Whibley: A Memoir, 1931