An Interpretation of the Modern World through W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming” (1919) and T.S. Eliot’s "Sweeney Erect" (1919)
Ashti Anwar Mohammed
University of Sulaimani
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/jls.1.2.6
Keywords: -Twentieth Century -Modern World and Modern Poets -Mysticism -Yeats and Eliot
Abstract
This research deals with the modern world and the
literary and nonliterary influences that shaped the world in the
twentieth century. These influenced the two outstanding poets to
write their well-known-poems, especially Yeats’s “The Second
Coming” (19191) and Eliot’s “Sweeney Erect” (1919),
furthermore; it deals with the strong connection between the two
poets and their two interlinked poems. It is also a critical reading
about W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” (1919), and the
destructive world in the aftermath of the First World War is
delineated and the behaviour and attitudes of the modern man
in the twentieth society is pinpointed. T. S. Eliot’s poem,
“Sweeney Erect” (1919), is critically interpreted in detail.
Moreover, the infidelity and the hypocrisy of modern man in the
modern world and the absurdity of the modern life are presented
throughout the poem. Finally, the researcher concluded that
there is a strong connection between the two poems as they show
the life of the modern man which is not harmonious, and people
become senseless about the crisis of the human being that is why
Yeats thinks that it is the time for the return of Christ to teach
them about their sordid and absurd life. Reader-Response
Analysis and Textual Analysis Approaches are used in the
analysis of the poems.
