Another Quote May 4, 2006

This one never fails to inspire and stir me. 

"Tell me…do you not feel a spirit stirring within you that longs to know, to do, and to dare, to hold converse with the great world of thought, and hold before you some high and noble object to which the vigor of your mind and the strength of your arm may be given? Do you not have longings like these, which you breathe to no one, and which you feel must be heeded, or you will pass through life unsatisfied and regretful? I am sure you have them, and they will forever cling round your heart till you obey their mandate. They are the voices of that nature which God has given you, and which, when obeyed, will bless you and your fellow men." ~ James A. Garfield, in a letter to a friend

Literary Criticism May 4, 2006

I love writing literary criticism. Really, I do. It just takes me awhile to get into it (and I'm usually forced, like for my Western Literature class). Right now I'm writing a short response to Florence Jones's "T. S. Eliot Among the Prophets," from American Literature, which deals with Eliot's The Wasteland. She is contesting a thesis made by Claude E. Magny in his article "A Double Note on T. S. Eliot and James Joyce." His thesis: In The Wasteland, we are in the bleak even time before the Incarnation, before the unique, exceptional event took place, that which, moreover the cards are unable to predict, because it is outside Time.

In response she writes: With respect to Mr. Magny, I suggest that [the] Judeo-Christian perspective in Time prevails also in Eliot's poem.

I don't agree with either of those totally. So I had to come up with a new one: In T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland, the author combines a Judeo-Christian influence with a fatalistic perspective, creating a work that contains all the despair of Jeremiah and Isaiah but none of their hope of redemption.

Now I've probably bored any hapless reader to tears, so I'll stop there.