T.S Eliot’s Modernism as Exemplified in the " Waste Land"and The Love Song of L Alfred Prufrock

Abstract

The term modernism refers to a specific period in literature that extent between 1890-1970. Modernism as a literary movement refers to the radical shift in aesthetic and cultural sensibilities evident in the art of the First World War. Modernism is characterized by experimentation of new styles and methods. This movement is influenced by many factors, the most important is the First World War. The second factor is the scientific discoveries and the theories put forward by famous psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung. One of most famous founders of the movement are is T.S Eliot and many like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. In order to abandon the rigidity typifying the classical forms of Arabic poetry, Arab poets were ever in quest for new moulds of poetry. A number of Arab poets from Egypt, the Gulf, Syria and Iraq have made early contacts with Western poets particularly those who have emigrated to the West. They were able to incorporate into the classical body of Arabic poetry the literary traditions of the West that depends mainly on critical approach. Some of the techniques they were able to borrow was the one called the “the free verse”, which helped them triumph over the shackles of the classical forms.Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab’s contribution in this respect is unmistakably manifest in his famous poem “A City without Rain”. In this poem he was able to inject varied images within the context of the major theme “rain” in emulation of the Babylonian myth Ishtar. Key words:modernism, free verse, western traditions, classical forms, critical approach