Distinctive Qualities
Eliot's fragmented form and disillusioned voice place his poetry within this early 20th-century literary movement.
Modernism / Modernity
"Preludes" is structured in this many numbered sections.
4
Prufrock fears "the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase," showing his dread of this.
being judged / labelled by others
"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes" gives the fog animal-like behaviour, an example of this technique.
Personification
Eliot was awarded this major literary honour in 1948, signalling his significance.
Nobel Prize in Literature
The title "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is an example of this device, since the poem is anything but a romantic love song.
Irony
"The Hollow Men" is structured in this many sections.
5
In "The Hollow Men," this "falls" between the idea and the reality, the motion and the act.
The Shadow
"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" uses this figurative device to suggest a trivial, over-measured life.
Metaphor / Symbolism
Early readers found "Prufrock" startling because it broke from this convention of earlier poetry.
regular rhyme and metre (traditional romantic form)
"Preludes" and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" share this distinctive setting: grimy, anonymous and fragmented.
The modern city.
"Rhapsody on a Windy Night" is organised around these, running from "Twelve o'clock" to "Four o'clock".
Hours of the night / Times
In "Journey of the Magi," the speaker concludes that this Birth was "like Death," a paradox about this experience.
Spiritual transformation (conversion)
The opening of "Preludes," with its "smells of steaks in passageways," relies on this kind of imagery.
Olfactory imagery
The epigraph to "The Hollow Men," "Mistah Kurtz — he dead," comes from this Joseph Conrad novella.
Heart of Darkness
Eliot's pairing of trivial images (coffee spoons) with huge concerns (disturbing the universe) is this technique.
Juxtaposition / Bathos
"Journey of the Magi" is made up of this many stanzas, following the outward journey, the arrival and the reflection.
3
In "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," the street-lamps unlock this faculty, which "throws up" a "crowd of twisted things."
Memory
"Shape without form, shade without colour, / Paralysed force, gesture without motion" is a string of contradictory phrases, an example of this device.
Oxymoron / paradox
This American poet and editor championed "Prufrock" and helped bring it into print in 1915.
Ezra Pound
Among the prescribed poems, "Journey of the Magi" is distinctive because it moves toward this, rather than pure despair.
Spiritual enlightement / search for meaning, redemption.
The irregular rhyme and varying line lengths of "Prufrock" imitate this, the restless movement of an anxious mind.
Stream of consciousness
"Preludes" ends with "some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing," a glimpse of this within a bleak poem.
compassion / a hint of hope or redemption
The opening of "Journey of the Magi" depicts what allusion?
1622 Nativity sermon by bishop Lancelot Andrews
The year Eliot wrote "Journey of the Magi," he was baptised into this church, reflecting his own spiritual journey.
Church of England / Anglicanism