How do the poems "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," "The Wasteland" by T. S. Eliot, and "Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen relate to T....

T. S. Eliot developed his theory of impersonality in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent." In this essay, he states:

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

In this statement, he is articulating a combination of ideas. First, he does not think that poetry should resemble a diary in the sense of simply being an outpouring...

T. S. Eliot developed his theory of impersonality in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent." In this essay, he states:

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

In this statement, he is articulating a combination of ideas. First, he does not think that poetry should resemble a diary in the sense of simply being an outpouring of what a person happens to be feeling at a given time. Instead, it exists at an intersection of the poetic tradition, the objective external objects or specific images that can evoke an emotion in a reader, and the particular emotion or experience.

Thus in "Prufrock," we do not simply get an outpouring of Eliot's own feelings. The poem connects to tradition through its frequent uses of allusion as well as its formal character, which moves back and forth between modernist free verse and traditional forms such as the heroic couplet and Shakespearean song. 

Although "The Wasteland" may have originated in Eliot's personal feelings (instead of being purely autobiographical), it addresses fragmentation as a modern condition and grounds itself in poetic and religious tradition in its central figure of the Fisher King. 

"Dulce et Decorum Est” is a more intensely personal poem, but the poet distances himself by use of the concrete imagery and details that are "linguistic objective correlatives" of the emotions experienced. Rather than telling us that war is horrible, Owens shows its horrors by means of precise descriptions of soldiers enduring trench warfare and gas attacks in World War I. Its title and conclusion link it to the poetic tradition.