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    Preludes

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    Rocky Farston
    The document discusses several poetic styles and techniques used in T.S. Eliot's The Preludes including: 1. Stream of consciousness which depicts the unfiltered flow of thoughts in a speaker's mind without rational connections between images or thoughts. 2. Imagism which conveys visual impressions and scenes with precise, vivid images and metaphors without explanation. 3. Symbolism where objects represent states of mind or spiritual conditions. 4. Impressionism where the poet focuses on a character's mental impressions and feelings without interpretation through selective descriptive details.

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    Preludes

    Uploaded by

    Rocky Farston
    624 views2 pages
    The document discusses several poetic styles and techniques used in T.S. Eliot's The Preludes including: 1. Stream of consciousness which depicts the unfiltered flow of thoughts in a speaker's mind without rational connections between images or thoughts. 2. Imagism which conveys visual impressions and scenes with precise, vivid images and metaphors without explanation. 3. Symbolism where objects represent states of mind or spiritual conditions. 4. Impressionism where the poet focuses on a character's mental impressions and feelings without interpretation through selective descriptive details.

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    The document discusses several poetic styles and techniques used in T.S. Eliot's The Preludes including: 1. Stream of consciousness which depicts the unfiltered flow of thoughts in a speaker's mind without rational connections between images or thoughts. 2. Imagism which conveys visual impressions and scenes with precise, vivid images and metaphors without explanation. 3. Symbolism where objects represent states of mind or spiritual conditions. 4. Impressionism where the poet focuses on a character's mental impressions and feelings without interpretation through selective descriptive details.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    624 views2 pages

    Preludes

    Uploaded by

    Rocky Farston
    The document discusses several poetic styles and techniques used in T.S. Eliot's The Preludes including: 1. Stream of consciousness which depicts the unfiltered flow of thoughts in a speaker's mind without rational connections between images or thoughts. 2. Imagism which conveys visual impressions and scenes with precise, vivid images and metaphors without explanation. 3. Symbolism where objects represent states of mind or spiritual conditions. 4. Impressionism where the poet focuses on a character's mental impressions and feelings without interpretation through selective descriptive details.

    Copyright:

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    of 2

    MN/JUN/2010

    CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PRELUDES


    Eliot consciously uses certain specific styles and techniques of poetic composition
    that are characteristic of the first few decades of the twentieth century. These
    include:

    • Stream of Consciousness
    This style of writing found strong favour with the modernists. Here, the
    reader has no choice but to go along with the flow of thought in the
    speaker’s mind. Many times, there is no apparent rational link between the
    images or thoughts passing through the speaker’s head and they do not make
    a coherent sense to the reader. However, they are the key to understanding
    the speaker’s own emotional or psychological state and also his relationship
    with the world and the people around him. They help us understand how he
    experiences what he sees, hears or feels. The reader’s task is also to discover
    the connections between the apparently disjointed images and thoughts. To a
    certain extent, the reader becomes a psychoanalyst.

    • Imagism
    This poetic style flourished in England and America between the years 1912
    and 1917. Poems were written in free verse (no specific meter and no end
    rhymes) and poets tried to convey as precisely and briefly as possible, and
    without comment or generalization, their impression of a visual object or
    scene. This style often made use of metaphors that were not immediately
    clear. Sometimes two vivid and precise images were linked without
    specifying their connection. Poets had complete freedom to choose the
    subject for their poems. Common speech language was used, and the exact
    word was always to be used, instead of the almost exact word.
    MN/JUN/2010

    • Symbolism
    This style had its origin in the Romantic period but influenced the
    modernists very strongly. It was based on the belief that there is a systematic
    and natural correlation between the human mind and the outer world and
    between the world of nature and that of spirits. Thus objects in the world
    outside could be used as symbols to say something about the state of mind of
    the observer or speaker. Thus for the poet in the Preludes, “vacant lots” or
    “grimy scraps” of newspaper flying about in the wind become symbols
    respectively of the emptiness of human lives and the moral degradation and
    rootlessness of human souls.

    • Impressionism
    This was originally a 19th-century style in painting. When used in poetry, the
    speaker centers his attention on a character's mental life such as his
    impressions, feelings, sensations and emotions, but without trying to
    interpret them. The poet selects a few details to convey the sense
    impressions left in his mind by an incident or a scene. This style of writing
    occurs when characters, scenes, or actions are portrayed from a personal or
    subjective point of view of reality. In other words, the reader views the
    outside world as it is impressed upon the mind of the poet or speaker. Thus it
    is important to understand that the hopelessness, despair, gloom, indignity,
    monotony and lack of direction which are emphasized in the urban life
    which the poet is observing in the Preludes, is his own subjective or
    personal interpretation – those who live in that world may not agree with the
    poet’s judgment at all.

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