The end of the 19th century witnessed unprecedented outbreak of drastic changes caused by the intensifying contradictions between the antiquated social order and the demands of the time. Those contradictions touched upon practically every sphere of social life and only deepened in the early 20th century. The new progressive age admitted no compromises with the antiquated social existence. In poetry it demanded new verse, new structures and revolutionary new views and visions. As a result, Europe saw a cultural and artistic hey-day, as symbolism and modernism in art and literature flourished throughout the continent, especially in France and Russia.

In Britain the new epoch with all the complexities of modern civilization came to take the place of the Victorian Age, which was the period of the country’s colonial expansion and predominance in international trade on the one hand – and the domination of very strict, almost puritan morals in the social consciousness on the other. By that time English literature had "stumbled", as it were, just marking time and making no headway, so to speak. Poetry of the period seemed to have exhausted its civic and moral spirit, peculiar to the works o

From 1917 to 1920 Eliot also edited a small unprofitable magazine Egoist and later another quarterly edition, Criterion, which was the most distinguished international critical journal of the period and where one of his most significant poems, The Waste Land, was first published in 1922. In it the writer brought to perfection his distinctive poetical expression of the anxious views and the profound and painful disillusionment of "the lost generation". In a series of sometimes realistic and sometimes mythological episodes, loosely linked by the legend of the search for the Grail, Eliot presented a sympathetic glimpse of a line of characters uneasily looking forward to a world order based on certainty and stability of humanistic ideals. The Waste Land is a reckless experiment in poetry; its style and language are highly complicated and symbolic and full of erudite allusions. In 1936 the poet even attached Notes on the Waste Land to the edition in order to explain the work's many quotations and allusions. The publication won Eliot an international reputation of incontestable master of verse-making.

Probably no other war in history had ever brought about such destructive spiritual crisis and total reappraisal of moral, cultural and social values as the World War I (1914 – 1918). It was pointless and insensate in its essence. Therefore the end of the war brought no sense of moral relief for either side, and a great many people, like Oswald Spengler, even argued that the European culture had entered the final stage of its existence.

At the same time Eliot applied himself to the art of drama. His plays include both religious pieces, such as Murder in the Cathedral (1935) about the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, and the tragicomedies like The Family Reunion (1939) and The Cocktail Party (1950). Eliot tried to revive verse drama of the Elizabethan Age. All his plays are in a blank verse of his own invention; thus he brought "poetic drama" back to the popular stage, making a significant contribution to the 20th century theatre. However, very few of Eliot’s plays managed to arouse interest of the public.

In 1932, after a 20-year long interval, Eliot visited the United States. It’s ironic that it was in the highly-industrialized America that the author of The Waste Land abandoned urbanism, which filled practically all of his works of the 1920-es, and started writing landscape lyrics. Along with the earnest philosophical poetry, Eliot created a series of “semi-amusing”, “semi-melancholy” poems, exhibiting his delightful sense of humour and talent of a subtle satirist. His most famous and popular work of that kind is Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), which was later assumed as a source of the modern musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber (the musical was first staged in London in 1981 and was on for 21 yea

Some topics in this essay:
Victorian Age, Waste Land, , London Eliot, Anglican Christian, Little Gidding, Thomas Eliot, Bergson Sorbonne, Elizabethan Age, Merry Widow, waste land, 20th century, thomas eliot, world war, eliot created, victorian age, st louis, thomas stearns eliot, thomas stearns, stearns eliot, poetic diction,