Intertextuality in T. S. Eliot’s poetry

Speaker: William Baker, professor, Hangzhou Normal University/ Zhejiang University/ Northern Illinois University

Time: 8:00-10:00, May 11

Venue: online (Tencent: 488-286-920)

Abstract: The presentation will apply the concept of “intertextuality” to various poems by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) and explain why it illuminates Eliot’s work. An explanation of “intertexuality” is a term used in recent literary discourse to indicate how a text, in this instance individual poems by one poet draw upon other literary texts by other authors. Extracts from early poems by Eliot, such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and portions of “The Waste Land” will be followed also by readings and discussion of Eliot’s use of intertextuality in the opening section of “Burnt Norton” from his late great poetic sequence “The Four Quartets.” If time allows there will be an illustration of Eliot using “intertextuality” for humorous purposes in one of the poems “Macavity: The Mystery Cat” and to also discuss how “intertextuality” relates in literary theory to ideas relating to “modernism” and “postmodernism.”