ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -T.S. Eliot used this phrase to describe “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion” that the poet feels and hopes to evoke in the reader (“Hamlet, ” 1919).

Detailed explanation-2: -objective correlative, literary theory first set forth by T.S. Eliot in the essay “Hamlet and His Problems” and published in The Sacred Wood (1920).

Detailed explanation-3: -In literary criticism, an objective correlative is a group of things or events which systematically represent emotions.

Detailed explanation-4: -So a situation in a Shakespeare play must objectively suggest corresponding emotions in the audience, which they then experience thanks to the situation and events they are witnessing. The action of the play evokes or inspires these emotions within the play’s audience.

Detailed explanation-5: -The idea of the objective correlative which Keats and Sipihri advocated in their poems is firmly grounded in their power of implying worldly ideas to the readers objectively and not through direct expression.