EWRT 1C Class 6

AGENDATS Eliot and New CriticismScanning Poetry

Group Discussion

T.S. Eliot

“Tradition and the Individual Talent”

T.S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot

Born: 26 September 1888, St. Louis, MO, USA

Died: 4 January 1965, London, United Kingdom

Field: poetry

Most Influential Work: The Waste Land (1922)

Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948

“Tradition and the Individual Talent,”

One of Eliot’s early essays, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” typifies his critical stance and concerns; it has been called his most influential single essay. Divided into three parts, appearing in The Egoist in September and December, 1919, the essay insists upon taking tradition into account when formulating criticism—“aesthetic, not merely historical criticism.”

Eliot asserts that no poet or artist has his or her complete meaning in isolation but must be judged, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. As Eliot sees it, the order of art is complete before a new work of art is created, but with that new creation all the prior works forming an ideal order are modified, and the order itself is altered.

Eliot argues that the poet’s mind is a catalyst for all those writers who come before him. His point is that the poet’s transforming mind stores up feelings, phrases, and images until all the particles that can form a new work of art come together to do so. The poet has not so much a personality to express as a medium for the expression of complex emotion that is separable from the poet’s own emotions.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) claimed that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility” (“Preface to Lyrical Ballads”)

Eliot responded directly to this assertion when he said “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”

This idea of the poet as not emotionally invested in his or her work is part of what drove the idea of New Criticism: using the text and the text alone.

QHQs: T.S. Eliot Q. According to Eliot, what is the role of the poet?

Q: Why does Eliot suggest that the progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality?

Q: What the heck is an “art emotion” and how does it differ from a “personal” emotion?

Q: What is the definition of “significant emotion”?

Q: Why is TS Eliot so keen to explain the relationship between tradition and talent?

Q: What did Eliot mean that tradition cannot be inherited and that it is obtained by hard labor?

Q: How does the consciousness of the past or present effect the work of art and how it is viewed?

Figurative Language: images, symbols, metaphors, similes, alliteration, personification, and hyperbole.

Tools of the new critic: paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension.

For the online class last Friday, I asked you to note figures of speech in the poem “My Papa’s Waltz.” Yesterday, we looked at the tools of the new critic.

Today, we will look at more poetic conventions

rhyme: a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words, most often at the end of lines in poems and songs.

rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

meter: the number of feet in a line.

scansion: Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet, marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables,

How to Scan a Poem1. Read the poem aloud. As you read, listen for a natural emphasis

in the rhythm of the line. Count the number of syllables in each line, and write that number at the end of the line. Do you see a pattern in the number of syllables?

The whiskey on your breath   Could make a small boy dizzy;   But I hung on like death:   Such waltzing was not easy.

2. As you read the poem aloud, try tapping your foot or pounding your hand on a desk when you hear the accented syllables. This will help you to hear the rhythm. The syllables you emphasize will be those that you'll mark with a / (indicating a stressed syllable). If you can't hear the rhythm try reading the lines to someone and asking that person to mark the stressed syllables, or, conversely, ask someone to read the poem and mark the lines as you listen to them.

3. Read more than one line. Sometimes the first line of a poem may have spondees or other types of feet that will throw off your reading. Remember, you are looking for the predominant metrical pattern of the piece.

4. Mark the stressed syllables first, and then go back and mark the unstressed syllables. The mark for these is a breve, which looks like a sideways parenthesis mark or shallow "u."

5. If you are not sure which syllables should be stressed, look for two- and three-syllable words in a line and pronounce them as you would normally pronounce them. These will help you to determine the stressed syllables in a line. For example, you'd say aBOVE, not Above, MURmuring, not murMURing or murmurING.

6. Try breaking the words into syllables so that you can see them individually instead of as part of a word.

The whiskey on your breath   Could make a small boy dizzy;   But I hung on like death:   Such waltzing was not easy.

iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic?

7. Once you have marked the lines for stressed and unstressed syllables, divide the lines according to the kinds of feet. (Use a larger / slash mark or circle the feet.): unstressed STRESSED = iambic (sounds like da-DUM: de-TROIT)

8. Once you're finished with that, determine the meter of the poem:

iamb (unstressed-stressed u/) trochee (stressed-unstressed /u) anapest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed uu/) dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed /uu) spondee (stressed-stressed //) pyrrhic (unstressed-unstressed uu).

Finishing up9. Count the number of feet:

Monometer (one foot) Dimeter (two feet) Trimeter (three feet) Tetrameter (four feet) Pentameter (five feet) Hexameter (six feet).

10. Put the type of foot together with the number of feet, and you've identified the meter.

“My Papa’s Waltz u / u u / / The whiskey on your breath 6 syllables

u / u / / / u Could make a small boy dizzy; 7 syllables

u u / u / / But I hung on like death: 6 syllables

u / u u / / u Such waltzing was not easy. 7 syllables

The whiskey on your breath   Could make a small boy dizzy;   But I hung on like death:   Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself.

.

Try to do the next stanza(s) in your groups

or aloneThe hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missedMy right ear scraped a buckle

You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

Try Summarizing the Form

Dominant foot:  iamb (unstressed-stressed u/), trochee (stressed-unstressed /u), anapest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed uu/), dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed /uu), spondee (stressed-stressed //) or pyrrhic (unstressed-unstressed uu).

Number of feet per line: Monometer (one foot), Dimeter (two feet), Trimeter (three feet), Tetrameter (four feet), Pentameter (five feet), or Hexameter (six feet).

Prevailing meter (dominant foot + number of feet per line):   

Structure: (kind of stanza):  couplets, triplets, quatrain, sestet   

Rhyme scheme: aa bb cc or abab or none?

Summarizing the formDominant foot: iamb

Number of feet per line: three

Prevailing meter (dominant foot + number of feet per line): iambic trimeter

Structure: quatrain

Rhyme scheme: abab (imperfect, partial, near or slant rhyme)      // cdc (imperfect) d // efef // ghgh 

u / u u / /The whiskey on your breath 6   u / u / / /uCould make a small boy dizzy; 7u / / u / /   But I hung on like death:  6u / u u / /u  Such waltzing was not easy. 7

u / u / u /We romped until the pans 6/ u u / u / Slid from the kitchen shelf; 6u / u / u u My mother’s countenance 6u / u / u / Could not unfrown itself. 6

u / u / u /The hand that held my wrist 3u / u u / / u Was battered on one knuckle; 3.5u / u / u / At every step you missed 3u / / / u / uMy right ear scraped a buckle 3.5

u / / u u /You beat time on my head u u / / / u / With a palm caked hard by dirt,u / u / u / Then waltzed me off to bed / / u / u / Still clinging to your shirt.

a

b

a

b

c

d

c

d

e

f

e

f

g

h

g

h

Four line stanzas are called quatrains

Feet per lineSyllables per line

HOMEWORKREAD

• “There Is a Girl Inside” • “The Fish”• “A Black Rook in Rainy

Weather”• “Memories of West Street and

Lepke”

Choose one poem to scan (meter and rhyme) like we did in class today,POST # 6: summarize the form (slide 17).