Teaching English Language and Literature Society of Iran (TELLSI) Journal of new advances in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics 2676-2927 8 1 2026 06 01 Navigating Fragmented Poetics in T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men: A Camusian Exploration of Existential Hollowness and the Absurd 76 106 247343 10.22034/jeltal.2026.8.1.4 EN Ehsan Khaef Fars Education Department, Ministry of Education, Fasa, Iran 0000-0001-9265-6063 Journal Article 2025 10 22 This study employs an interdisciplinary synthesis of modernist literary theory and Albert Camus’s philosophy of the absurd, as articulated in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), to interrogate T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men (1925) and its embodiment of existential hollowness as a precursor to existentialist thought. Addressing four research questions, the analysis explores how Eliot’s fragmented poetics parallel Camus’s absurd, enact the tension between human desire and cosmic indifference, illuminate paralysis and cultural allusions through a Camusian lens, and position the poem as a bridge between modernism and existentialism. The poem’s disjointed structure and “stuffed men” paradox (Eliot, 1963, p. 77) reflect Camus’s absurd confrontation with cosmic silence (Camus, 1955, p. 31); oxymorons like “Shape without form” and repetitions like “prickly pear” (Eliot, 1963, pp. 79–80) underscore desire’s futility; paralysis and allusions to Dante and Guy Fawkes (Eliot, 1963, pp. 77, 80–81) signify existential failure against Camus’s call for revolt (Camus, 1955, p. 55); and the “whimper” ending (Eliot, 1963, p. 82) anticipates existentialism but resists Camus’s clarity through Christian ambiguity. This study reveals The Hollow Men as a contested nexus of literary and philosophical discourses, challenging modernist readings and enriching existential scholarship by illuminating Eliot’s navigation of meaninglessness. https://www.jeltal.ir/article_247343_79ec80623eba239132367940bf7342b3.pdf