艾略特荒原中的現(xiàn)代主義分析.doc

T.S艾略特荒原中的現(xiàn)代主義特征分析*畢業(yè)論文 系 部 外語系 年 級 2008級 專 業(yè) 英語語言文學(xué) 班 級 英語本科 學(xué)生姓名 * 學(xué) 號 * 指導(dǎo)老師 *An Analysis on the Modernistic Features of T.S Eliots Waste LandBy *Submitted to the Department of Foreign Languages of Shandong University of Political Science and Law in Partial Fulfillment to the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in EnglishUnder the Supervision of Professor Ms. *June, 2012山東政法學(xué)院外語系2012屆本科畢業(yè)論文T.S艾略特荒原中的現(xiàn)代主義特征分析摘要:艾略特不僅僅是英國和美國現(xiàn)代詩的先驅(qū)，也是荒原派的創(chuàng)始人，對當(dāng)代和以后的作家產(chǎn)生很大的影響。他的詩歌極具現(xiàn)代性，這種現(xiàn)代性特征在他的詩歌荒原里被表現(xiàn)的淋漓盡致。作者使用各種不同的現(xiàn)代主義表現(xiàn)手法把當(dāng)時的社會現(xiàn)實如實的反映給讀者，這些手法不僅包括詩歌主題，也包括一些文體特征和寫作技巧。本文試圖對愛略特荒原一詩的現(xiàn)代性特征進行分析，作為現(xiàn)代主義運動之一的現(xiàn)代文學(xué)全方位、多角度的反映了西方的社會現(xiàn)實，其主要特征就是新：主題新、寫作手法新。這種表現(xiàn)方式遠不同于傳統(tǒng)的詩歌表現(xiàn)手法。全文共分四章，第一章對愛略特的文學(xué)成就和貢獻以及將要分析的詩歌進行簡要介紹；第二章對現(xiàn)代主義進行詳細解釋，并通過分析其特征引出本文的研究目標(biāo)，全新的現(xiàn)代性詩歌主題和寫作技巧；第三章對荒原的現(xiàn)代性特征的表現(xiàn)方式著重進行分析，并通過舉例論證的方式來引導(dǎo)讀者對該詩歌有一個全面的了解和認識；最后一章對論文進行簡要總結(jié)。關(guān)鍵詞：現(xiàn)代主義，現(xiàn)代主義特征，主題，藝術(shù)技巧An Analysis on the Modernistic Features of T.S. Eliots Waste LandAbstract: T.S.Eliot(Thomas Sterns Eliot 1888-1965), as the leader not only of modern poetry in the U.K and U.S.A, but also of a whole generation of writers later to be identified as "Waste Land Painters". He remains a shaping influence on many of his contemporaries and followers. Eliots poems are extraordinary with great modernity; the point is especially expressed in his famous poem the Waste Land, which gives inspirations to other poets of the followers. He is not the inventor of modern poetry, but he has exerted great influence on the new trend.The thesis is devoted to the analysis of modernistic features in T.S. Eliots masterpiece Waste Land. As one of the modern movements, modern literature reflected the realities of the western modern society thoroughly and multi-angled. The main characteristic of the modern literature is novelty. The new theme and new artistic techniques are both different from the traditional ones. The article is divided into four parts: chapter one introduces the achievements and contributions of T.S. Eliot and the viewpoints of other critics on the poetry. Chapter two explains the survey about characteristics of modernism, modern literature, the general idea of what is called modernistic feature then points out the aim of the research work, introduces Eliots new and precious instruments: modern artistic techniques and the post war new theme. Chapter three researches the new theme expressed in the poem by analyzing the whole poem part after part, exposes the modernistic features hidden in the depth of the complex content, discusses the modernistic artistic techniques with which the great poet expresses his sensations and emotions at the bottom of his heart to make the poetry one of the famous poems in modern literature. Chapter four concludes the modernistic features have been discussed above.Key Words: Modernism, Modernistic features, Theme, Artistic techniquesContents摘要i關(guān)鍵詞iAbstractiiKey WordsiiChapter One Introduction11.1 Brief Introduction of T.S.Eliot and the Waste Land11.2 Literature Review of the Poetry2Chapter Two Modernism and Modern Literature32.1 General Knowledge of Modernism and Modern literature32.2 New Ways to Express Modernism4Chapter Three Modernistic Features in the Waste Land53.1 Theme of the Poetry53.2 Stylistic Features of the Waste Land73.3 Poetic Techniques of the Poetry83.3.1 Symbolism in the Waste Land83.3.2 Stream of Consciousness in the Waste Land113.3.3 Dramatic Monologue in the Waste Land123.3.4 Montage in the Waste Land13Chapter Four Conclusion15Bibliography1615An Analysis on the Modernistic Features of T.S Eliots Waste LandChapter One Introduction1.1 Brief Introduction of T.S.Eliot and the Waste LandT. S. Eliot (Thomas Sterns Eliot, 1888-1965), the leader not only of modern poetry in the U.K and U.S.A, but also of a whole generation of writers later to be identified as "Waste Land Painters". He was famous not only for his poetry but also for his criticism and his verse drama who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1948. Eliot pioneered the modernist poetry of the 20th century in the sense that he brought into modernist poetry the intellectual resources of wit and irony. He used the “un-poetical” imagery of modern urban life. He rejected the meaningless rhythms of conversational verse and adopted a non-discursive mode. The complexity, impersonality, “orthodoxy” and the mixture of formal and conventional registers, the fresh and spontaneous rhythms marked a decisive development in English poetry.So many works were created by the great man, such as the Waste Land, the Hollow Man Four Quartets, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, etc. However, it