The Ill Body In T.S.Eliot's Poetry

Thomas Steams Eliot is an important representative of The New Criticism,and a distinguished poet,playwright and literary critic.His The Waste Land,published in the year of 1922,has initiated a new path in poetic creation,and stood as a milestone in the history of the 20th century literature.Many of Eliot's poems have included the ill body.However,it has failed to attract due critical attention.In her research,the present author finds that the ill body is a metaphor employed by Eliot to expose the various crises of the modern society,such as spiritual emptiness,moral depravity,human alienation and the violence of war.In addition,the writing of the ill body not only is Eliot's application of his poetic theory of "impersonality" and "objective correlative",but also reflects his belief in original sin and his aesthetics of ugliness.Thus,this thesis is to discuss the significance of and reasons for Eliot's writing of the ill body,aiming to reveal the social and cultural implications loaded in the ill body and the poet's poetic theory,religious thought and aesthetic view embedded in such writings.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces Eliot's literary status in modern literature,his literary achievements,his major works and poetic theories.It also gives a survey of the historical development and current situation of Eliot study.Then it explains the structure and main contents of the thesis.The second chapter makes a classification of various ill bodies in Eliot's poetry.The ill bodies under the pen of Eliot mainly fall into two categories:physical disability and psychological morbidity.Physical disability can be further divided into the incomplete body and physiological invalidity.The former includes the injured body and the fragmented body,while the latter manifests itself as aphasia and visual impairment.Psychological morbidity is displayed in the forms of mental disorder and distorted sexuality.On the one hand,Eliot's poems are fraught with bodies bitterly afflicted by mental disorder.Some of them are schizophrenic and some of them are hysterical and neurotic.On the other hand,the sensual and animalistic bodies indulge themselves in loveless sexuality on the waste land overflowed with lust and desire.The separation between flesh and spirit in sexuality reflects the morbid and distorted psychology of modern human beings.The third chapter probes into the historical significance and social values behind the writing of the ill body.It first reveals the crises of the modern society metaphorized by the ill bodies.Eliot uses the illness of body to suggest the illness of an entire age.The fragmented body serves as a metaphor for spiritual emptiness and disillusionment,the body of loveless sexuality for moral depravity,the injured body for the violence of war,and the physiological invalid body and mentally disordered body for human alienation.Then the chapter further studies the underlying reasons for the modern crises and how the ill bodies in turn exacerbate the sickness of the modern society.The fourth chapter explores Eliot's poetics,religion and aesthetics underlying the writing of the ill body.Firstly,writing about the ill body is Eliot's application of his impersonal poetics.The various ill bodies serve as a series of "objective correlatives"that reveal the poet's personal attitudes,feelings and emotions.Secondly,the ill body reflects Eliot's belief in original sin.In Calvinism,men are born to be sinners.From this perspective,all kinds of illness inflicted on human bodies can be seen as the punishment of our sins.Finally,the depiction of various ill bodies reflects Eliot's aesthetics of ugliness.The last chapter is the conclusion.It summarizes the previous discussions and restates that the writing of the ill body in Eliot's poetry has high realistic significance,showing various kinds of crises in the modern society.Moreover,it enables us to have a better understanding of Eliot's poetic theory,his religious thought and aesthetic view.