Ts eliot reading the wasteland7/6/2023 ![]() ![]() We also tell them about Kirk’s work about The Waste Land. Eliot’s The Waste Land is a dense work, but we demonstrate to our Great Books students every spring that they understand much more of it than they think. Another would be Russell Kirk’s ruminations on T.S. Eliot’s reflections on Dante’s Divine Comedy. Sometimes there are those writings about the Great Books that offer such assistance and are so rich with insight that the secondary work in conversation with the primary work comes a work well worth reading and analysis. Typically, our students read introductions at the end and not the beginning.Īll this is stated to provide the exceptions. Of course, we all know that sometimes answers to our questions about a reading are not to be found within the work and sometimes we need additional outside, background materials to assist a fuller reading. ![]() ![]() By asking interpretive questions and applying the Socratic method of clarifying and qualifying, the student has better understanding of the reading. What we generally do is encourage the students to jump right in and start swimming. In all of our Great Books based programs we exalt the primary readings, unmediated by commentaries, critical theories, jargon ladened treatises, and a mountain of secondary works explaining what a given author meant within his work. ![]()
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