is the poetry titled the Waste Land that expresses perfectly the modernistic features, which gives inspirations to other poets of the followers. His poetry conveys his pessimistic view that the modern world is chaotic and its life is futile and fragmentary. Man lives in a frustrated and disillusioned life. The modern world is a spiritual “wasteland”.As to The Waste Land, it is a poem of 433 lines, mainly free verse with occasional snatches of rhyme and with several quoted lines in German, French, Italian and references and allusions to English writers as Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton and Goldsmith. First published in 1922 in the Criterion, “it was a landmark in English poetry, bringing the Romantic period into the end and signifying the emergence of Modernism” (劉炳善 400) 3The poem consists of five sections, “The Burial of the Dead”, “A Game of Chess”, “The Fire Sermon”, “Death by Water”, and “What the Thunder Said”, together with Eliots own “Notes” which explain his many varied and multicultural allusions, quotations, and half-quotations and express a general indebtedness to the Grail legend and to the vegetation ceremonies in Frazers The Golden Bough. “The poem is filled with allusions to Ovid, Dante, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Christian and pagan myths, fertility legends, Holy Grail legends, etc.” (劉意青361)51.2 Literature Review of the PoetrySince The Waste Land was published, it was rapidly acclaimed as a statement of the post-war sense of depression and futility; it was seriously praised by I.A.Richards as a perfect emotive description of a state of mind which was probably inevitable for a while to all meditative people, and less seriously but significantly chanted as a kind of protest against the older generation by the undergraduates of the day. Complex, erudite, cryptic, satiric, spiritually earnest, and occasionally lyrical, it became one of the most recognizable landmarks of Modernism. The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts, edited by Valerie Eliot, sheds much light on the circumstances of the poems composition, and particularly on the well-heeded and detailed textual advice offered by Pound.Some people give multi-dimensional analysis of the images in the Waste Land, such as the images of humans, the images of animals and objects from the categorical dimension, and the images of sight, the images of voice and other senses from the psychological dimension. Thus gives us so many indications that the poem contains images that help to convey the ideas of the poet about the realities of western society. Others, however, make some contributions to the analysis of the symbolic art of the poem. They dissect the overall symbolic art of the poem by analyzing the prototype image of the “wildness” and they also research the death image, the sexual and erotic images, exposing the symbolic meaning of the poem by the images of wilt and death and regeneration after death, exploring the symbolic poetry from the aspects of the causes of wildness, the meaning of sex and lust, and modern gender relations in the wildness. Thus gives us some thorough knowledge of the poem that can simplify our project of analysis of the great work. Chapter Two Modernism and Modern Literature2.1 General Knowledge of Modernism and Modern literatureModernism was a complex and diverse literary movement in the 20th century. After the World War I all kinds of literary trends of modernism appeared: Symbolism, Imagism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism and Stream of Consciousness. Towards the 1920s, these trends converged into a mighty torrent of modernist movement across Europe and America. The movement which was international in scope and drew heavily on the French symbolist poets as well as on the new psychological thoughts of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gaustav Jung and their followers.Modernist literature involved such writers as Virginia Woolf, T.S.Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, W.B.Yeats, D.H.Lawrence, Samuel Beckett and Robert Frost, etc. As one of the forms of the modernism, modern literature reveals a breaking away from established rules, traditions and conventions, fresh ways of looking at mans position and function in the universe and many experiments in form and style.Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psychoanalysis as its theoretical bases. It is a reaction against realism. It rejects rationalism which is the theoretical base of realism; it excludes from its major concern the external, objective, material world, which is the only creative source of realism; by advocating a free experimentation on new forms and new techniques in literary creation, it casts away all the traditional elements in literature, such as story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc, which are essential to realism. As a result, the works created by the modernist writers can often be labeled as anti-novel, anti-poetry or anti-drama.Modernist literature developed a style that can be characterized by a preoccupation with stylistic novelty, formal fragmentation, multiple perspectives, and alternatives to traditional narrative forms. One characteristic of English modernism is “the dehumanization of art”. The major themes of the modernist literature are “the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man, and man and himself”. The modernist writers concentrated more on the private than the public, more on the subjective than the objective. Therefore, they paid more attention to the psychic time than the chronological one. In their writings, the past, the present and the future were mingled together and existed at the same time in the consciousness of an individual. The subject matter of T.S.Eliots poetry is to expose the sterility and futility of the western culture, to reveal the breakdown of communication between human beings, to show mans disillusionment and frustration caught between his sense of meaning and his sense of meaninglessness, to quest for a spiritual regeneration by finding salvation in religion.2.2 New Ways to Express ModernismThe beginning of the 20th century marked a significant difference from the eras before. With the change of the society, American literatures situations changed as well. The complete new experience of the society must have the complete new ways of expression. Imagism, Dadaism, Expressionism, Symbolism, Surrealism and other different kinds of "ism" all came into being. The writers at that time were eager to challenge the conventions of the past, and wanted to speak for their fellowman by attacking the dark side of the fragmentary and disorderly society. They expected to restore the dignity of men. With Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot being the leading figures in American modern poetry history, the modernist poets were not only putting down the old tradition of Victorian poetry, but also desiring to establish a new way of expressing the modern world.Firstly, modern poets did not agree with the “seriousness” of the theme in traditional poetry. As we all know, the traditional poets were likely to create the poem with the theme of love, death, morality, etc. On the contrary, the modern poets believed that the modern world was in a disorder position, and they tried to represent the world with the complicated and conflicting aspects. Secondly, modern poets did not agree with the traditional versification. The traditional way of iambic meter was substituted by the free verse. The wide range of choice in the poetic rhythmic pattern was more suitable for the modern poets to express the incongruities in the modern society. Thirdly, modern poets did not agree with the traditional poetic diction. The modern poets believed that the diction in the traditional poetry was an unnatural way of speaking, and they wanted to create the poem with common speech and conversational style.Similarly, T.S.Eliot expresses perfectly the modernism in his world well-known poetry the Waste Land by using new stylistic techniques and resorting to new modern theme. The article will analyze the modern features of it in the following chapter in detail.Chapter Three Modernistic Features in the Waste LandAt the turn of century, all kinds of contradictions were intensified in the capitalist society and the traditional values, art standard and the whole civilization were in question. The modern ideological trend emerged under that historical background. As a form of modernism movement modern literature reflected the social situation of modern western society widely and fully. Its main characteristic is the "new", which is mainly shown in two aspects: First, the new theme, modern literature works against romantic bucolic feelings, and shows loneliness, anxiety, despair, and spiritual void of the modern society as its theme. Second, the new ways of expression, as it is said that most of the modernist literature achievements praised are its innovation in art forms. In order to show its breaking away from the tradition, modern literature used poetic techniques widely in art, such as symbol, fables montage, stream-of-consciousness. With bold technical innovations in versification and style, the poem not only presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation in the modern western world, but also reflects the prevalent mood of disillusionment and despair of a whole post-war generation. Eliots poetry embodied the characteristics of the modernist literature not only from the theme but also from such aspects as the skills perfectly. And the new things are well demonstrated in the poetry Waste Land. The thesis will