City And Its Wanderers In Eliot's Early Poems

The American-born English poet T.S. Eliot is undoubtfully one of the most important English-language poets of the 20th century. He lived in a time of chaos and wilderness. The two-World-War experience provided him better chance to know about the society and the people in the great pain. He left us not only the most significant and influential poems but also large amount of critical writings which affect the contemporary literature climate. There are so many allusions and images in Eliot's poems that the readers are often confused. Thus, he is still under discussion and debate until these days. However, literary criticism has been made from various aspects, while the study from the "city" and the "people in the city" has been ignored to some extent. City prospers, then declines. The history of city marks the marks the footstep of human beings. This thesis aims at analyzing the city in Eliot's poetry from the perspective of wilderness and its wanderers with an attempt to explore his intention to express anxiety and a desire of reestablishing a certain order and belief, in the depression.This thesis is composed of five parts.First of all, the original conception and the reason why this thesis is feasible are carefully illuminated in the introduction part. It introduces the foundation of the first city in the human history and reveals the everlasting fascination of the city motif in the modern literature works. The history of city marks the footsteps of human beings. As a city poet. Eliot adopts the city and its wanderers as a source of showing his concerns for humankind. Chapter One and Chapter Two examine the city of wilderness from the perspectives of male and female characters, respectively. Prufrock, Gerontion and hollow men are all the victims of the city of wilderness under the Western civilization. The women, suffering and being gazed, become the machines and devices in the relationship with man. They appear spiritually dead. They are only flesh and bones without souls and dare not accept the reality. They have not any beliefs or souls.Chapter Three concentrates on the figures behind the T.S. Eliot. His life experiences and his Puritan sensibility contribute to the building of the wanderers'image in his early poems. And meanwhile, Eliot is trying to find the way to the Promised Land in the chaos and wilderness.The last part of the thesis brings out the conclusion that Eliot's poems not only present the falling of city and its wanderers, but also demonstrate the wanderers'and the poet's own suffering as well as the struggling on the way to the Promised Land...