The Violent Bear It Away: Flannery O'Connor's Savage Vision of Grace

2022 was the centenary of the publication of T.S. Eliot's groundbreaking modernist masterpiece, The Waste Land. Originally titled "He Do The Police in Different Voices" (from Dickens' Our Mutual Friend), Eliot's poem harkens back to Greek and Roman mythology, the legend of the Holy Grail, The Bhagavad Gita, Dante, and Shakespeare, while simultaneously looking forward to what would become our fragmentary, modern landscape. TS Eliot is widely considered to be one of the greatest, most innovative poets in the history of Western literature. In this course we will read and discuss a number of Eliot's greatest poems such as The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, Journey of the Magi, and his final masterpiece, Four Quartets. We will also learn about Eliot’s life, his difficult first marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, his literary theories, and his impact on modernism.