"April is the Cruelest Month"-T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, and Modernism - Podcast Episode

You may know him as the poet whose work inspired the Broadway musical, and now infamous movie, Cats. T.S. Eliot, though, is widely recognized as one of (if not the) best poets of the twentieth century for his Modernist classics like "The Waste Land" (1922) and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915). Drs. Crystal and David Downing sit down to discuss T.S. Eliot's involvement in the Modernist movement and specifically how Wade author's like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton reacted against modernism and against Eliot.
Image: quotefancy.com/quote/914917/T...

[@janellemckinley172]

I've been curious about Eliot for a long time but not interested enough to spend time on it. Someone pointed out that he was 23 when he wrote of growing old and stockings rolled, but I felt old at 23 and I knew a woman who called herself 2300. Thanks to you I think I've got him, even want to read Wasteland which I'd thought impenetrable before.

[@aaronhill7599]

Janelle, glad you enjoyed this episode! You should check out any of Thomas Howard's book or lectures on T.S. Eliot (like David mentions at 47:45) if you want to finally venture into "The Waste Land"--so to speak. For example, there is a good recording of him giving a lecture on "The Four Quartets" at Gordon College on their CZcams channel. (czcams.com/video/fnTqmpti6So/video.html)

[@janellemckinley172]

@@aaronhill7599 I majored in Engl.Lit. way back when (though by the time I was graduated they quit giving those out, just English) and had to read it. This time I expect to thoroughly enjoy the private grumble.

[@hazelwray4184]

27:08 everyone could see that social reform was a bust, "that's what led up to WWI" - nonsense.

[@WadeCenter]

A response from David and Crystal Downing: "Thanks for your comment, Hazel. You have highlighted how any asset can have liabilities. The Wade podcast is praised all over the world for intellectual substance delivered with laugh-filled enjoyment, like a conversation around a dinner table. But that means many comments are off the top of the speaker’s head-as in any dinner conversation, where another person’s immediate response can preclude the possibility for elaboration of a simplistic statement, like the one you identified. So of course the causes of WWI were complex, going way beyond the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. However, what the comment meant to highlight was the social situation of the era, when Modernists were assuming the progressivism of Social Darwinism: that humanity was becoming more intellectually and morally sophisticated. The Great War totally subverted that assumption, thus reinforcing Christian truth about human nature."