Stylistics 2013/2014

Thomas Stearns Eliot   (26 Sept. 1888-4 Jan. 1965) Thomas Stearns Eliot  (1888-1965) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, of an old New England family. He was educated at Harvard and did graduate work in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and Merton College, Oxford. He settled in England, where he was for a time a schoolmaster and a bank clerk, and eventually literary editor for the publishing house Faber & Faber, of which he later became a director. He founded and, during the seventeen years of its publication (1922-1939), edited the exclusive and influential literary journal Criterion. In 1927, Eliot became a British citizen and about the same time entered the Anglican Church. Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. Never compromising either with the public or indeed with language itself, he has followed his belief that poetry should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language and th...

James Joyce (1882-1941)   (BORN FEB. 2, 1882, DUBLIN, IRE.DIED JAN. 13, 1941, ZRICH, SWITZ.) IRISH NOVELIST. EDUCATED AT A JESUIT SCHOOL (THOUGH HE SOON REJECTED CATHOLICISM) AND AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, HE DECIDED EARLY TO BECOME A WRITER. IN 1902 HE MOVED TO PARIS, WHICH WOULD BECOME HIS PRINCIPAL HOME AFTER YEARS SPENT IN TRIESTE AND ZRICH. HIS LIFE WAS DIFFICULT, MARKED BY FINANCIAL TROUBLES, CHRONIC EYE DISEASES THAT OCCASIONALLY LEFT HIM TOTALLY BLIND, CENSORSHIP PROBLEMS, AND HIS DAUGHTER LUCIA'S MENTAL ILLNESS. THE REMARKABLE STORY COLLECTION  THE DUBLINERS  (1914) AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL  PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN  (1916), HIS EARLY PROSE VOLUMES, WERE POWERFUL EXAMPLES OF HIS GIFT FOR STORYTELLING AND HIS GREAT INTELLIGENCE. WITH FINANCIAL HELP FROM FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS, INCLUDING  EZRA POUND , SYLVIA BEACH (18871962), AND HARRIET SHAW WEAVER (18761961), HE SPENT SEVEN YEARS WRITING  ULYSSES  (1922...