What happens to poetry when civilisation itself appears fragmented, exhausted, and spiritually uncertain?

In this episode of Literary Rides, we explore the revolutionary poetic world of T.S. Eliot — the towering modernist writer who transformed twentieth-century literature through fragmentation, allusion, myth, and intellectual intensity. From the anxious paralysis of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to the cultural desolation of “The Waste Land,” Eliot created a poetic language capable of expressing the psychological and spiritual crises of modernity.

The episode examines Eliot’s groundbreaking critical theories, especially his influential essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” where he introduced concepts such as the historical sense, poetic impersonality, and the objective correlative. We also investigate the tensions and contradictions within Eliot’s work, asking whether the poet who argued against personal emotion in literature was nevertheless revealing profound psychological anxieties through his poetry.

Alongside detailed discussions of modernist techniques, urban alienation, intertextuality, mythic structure, and cultural decay, this conversation situates Eliot within the larger intellectual landscape of literary modernism and explores his lasting influence on criticism, poetry, and academic literary studies.

This episode is especially valuable for UGC NET English students, MA English learners, researchers, teachers, and anyone interested in understanding how literature responded to the fractured consciousness of the modern world.