The Seduction of Argument and the Danger of Parody in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets
Though its more lyrical passages present detailed and evocative imagery, substantial portions of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets afford no such easy approach. Since the initial appearance of "Burnt Norton" it has been a critical commonplace to regard these portions of the text as at once its most conceptually profound and its most formally prosaic. Of course, the Quartets offer enough cues toward this critical attitude that it may fairly be said to reside within the poem at least as much as it is imposed from without. As the text of the poem itself apparently gives license to the view that its "poetry does not matter," the preponderance of critical attention to the Quartets' non-lyrical passages has been devoted to philosophical and theological paraphrase of its argument, to explicating the system of belief or thought behind the words. Meanwhile, relatively little attention has been paid to the working of the poetry itself, to the construction of the presumed meaning, in these "discursive" or "conceptual" passages. Seduced by the desire for a systematic argument, criticism has overestimated these passages' straightforwardness and largely neglected their ambiguity and indeterminacy. The seductive voice of argument – which is already a voice within the poem – invites conceptual scrutiny but repels formal analysis; it displaces the concerns of "poetry" in order to work its poetry undetected. I will be reading critically several critical discussions, but always in the belief that the criticism's concerns are not projected onto the poem from without, but express the critical voices within the poem.
The seduction of reading the Four Quartets as a systema...
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In the small town of Salem, the year of 1692, people were being inaccurately accused as witches by people they did not know. The Salem witch trial hysteria of 1692 may have been caused due to a combination of a civil war and the intention to cause a stir. There were at least three causes of the Salem witch trial hysteria. These were economic status, girls acting as if been affected by witchcraft, and a combination of gender and age.
The Salem Witch trials and what caused them is very debatable. Some theories lead to Rye poisoning from bread to even people faking it. The most believable claim is that people were faking it. Everyone had a motive and they all just wanted to save themselves. It was a time when people were selfish and only cared for themselves.
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, a novel about the period of growth from childhood to adulthood, portrays the disappearance of childhood immaculateness. The main character of the novel is Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old boy who suffers from PTSD because of the death of his younger brother, Allie. The story begins with Holden talking to, what is assumed to be, a therapist about crazy things that had happened in his life. The novel is a flashback in Holden’s perspective that takes place in approximately three days. Throughout the book Holden learns valuable lessons about growing up and moving on. J.D. Salinger uses the checkers, the profanity on the wall, and the catcher in the rye dream to depict that innocence cannot be preserved forever.
In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old boy, transitions from childhood to adulthood. The death of Holden’s little brother signifies the beginning his loss of innocence and growth of maturity. As he enters adulthood, Holden views society differently from his peers by characterizing most of his peers and adults he meets as “phonies.” Thus, Holden takes the impossible challenge of preserving the innocence in children because he wants to prevent children from experiencing the corruption in society. The Catcher In The Rye embodies Holden’s struggle to preserve the innocence of children and reveals the inevitability of and the necessity of encountering the harsh realities of life.
The Salem Witch Trials were a series of prosecutions of men and women who were accused to practice witchcraft or have associations with the devil. The first Salem witch trial began with two girls in 1692, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams who started to have “fits”, in which they would throw tantrums and have convulsions. The random outburst of the girls threw the town of Salem into a mass of hysteria. Although historians have not found a definite reason or cause for the witch trials, they have taken different approaches to explain the hysteria that took over Salem. Some historians approach a psychological theory by proposing the girls suffered from diseases that made them act out. Other historians refer to factors such as religion, economics, and weather to explain the beginnings of an unforgettable time in Salem, Massachusetts. For over 300 years, historians have tried to reveal the truth about the beginnings of the Salem Witch Trials, but in order to do so historians must look at both the way of life in Salem in the seventeenth century and use knowledge that is available now to explain the phenomenon.
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Suddenly people seemed very paranoid and soon residents were placing blame on one another and accusing each other of witchcraft. In a fifteen month period between 1691 and 1692 nearly twelve dozen people were accused of witchcraft in or near Salem (Norton, p8).
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The mass hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials began in early 1692. The trials initiated with young girls behaviors being out of the ordinary. One of the many mysteries to this hysteria is what caused the girls to act the way that they did. Samuel Parris was the minister
According to the history channel there was a story where three young women were accused of witchcraft. They were brought in front of the magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne who questioned them. on the day of the trial the accusers were screaming and withering in pain yet two of the three withes pled not guilty . While the last women pled guilty likely thinking that she would save herself from conviction by ratting out the other people. This brought on hysteria that spread through the community and on to the rest of Massachusetts. Soon the witch accusations started to overwhelm the local justice system so their was no focus on the other crimes that occurred in the towns. In May of 1962 the new appoin...
Eliot, T. S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Prufrock, and Other Observations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920. N. pag. Bartleby.com. Aug. 2011. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.