TS ELIOT - THE MODERN CITY

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis in 1888.

He had a good upbringing in an upper class family, and received an excellent standard of education.

In 1914 Eliot came to rest in England, where he studied at Harvard University.

The effects of the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century had marked the beginning of a new modern city, overcrowded with strangers, numerous new restaurants and coffee – houses and professionals and clerks who came to the city.

Eliot immediately took a dislike to this new fast city. He felt isolated, out of place and oppressed by London at war -time.

It was during this period that Eliot wrote poems such as Rhapsody on a Windy Night and Preludes, both written with no fixed verse form or regular pattern and rhyme is used only occasionally.

Both poems relate to a real world focusing on the impoverished spiritual life of the lonely individual in a sordid decadent culture. The poems also share many other similarities, and both demo...