Professor Sir Christopher Ricks: More Than One Waste Land

A video cannot do justice to the brilliance of Christopher Ricks' lectures. He captivates every single member of the audience right till the very end, and his recent lecture on The Wasteland was no different.

What attracted me particularly to this lecture was Ricks' exploration of how we see and interpret the first line of the poem. The Wasteland begins with 'April is the cruellest month, breeding'. Ricks states depending on how one emphasises this sentence can dictate how we interpret it.

Same, then, in how we read words. My own example: 'he was a good man, on weekends'. Up till 'on weekends' we see the man as 'good'. Yet, on reading 'on weekends' we understand that the man is not so good on weekdays. Then, our interpretation and evaluation of the man has changed from what it was at the beginning of the sentence.

Careful interpretation is essential in all work, not just in Ricks' forte of literary criticism. One can only see the complete idea by re-evaluating what we already understand, and as Ricks shows, without it we have but half the story.

Written by Lizzie who is studying for the English BA with Art History at New College of the Humanities. Find out more about studying English at NCH at: https://www.nchlondon.ac.uk/english-a...