Thomas Stearns Elliot, an American poet and dramatist, was born in St Louis, on September 26, 1888 and died on January 4, 1965. Elliot was born into an upper class Missouri family. Though he spent his childhood in Missouri, his work contains very few signs of St. Louis. After studying at Harvard University, Elliot moved to Europe, where he did the majority of his writing and enjoyed most of his literary success. He married Vivien Haigh-Wood in July 1915 and from 1915 through 1919 held a number of jobs including teacher, bank clerk, and assistant editor of the literary magazine Egoist. From 1921 through 1922 he was the London correspondent for The Dial and in 1922 founded The Criterion and served as its editor until 1939. In 1947 his wife died after a long illness, and Elliot did not remarry until 1957 when he wed Valerie Fletcher. During the interim, Elliot continued to enjoy tremendous literary success. In 1948 King George VI bestowed the Order of Merit on him and that was the same year Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His final work, The Elder Statesmen published in 1958 was the last thing he wrote before dying seven years later in 1965. .
Elliot moved to Great Britain after a trip to Germany was cut short by the outbreak of World War I. Following the War, during the 1920s he spent most of his time with other great artists in the Montparnasse Quarter in Paris. With the help of Ezra Pound, the publication of his first poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, earned him tremendous recognition throughout the European literary community. His style was contemporary and more modern then the rustic poetry which characterized the early twentieth century (Sheridan, 342). .
In 1922, he published The Waste Land, which gradually became the most widely known poem of the post World War I era. It captured the disillusionment that characterized post World War I Europe, and illustrates the hopelessness which plagued European society after suffering the loss of millions of its citizens (Sheridan, 565).
Questions I and II What are the central concerns illustrated in the article "The Crisis of Belief"?" How does this show symbolically in the poem "Dover Beach,"" by Arnold? Response The central concern is the despair of the modern man who loses the certainty that belief gave him, the inner conflict ...
Depression - What is it? Depression is an affliction that over 20% of Americans will experience in some form during their lifetime. It is one of the most common and serious mental health problems facing people today. Many people experience feelings of sadness, or melancholy every now and then. But when these feelings last for weeks, months or even years, it is referred to as clinical depression. ...
