Sunday, February 3, 2008

Prompt for First Day on Eliot’s Poetry…

Prompt for First Day on Eliot’s Poetry…

As you are reading Eliot’s early poetry, here are some things to think about:


1) You may want to know something about Eliot’s Life. The Kermode Intro can help with this. A good on-line biography is this one by Ronald Bush: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/life.htm


2) What are the main themes/ideas in these poems? What attitudes, images, plots, and characters do they have in common?


3) How do these poems represent a Modernist break with the past?


4) How do the poems relate to what we have read of the prose so far?(See Torrens’ essay on BB for help on this)


5) What is the chronology of their composition vs the way they arranged in the book? What does this arrangement say about themes? (See my chronology for info on this: http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/dial/T&Vseminar/teearlyp.html)


6) Although we are going to focus on Prufrock, I’d like each of you to pick another poem to be kind of an expert on. Be prepared to talk in special detail about your poem, and if possible bring it into your blog for the week.


7) For reading Prufrock, be sure to check out all the helpful on-line annotations etc. If you click on the title of the poem on the web syllabus, it will take you to a very detailed, in-progress annotation I’ve been accumulating through various classes. My Eliot links page also has several helpful links to annotated and illustrated versions of the poem. http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/dial/t&vseminar/tselinks.htm


7) This Modern American Poetry Site has a lot of good info on Eliot, including analyses of various poems: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/eliot.htm

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