Category: Modern Poetry and Poetics

Which of the following best characterizes T.S. Eliot’s concept of the “objective correlative” ?

A. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem’s formal structure and its meaning.
B. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem’s formal structure and its rhetorical aim.
C. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem’s theme and its objective historical context.
D. The objective correlative refers to a set of objects, situations, or events which necessarily produce a particular emotion.

Ezra Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro” reads: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough.” Which of the following statements best characterizes this poem ?

A. It seeks to diminish the distance between society and nature.
B. It seeks to amplify the distance between society and nature.
C. It plays with the relationship between the social, natural, and supernatural worlds.
D. It evokes the beauty of a pastoral scene.