T. S. Eliot: Life And Background

Abstract

It must often seem to the examination candidate as if Eliot’s poetry were deliberately written for the examination-hall. If what it says is difficult enough, the manner of its saying seems even more bewildering: the incomprehensible images, the incoherent syntax, the learned allusions. It must seem an examinee’s nightmare, for how can one person, under the duress of an examination, hope to disentangle enough of Eliot’s poetry to satisfy the voracious examiner?