In this lecture, Prof. West argues that the two great philosophically-inclined artists in early twentieth-century America were T.S. Eliot and Eugene O’Neill. Eugene O’Neill’s 49 plays constitute the greatest literary exploration of the cultural and spiritual dynamics of the American empire. Eliot’s work, especially his poems and criticism from 1917-1942, explored the end of the age of Europe with its wars, loveless creatures, hollow men, mindless barbarity, and devastated wastelands. As Prof. West discusses in response to O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh and Eliot’s Four Quartets, both writers understood the profound human tragedy of their times, but, trapped within a waning civilisation, neither artist could find a way out.
The original video can be found here.
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