analyze the theme, the stylistic features and the poetic techniques of the Waste Land to reveal its modernistic features.3.1 Theme of the PoetryEliots poetry deeply reveals the modern western mans spiritual void, wandering through life. He reveals the social reality, mainly from the ugly facet of modern social life, modern peoples spiritual emptiness, loneliness, despair and lack of confidence. He, on one hand, reminds readers of the association with the ugly social reality indirectly with symbols, and on the other hand, depicts the reality directly with uncluttered gimmick. In the Waste Land, Eliot describes a dirty, ugly and detestable society. This poems title gives readers a kind of hint that the modern western society is a barren, drought and desolate land without vitality and it at the same time also suggests the fact that the human lives in the spirit wasteland. In the poem, Eliot shows the modern peoples ugly reality with even more detailed descriptions, "no life also not death", rich people in the luxurious house staying along with loneliness and empty, the pub womens vulgar topic, modern peoples love-making with no love, the dense of bones on the river Thames and so on. Eliot writes through the four seasons, and from the past to the present then to the future, looks insightfully into many different kinds of people. However, there is only one objective in his mind that to show the crisis of religion belief, the ugly reality of pursuit of fame and fortune of the modern western people multi-angled, multi-layered, and thoroughly. “APRIL is the cruelest month, breeding /Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing /Memory and desire. (613 Lines1-3) 3These lines comes at the very beginning of The Waste Land and illustrate a fact that Eliot plays on the familiar nostalgic associations of spring, but darkens and deepens them through the strong adjectives “cruelest” and “dead” and through the interruption of the lilting r and l and front vowels by the long u of the first line, the scattered stop-sounds, the sharp breaks in movement forced by the punctuation, and the contemplative effect of the two participial phrases. While he has not yet presented the great theme of death and resurrection, these lines definitely prepare us for it.”(Rosenthal. M.L 85)1 Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. .That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? Oh keep the Dog far hence, thats friend to men, Or with his nails hell dig it up again! You! hypocrite lecteur!mon semblable,mon frre! (616-617 Lines 60-76) 3“A crowd flowed over London Bridge.”(616 line63) 3The line indicates that so many workers went through the London Bridge to work. The people in the big cities worked day to night without the spiritual purpose, and they struggled for life and did not think about the meaning of the whole world and life. “And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.”(616 line65) 3 The person who “fixed his eyes before his feet” is the short eyesight one. They are satisfied with the money and material chasing, but do not have the spirit faith. “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?”(617 line72) 3This line may suggest that the people on the “wasteland” do not have the ability to regenerate themselves and they are just so dead. “You! hypocrite lecteur!mon semblable,mon frre!”(617 line76) 3This line is written in French. If we put it in English it will be in this way “You! Hypocrite reader! -my fellowman, -my brother!”. So here the poet suggests that all people including the readers and the poet himself are the residents of the wasteland. We all go through some kind of meaningless life without knowing it.In “A Game of Chess” we first see a woman who, surrounded by luxury and by art-works, is nevertheless reduced to shrieking frustration. The horror of her condition lies as much in her burning need for love as in any lack of religious faith.To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, He said, I swear, I cant bear to look at you. .You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. (And her only thirty-one.) I cant help it, she said, pulling a long face, Its them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. (Shes had five already, and nearly died of young George.) (620-621 Lines144-160) 3From above, we know that Lil is only 31 years old. She looks older than her real age. And Lil blames her old look to the five abortions. Because of the medicine she takes to get aborted, her teeth go off and she turns older. Easily we learn the misery circumstance of Lil and that there is no spiritual love between Lil and her husband, because they do not care for each other. Here we can see the poets intention to expose the loveless, meaningless, chaotic and dull world to the readers through the condition of a pathetic woman.3.2 Stylistic Featur