Janice Brown: "T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and the Tyranny of Time"

DESCRIPTION

Four Quartets stands at the summit of poetry. This four-part work is T. S. Eliot’s greatest achievement, intellectually, aesthetically, and spiritually.

The title Four Quartets indicates that each poem is a separate movement, as in a piece of music written for four instruments. Each poem is named for a place with special spiritual significance, and each deals with the central themes:

Time— How can we come to terms with past, present, and future?

Language— How can we truly communicate when language is so unclear?

The Eternal— How can we relate to the world beyond time?

This lecture will show that in Four Quartets we encounter the Christian answer to these questions, and learn that we can escape from the bondage of the past, the impotency of the present, and the fear of the future.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Janice Brown (Ph.D.) is a specialist in the work of Dorothy L Sayers, who also lectures on C. S. Lewis and other writers connected with the Inklings milieu. She taught English Literature at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, for twenty-one years until her retirement in 2015. She has also taught short courses at the seminary Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA.

Dr. Brown served on the board of C. S. Lewis and Inklings Society for a number of years, and organized the hosting of the CSLIS conferences at Grove City College in 2008 and 2015.

Her Kent State University Press publication The Seven Deadly Sins in the Work of Dorothy L. Sayers was a finalist for the Edgar Alan Poe Award in 1998. This year Kent State University Press published her latest book The Lion in the Waste Land: Fearsome Redemption in the Work of C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, and T. S. Eliot.