The relationship between literary tradition and modern literature in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Richard Aldington’s Choricos
Modernism is a movement in literature that began in the first years of the 20th century. One of its main goals was to revitalise literature and free it from the boundaries of literary tradition. However, different modernists had contrasting ideas about how this goal should be achieved. T. S. Eliot thought that artists can never truly break free from literary canon and that they should use it as a stepping stone that can help them improve their works. He believed that any work of art, no matter how novel, can be traced back to an older one and that this is not a threat to modernism, but an opportunity for improvement. On the other hand, there were artists like Richard Aldington who thought that literary canon is obsolete and has no place in modernist literature.
T. S. Eliot’s …show more content…
S. Eliot states that “there are often passages in an unrhymed poem where rhyme is wanted for some special effect” (Eliot, 189). He uses rhyme for this very reason in The Waste Land. The passage that is being analysed is divided in three parts, each different than the rest. The first part, lines 249-256, adheres to the literary canon most closely – it rhymes and most of it is written in pentameter. The second part, lines 257-265, distances itself from the canon, it does not rhyme, except for the last two lines, and it does not try to follow a meter closely, it is the middle ground and forms a tunnel between the part before it and the one after. The third part, lines 266-291, is the most distant from the canon, it has no rhyme and it does not have a pattern or meter. Together, those three parts display the connection between traditionalism and modernism and demonstrate how those two movements can exist together and that if a poet desires it, he can seamlessly move from one to the other, without damaging his poem or its
Modernism is a movement in literature that began in the first years of the 20th century. One of its main goals was to revitalise literature and free it from the boundaries of literary tradition. However, different modernists had contrasting ideas about how this goal should be achieved. T. S. Eliot thought that artists can never truly break free from literary canon and that they should use it as a stepping stone that can help them improve their works. He believed that any work of art, no matter how novel, can be traced back to an older one and that this is not a threat to modernism, but an opportunity for improvement. On the other hand, there were artists like Richard Aldington who thought that literary canon is obsolete and has no place in modernist literature.
T. S. Eliot’s …show more content…
S. Eliot states that “there are often passages in an unrhymed poem where rhyme is wanted for some special effect” (Eliot, 189). He uses rhyme for this very reason in The Waste Land. The passage that is being analysed is divided in three parts, each different than the rest. The first part, lines 249-256, adheres to the literary canon most closely – it rhymes and most of it is written in pentameter. The second part, lines 257-265, distances itself from the canon, it does not rhyme, except for the last two lines, and it does not try to follow a meter closely, it is the middle ground and forms a tunnel between the part before it and the one after. The third part, lines 266-291, is the most distant from the canon, it has no rhyme and it does not have a pattern or meter. Together, those three parts display the connection between traditionalism and modernism and demonstrate how those two movements can exist together and that if a poet desires it, he can seamlessly move from one to the other, without damaging his poem or its