Friday

 Today we are going to discuss AP Classroom and then read part II of the Waste Lands

Zoe Wassman: "I miss poetry!  I love the Waste Land.  I want to marry T.S. Eliot." 

PART II: A Game of Chess

The key to Eliot is usually through his allusions. In this section there are allusions to Shakespeare: Anthony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, and Hamlet.
The Aeneid - story of Dido,
Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, and Ovid. Most of these allusions are connected to women.
Example: Cleopatra - a suicide over love. Dido - a suicide over love. Paradise Lost - a seduction by the Devil (or snake). Dante - lustful lovers in Hell. Ovid - a rape of a woman by her brother in-law. Hamlet - Ophelia - a suicide over love.

This section can be read as a contrast of sex and love from the viewpoint of upper and lower classes. The 1st woman, the upper class, has been compared to a female Prufrock.

The title of this section comes from an obscure play that uses chess as a metaphor for stages in seduction. 
How does the title fit into the overarching theme of the section?  What do you make of WWI and trenches?  WWI appears twice in (section 2 and 3).  There is an allusion to Carthage in part 1.  What about all the wars seen/alluded to in this section: WWI, Punic Wars, Roman Civil War - The Battle of Actium, Troy, Norway-Denmark, Revenge in the Tempest.    

JUG - JUG TWIT TWIT

Allusions - Dante's Inferno, Philomela (Metamorphoses by Ovid), Tempest (sea storm), Aeneas (Dido), Hamlet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Carthage, Troy. 

Venus/Aphrodite. 

Who is in Circle Two of Hell (the Lustful) in the Inferno:
Dido, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles, Paris, Tristan, Lancelot, Guinevere


Remember - Ophelia drowns herself.  Anthony loses a sea battle.  Tempest has a storm that sinks a ship.  Water is a traditional symbol of love.

FIRST PART OF "The Game of Chess" from https://tanzeelafaiz.medium.com/allusions-in-the-wasteland-by-t-c587c790bff4

The title of this part of the poem is from Middleton’s The Game of Chess and the main plot for this part of poem is taken from “Women Beware Women” of the same writer. Its main plot is about the seduction of a young wife by a gallant whose mother in law is enjoying the game of chess. To explain the chair she sat in, Eliot uses the reference from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and elaborates its grandeur marvelously. He also uses the reference of Queen Dido of Carthage’s ceiling at this point to explain the setting that is taken from Virgil’s Aeneid.

Afterwards Eliot refers to Milton’s Paradise Lost book IV and explains the entry of gallant in the setting as Milton explains the entry of Satan in the garden of Eden in “Sylvan Scene”. In the very next verse he symbolizes the expected tragedy of the wife with the tragedy of Philomela seduced by her brother in law King Trent in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. At the end of this part he refers to Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet where dying Ophelia bids farewell by saying “good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night”. He again uses Shakespeare’s line of The Tempest “those are pearls that were his eyes” for the seduced wife.

The phrases used by Eliot in this part to explain the crime and spiritually hollow attitude of modern man include English and French terms. He writes French phrase “Jug Jug” to represent the sexual intercourse. The word rat symbolizes the modern man who has entered in the vegetation to spoil it, the one eyed commerce man for the man selling the abortion pills, and dead bones for the man who is spiritually dead.