‘[in Elliot] the Disembodied ‘I’ Glides in and Out of Stolen Texts.’ (Maud Ellmann) How Does Eliot Use Intertextuality to Ask Questions About Identity, Authenticity and Authority
‘[In Elliot] the disembodied ‘I’ glides in and out of stolen texts.’ (Maud Ellmann) How does Eliot use intertextuality to ask questions about identity, authenticity and authority
The question of Identity, authenticity and authority transcend throughout T. S. Eliot’s poetry. A master of modernist poetry, Eliot manages to highlight the dramatic changes of culture and society in the early 20th century through employing crippling imagery and an astounding catalogue of intertextual links, questioning the capability of the literature of the modern artists and indeed society itself. T. S. Eliot stated in his notes to The Waste Land and Other Poems that, “no poet, no artist of any kind, has his complete meaning alone.” Eliot emphasised a lack of tradition in the modern culture and to use a phrase from his own work The Waste Land, suggested that we “only know a heap of broken images”; a fragmented picture of past literature, so passive in our acceptance of its existence that we “avoid speech.” Maud Ellmann’s depiction of the ‘I’ in T. S. Eliot’s poetry creates a ghost-like image of a being, drifting without substance or reality between the texts of others. Eliot was a master in highlighting the voids in the human condition in the aftermath of World War One and emphasises our need for self discovery in a time of such disillusionment. In this essay I will attempt to depict how the epitaphs inform the poems The Hollow Man and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock, how the intertextual references present question identity, authenticity and authority and how these terms inform our understanding of the human condition in Modernist Literature. A full analysis of the many facets of Eliot’s poems would require a far more extensive essay, and thus, I will analyse the epitaphs and how they extend throughout the poems in a multitude of intertextual references. Before an analysis can happen however, it is important to address the requirements of the question, which I feel begins
The question of Identity, authenticity and authority transcend throughout T. S. Eliot’s poetry. A master of modernist poetry, Eliot manages to highlight the dramatic changes of culture and society in the early 20th century through employing crippling imagery and an astounding catalogue of intertextual links, questioning the capability of the literature of the modern artists and indeed society itself. T. S. Eliot stated in his notes to The Waste Land and Other Poems that, “no poet, no artist of any kind, has his complete meaning alone.” Eliot emphasised a lack of tradition in the modern culture and to use a phrase from his own work The Waste Land, suggested that we “only know a heap of broken images”; a fragmented picture of past literature, so passive in our acceptance of its existence that we “avoid speech.” Maud Ellmann’s depiction of the ‘I’ in T. S. Eliot’s poetry creates a ghost-like image of a being, drifting without substance or reality between the texts of others. Eliot was a master in highlighting the voids in the human condition in the aftermath of World War One and emphasises our need for self discovery in a time of such disillusionment. In this essay I will attempt to depict how the epitaphs inform the poems The Hollow Man and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock, how the intertextual references present question identity, authenticity and authority and how these terms inform our understanding of the human condition in Modernist Literature. A full analysis of the many facets of Eliot’s poems would require a far more extensive essay, and thus, I will analyse the epitaphs and how they extend throughout the poems in a multitude of intertextual references. Before an analysis can happen however, it is important to address the requirements of the question, which I feel begins
Bibliography: * Scofield, Martin. - T. S. Eliot The Poems, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) * Kristev, Julia * Allen, Graham. - Intertextuality. (Great Britain: Routledge 2000) * Thomas Sternes Eliot, - Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed 27/03/2012 * Gray, Piers. - T. S. Eliot’s Intellectual and poetic development 1909 – 1922, (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982) * Moore, Gene * Eliot, T. S, ed. Valerie Eliot, - “Letter to J. H. Woods (April 21, 1919.)” The Letters of T. S. Eliot, vol. 1. w New York: Harcourt Brace, 1988) -------------------------------------------- [ 1 ]. Scofield, Martin. T. S. Eliot The Poems, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) – (All poetry quotes are from this text.) [ 2 ] [ 3 ]. Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. (Great Britain: Routledge 2000) – p165 [ 4 ] [ 5 ]. Gray, Piers. T. S. Eliot’s Intellectual and poetic development 1909 – 1922, (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982) – p58 [ 6 ] [ 7 ]. Eliot, T. S, ed. Valerie Eliot, “Letter to J. H. Woods (April 21, 1919.)” The Letters of T. S. Eliot, vol. 1. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1988) – p285