Topic 20: T.S. Eliot and W. H. Auden
March 15th –
BIOGRAPHY
First published in 1922—big year for Modernist writing!
● First publication of Joyce’s Ulysses (allusive, elusive)
Born in St Louis, Missouri—tried really hard to be English?
TEXT
Self-consciously constructed poem: does not reflect the profuse strains of unmediated art
● There is an editorial apparatus: with FOOTNOTES
Dedicated to Ezra Pound: edited it! “Il Migliore Fabbro”, the better craftsman
○ Pound is famous for imagism! “In a Station of the Metro”
The levels of disorientation, including different languages
● Very serious and then very shallow
● Biblical material
● Speaker and character shifts! Moving amongst a series of personae
Symbolism: multiple frames and multiple narrators
● Touchstone effect: generational shift and conflict
● “Under the brown fog of the winter dawn / a crowd flowed over London Bridge”
○ The crowd AS the river! Water imagery is another one to track
○ Lifeless, dead, undifferentiated mass
○ Alienation in a crowd!
“Ships at Mylae” — Ancient Greek!
● Eliot is quite judgmental about class and sexuality!
● Capital-C City are for the financial district: the clients of the sex workers!
● Sweeney is a character in Eliot lore.
Near the end of the poem, Lane cites the final lines as the best of the poem.
W. H. Auden: Musée des Beaux Arts
Ekphrasis
● About “The Fall of Icarus”, but also using the painting as a jumping point?
● Beautiful description! Like Keats and Herbert
“How well they understood the human position”
● Auden very political! Talking about the Spanish Civil War? Trying to use art to cope with
suffering?
● People don’t tend to want to face people’s pain!
○ Do we look at art in a detached way?
The painting
● The details we all pick up!
● Perspectival depth?
● Hierarchy of sights! What makes things matter?
“About suffering they were never wrong, / The old Masters”
● Comparison of age?
● The miraculous birth is another Breughel painting! The Nativity
March 15th –
BIOGRAPHY
First published in 1922—big year for Modernist writing!
● First publication of Joyce’s Ulysses (allusive, elusive)
Born in St Louis, Missouri—tried really hard to be English?
TEXT
Self-consciously constructed poem: does not reflect the profuse strains of unmediated art
● There is an editorial apparatus: with FOOTNOTES
Dedicated to Ezra Pound: edited it! “Il Migliore Fabbro”, the better craftsman
○ Pound is famous for imagism! “In a Station of the Metro”
The levels of disorientation, including different languages
● Very serious and then very shallow
● Biblical material
● Speaker and character shifts! Moving amongst a series of personae
Symbolism: multiple frames and multiple narrators
● Touchstone effect: generational shift and conflict
● “Under the brown fog of the winter dawn / a crowd flowed over London Bridge”
○ The crowd AS the river! Water imagery is another one to track
○ Lifeless, dead, undifferentiated mass
○ Alienation in a crowd!
“Ships at Mylae” — Ancient Greek!
● Eliot is quite judgmental about class and sexuality!
● Capital-C City are for the financial district: the clients of the sex workers!
● Sweeney is a character in Eliot lore.
Near the end of the poem, Lane cites the final lines as the best of the poem.
W. H. Auden: Musée des Beaux Arts
Ekphrasis
● About “The Fall of Icarus”, but also using the painting as a jumping point?
● Beautiful description! Like Keats and Herbert
“How well they understood the human position”
● Auden very political! Talking about the Spanish Civil War? Trying to use art to cope with
suffering?
● People don’t tend to want to face people’s pain!
○ Do we look at art in a detached way?
The painting
● The details we all pick up!
● Perspectival depth?
● Hierarchy of sights! What makes things matter?
“About suffering they were never wrong, / The old Masters”
● Comparison of age?
● The miraculous birth is another Breughel painting! The Nativity
