I love your addition of the historical perspective of the time in which the poems were written. Thank you for doing these excellent videos!!

I've already watched the first 9 videos, and I can say this series is one of the best experiences I've had with literature. Thank you for this amazing content.

Thank you for this insightful lecture, Professor Strandberg; I especially appreciated your breakdown of "the hot gates" as a translation for Thermopylae and how it highlights the old man's lack of heroic history. This contrast between a life of action and a "dry brain" is exactly what I've been exploring in my retirement project, V2Melody, where I’ve set ten of Eliot's poems to music. For "Gerontion" specifically, I felt the internal conflict was so rich that I actually created two different musical versions to capture that "chilled delirium" you mentioned. Giving these classic lines a melodic life is my way of making Eliot's work more accessible to a modern audience who might otherwise find him daunting.

I wish we could have more literature courses.  You are an excellent professor.

this is so so so good. also what a voice victor has lol

This helped me so much understanding Gerontion. Thank you 😊

Your videos are extremely helpful. Thanks for everything.

The search for meaning:

1. Heroic adventure
3:55

2. Salvation 10:45

3. The march of History
20:23 contrived corridors (Versailles)
Still alludes to religion,

4. Cultivating one's "garden"
(Voltaire)
Still shadows of Christ the tiger, the wrath bearing tree.
24:00
Usually through Marriage/& relationships
25:00 Grover Smith: discussing a bad marriage, borne from rashness


I have lost my passion: pointless 26:50
Adultery and Poverty
28:40


RECAP
29:33

The future of an old Man
30:10
Pondering death
31:30
Examples

And it ends with a recurve

I have enjoyed a number of your informative and enlightening videos. Many thanks, so enjoyable.

The Epigraph is from Measure to Measure.

These are very enlightening! :D

Great video!  I was struggling with this one.

Thanks. Very clearly explained

clearly explained..

Greeting and thank you to Duke Learning Innovation and to Professor Victor Strandberg for this enriching course on The Works of T.S. Eliot.

thanks from Bangladesh 🇧🇩🇧🇩🇧🇩🇧🇩

A comprehensive survey of Eliot's notoriously allusive poem. The poem Prof Victor mentions among others is A Rhapsody on a Windy Night and the epigraph to the poem under study is a quote from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Illuminating lecture without any aide memoire in hand or on the screen. Re-listenable.

Thank you for your sensitive reading of this poem. I am going to recommend your lecture to my students.

The opening lines are torn from Benson's FitzGerald's biography (who was the chief translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam) and Fitz had a boy who used to go to read for him because he was "old and blind"! and most of the imagery in this poem, as much as in The Waste Land, is from either FitzGerald or Khayyam (most of the time, both, as many might don't know that Eliot was seriously possessed by Khayyam.

6:35 don't care