Comparing T S Eliots The Wasteland and William Butler Yeats The Secon

Comparing T. S. Eliots The waste and William Butler Yeats The Second Coming earth War One fundamentally changed Europeans perspective on man. Before the fight they believed that man was innately good, after it people were disenchanted with this vision of man. some(prenominal) Thomas Sterns Eliot and William Butler Yeats keenly felt this disenchantment, and evinced it in their poetry. In appendage to the war, Eliot and Yeats also saw the continuing turmoil in Europe, such as the Russian Revolution and the Irish Rebellions, as confirmation of their fear of mans personality and expanded their disillusionment in The Waste Land and The Second Coming. The poets dual-lane more than a disbelief in the goodness of mans disposition, they also some(prenominal) had religious experiences that colored their thoughts. Eliot was an atheist at the start of his life, and converted to Christianity, approach to believe in it fervently. Eliot also toyed with Buddhism during one stage of his writing The Wasteland (Southam 132). Yeats, on the other hand, grew up a practicing Christian and by the time he wrote The Second Coming was forming his own personal philosophy founded on an accumulation of everything he had read, thought, experienced, and written over many years (Harrison. 1). His philosophy, therefore, included Christianity as a factor in his life, but not nearly as significant a factor as in Eliots life. Because of the importance of organized religion in both of their lives, Yeats and Eliot used many mythological and religious allusions in their poems. While both poets shared a disenchantment in the nature of man, their varying religions made them see different outcomes on mankinds horizon. Eliot saw the coming(prenominal) as redeemable, while Yeats believed it could onl... ... Works Cited Harrison, John. What rough beast? Yeats, Nietzsche and historical ornateness in The Second Coming. Electric Library Leavis, F.R. The Waste Land. T.S. Eliot a assembling of Critical Essays.ed. HughKenner. Englewood Cliffs Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1962. 104-109 Rudyard Kipling and William Butler Yeats http//www.en.utexas.edu/benjamin/316kfall/316unit4/studentprojects/ kiplingyeats/intro.html Southam, B.C. A guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot. New York Harcourt, pick up & Co., 1994. UVA class notes, Dept of English, lit. intro into English from 1890 1989. http//www.faraday.clas.virginia.edu./sg5p/Class_notes_2.html Vickery, John B. The Literary Impact of The palmy Bough. Princeton Princeton University Press, 1973.