Fourteenth lecture for my students in English 140, UC Santa Barbara, Summer 2012. Course website: http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/su12/index.html

1. Lecture 14: Look Homeward, T.S.:
Eliot’s American Quartet
English 140
UC Santa Barbara
Summer 2012
28 August 2012
“History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous,
empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now. The French
Revolution […] evoked ancient Rome the way fashion evokes
costumes of the past. Fashion has a flair for the topical, no matter
where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tiger’s leap into the
past. This jump, however, takes place in an arena where the ruling
class give the commands. The same leap in the open air of history is
the dialectical one, which is how Marx understood the revolution.”
—Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” XIV

2. A few administrative matters
● Papers – what was successful?
● Quizzes
● Grades
● Questions?

3. Notes on the structure of each Quartet
i. Scenes of action and movement, combined with
meditations on time, with fleeting glimpses of
timelessness. (A comparatively long section.)
ii. An episode of dissatisfaction with worldly experience.
(A comparatively long section.)
iii. Purgation in the world, divesting the soul of the love
of created things. (A comparatively long section.)
iv. A lyric prayer for, or affirmation of the need of,
Intercession. (A short section; usually an emotional,
self-contained lyric, sometimes associated in some
way with Mary, mother of Jesus.)
v. The problems of attaining artistic wholeness and, at
the same time, the problems of achieving spiritual
health. (Normally a rhetorically elevated restatement
of the poem's themes with a conclusion. A
comparatively long section.)