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Varied critical perspectives on Eliot's poetry.
An article giving insights into Eliot's earlier life and the focus of his poetry.
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Who is T.S. Eliot?
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in the United States of America in 1888. He became an essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic, social critic and "one of the twentieth century's major poets". In 1914 he moved to England and settled there, becoming a British subject. He died in 1965.
While living in London, Eliot was befriended by Ezra Pound who realised the brilliance of his poetry and helped him get published. His first book of poetry was published in 1917 "and established him as a leading poet of the avant-garde". For the next 30 years, Eliot was noted as "the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world". Eliot was influenced by the metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century, such as John Donne and the nineteenth century French symbolist poets like Baudelaire. He adapted their techniques and ideas to the subject matter of his modern world to create radical new poetry. His poems express Post World War I disillusionment with the values and conventions of the Victorian era. |