Janice Brown: "T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and the Tyranny of Time"
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- DESCRIPTION
Four Quartets stands at the summit of poetry. This four-part work is T. S. Eliot’s greatest achievement, intellectually, aesthetically, and spiritually.
The title Four Quartets indicates that each poem is a separate movement, as in a piece of music written for four instruments. Each poem is named for a place with special spiritual significance, and each deals with the central themes:
Time- How can we come to terms with past, present, and future?
Language- How can we truly communicate when language is so unclear?
The Eternal- How can we relate to the world beyond time?
This lecture will show that in Four Quartets we encounter the Christian answer to these questions, and learn that we can escape from the bondage of the past, the impotency of the present, and the fear of the future.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Janice Brown (Ph.D.) is a specialist in the work of Dorothy L Sayers, who also lectures on C. S. Lewis and other writers connected with the Inklings milieu. She taught English Literature at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, for twenty-one years until her retirement in 2015. She has also taught short courses at the seminary Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA.
Dr. Brown served on the board of C. S. Lewis and Inklings Society for a number of years, and organized the hosting of the CSLIS conferences at Grove City College in 2008 and 2015.
Her Kent State University Press publication The Seven Deadly Sins in the Work of Dorothy L. Sayers was a finalist for the Edgar Alan Poe Award in 1998. This year Kent State University Press published her latest book The Lion in the Waste Land: Fearsome Redemption in the Work of C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, and T. S. Eliot.
Like many people, I've been reading and teaching "Four Quartets" most of my professional life whilst having a very complicated tussle with a poem which is probably more impressive than any other produced in the C20th and also impossible to respond to uncritically: the very idea of the Catholic Church being for many repulsive. If Jacob Rees Mogg is a member of that club,most of us would never wish to be. Most articles on "Four Quartets" and students' essays are crippled by their own ingenuity and masses of undigested scholarship: they will confuse rather than help the normal reader. Not sure I've ever given an essay 20/20 but it would be churlish to award this one anything else. It is superb. Doesn't put a foot wrong. Never strays into the dogmatic or the narcissistic. Simply elucidates what is there, in language everyone can understand. Something wonderful in this being available free of charge to anyone interested in poetry and thinking and this endlessly rewarding and at times very irritating poem. Brown doesn't point out its blindspots as Leavis does so forensically but nobody could quibble with the way she gets the student into the text so he can begin to search for himself. Exemplary teaching! This plus Alec Guinness's reading is all the Eliot student needs.
Brilliant, I've learned so much! Thank you. Also, I wish David all the best in his new appoinrment in the U.S.
They didn't leave for an adventure.
They were forced out.
Still, I can enjoy a long forgotten Romantic.
every time i listen i learn more -'-do not call it fixity' has been my refrain through over 50 years of research of our uniqueness & connectedness
Beautiful, insightful, colourful, and inspirational presentation. Thanks! Dr Charles W Spurgeon
Four Quartets refers to the late Beethoven Quartets such as opus 132. This work has five movements. Eliot is presenting four complete works in one book, but yes they also progress in order. The speaker here seems not to grasp that a single quartet is made of a number of movements from one to any number, and the word quartet refers to the number of performers, four.
Eliot introduces and develops a number of themes in the way Beethoven does in his late quartets: some material and processes being common to all of them.
Superb exposition.
This was insightful.
Thank you.
Wow, such a great lecture. I really appreciate it. It helps tremendously,
😜
Thanks for this lecture! An undergraduate degree in English Lit gives only the briefest sampling of this great poet's body of work. Now, decades later, I'm diving deeply into Four Quartets and enjoying every exposure. Like Dr. Eliot, we are now earnest, traditional Anglicans.
Eliot completed a doctoral thesis, but did not present himself to 'defend' it. A PhD was not awarded, therefore he remained a 'Mr'. (He did, however, receive no fewer than 13 honorary doctorates.)
@@terencemeikle534 Eliot did not present his 1916 PhD thesis at Harvard ONLY because he lived in England during WWI. Transit across the pond via ship was too dangerous at that time because of the German U-boat threat. I believe, decades later, he was awarded his PhD because by then his success was well established worldwide. But I won't quibble if you know different.
A very informative lecture.
Thanks for posting this lecture. It is clear and delightful. I am not a not a poet. More like a Philosopher. Something I have dedicated my life. Something I share with Eliot.
Love the Canadian accent. So charming!
I listen to the Alec Guinness reading of Four Quartets while riding long distance bicycle treks.
A clear and engaging lecture. I must admit to having entertained a less than wholly appreciative attitude toward these late works of Eliot, sharing in George Orwell's view that they presented a falling off of inspiration. I'm nearing sixty, and have not looked at them in quite some while. Inspired by this lecture, I'm going to give them another go. So thankyou.
Great lecture. Thanks
u r marvelous janice
It is my understanding that the four instruments being played, as implied in the term "quartet", are Air, Earth, Fire, and Water......the four elements that play together in order to create life and time.
If time is irredeemable, as said in Burnt Norton, there’s a certain peace and tyranny that come with that. There’s a felt communion with the moment when you accept and surrender to it, but for Eliot the past and tradition make the overwhelming swell of the present. It’s true he believes that the individual can creatively react with his cultural context, but that context really dictates what we can work with. If past present future are all one then everything is contained in the present and time is irredeemable. Believing that would create more of a tendency to lean into the past because it at least can be studied.
I love Eliot though. The best conclusion to draw from this would be one of a Zen togetherness.
@@c.s.hayden3022 Rubbish! God seized T. S. Eliot through the miracle of the Incarnation and the mystery of the Holy Eucharist. In 1927, Eliot abruptly turned from the barrenness ("Waste Land") of his Unitarian upbringing to the glowing, enervating realities of the traditional Anglican faith ("Ash Wednesday" and "Four Quartets"). Zen? Never in Eliot.
Nietschze's Eternal Recurrence?