The Notion Of Image In T.S. Eliot's Major Poetry

As a significant form that Modernism adopts in experimenting with objectified poetry, image is the everlasting concern of literary critics. T. S. Eliot, the forerunner of Modernism, has a unique style in the treatment of image. Since his use of image is significantly diversified and complicated, a great number of studies attempted to interpret Eliot's poetry through analysis of the symbolic meaning of images:formalistic studies take the image as a mere literary form to explore its role in expression of the themes; other studies mostly took Eliot's treatment of image as a reflection of his personal life and mentalities.The complication of Eliot's image treatment is the result of multiple influences; therefore, in the process of continuous maturity of the notion of image, Eliot's treatment of images varies in different periods of his literary career, and his poetry present different features in image treatment. By exploring the impacts on Eliot's notion of image exerted by Imagism, French Symbolism, Romanticism and Metaphysical poets, this thesis aims at providing a reassortment of the notion of image in his major poetry (inclusive of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Rhapsody on a Windy Night, The Waste Land and Four Quartets) according to the evolving notion of image:Eliot's early poetry is largely influenced by the image style of Metaphysical poets. The features of image treatment in early poetry are represented by abundant use of metaphors to create images with ironic and witty effects and repetitions to create images for moment of intense feelings and occupying ideas; poems represented by The Waste Land constitutes the second style of image treatment, which makes use of symbols in creating images with allusiveness and implications. Meanwhile, Eliot constructs masses of systematic symbols to create interrelated images combinations, which are defined as "objective correlatives"; Four Quartets stands for the maturity of Eliot's notion of image, and is the inclusive representative of his treatment of image. On the one hand, it integrates all the features of image employment in early poetry; on the other hand, the poem presents traces of Romantic images and the symbolic meanings of images are also elevated to the level of philosophy and religion.