I've been enjoying, and learning from, Professor Langdon Hammer's lecture series on Modern Poetry (given in 2007), one of the courses published online in video form by Yale University. Hammer uses a variety of critical approaches - biographical, psychological, textual - and offers some exciting readings of canonical works. I've been concentrating in particular on the three lectures (10-12) on T S Eliot. Hammer considers in detail Prufrock (the poem), The Waste Land, and key critical essays 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' and the review of The Metaphysical Poets. But the ideas suggest ways of approaching the rest of the work too. My own notes are here, but they are offered as a memory aid only - you have to hear this for yourself!
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Yale Lectures on T S Eliot
I've been enjoying, and learning from, Professor Langdon Hammer's lecture series on Modern Poetry (given in 2007), one of the courses published online in video form by Yale University. Hammer uses a variety of critical approaches - biographical, psychological, textual - and offers some exciting readings of canonical works. I've been concentrating in particular on the three lectures (10-12) on T S Eliot. Hammer considers in detail Prufrock (the poem), The Waste Land, and key critical essays 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' and the review of The Metaphysical Poets. But the ideas suggest ways of approaching the rest of the work too. My own notes are here, but they are offered as a memory aid only - you have to hear this for yourself!
