ENGLISH 45C Lecture 12: 10/5 Waste Land Section V
Document Summary
Waste land doesn"t let us fully order it; part of the point is that it emerges from disrupted, disordered society/culture. Can"t lay out one schema to make sense of it all. Falci"s skeptical of eliot"s suggestion to reader that tiresias centers the whole poem, that all the male characters are the same. Part of the point is that the young man carbuncular is not tristan. We"re meant to try integrate the poems parts, but it always fails. Fragmentation is both disease/cure; double figure like tiresias (blind/seer, man/woman) Eliot leads us to think abt poem in relation to his biography, can"t ignore these details; most of poem is set in part of london he worked, places he was - doesn"t determine meaning, but impt. Problem of poem is awkward juncture of indiv/civilization. Relationship tw 2 unthinkable things - interiority of self + totality of world. Poem doesn"t have some secret answer; we"re just trying to find a path through.
