Reading: (1) T. E. Hulme (pronounced like “Hume”), “Romanticism and Classicism” (CT, 728–734)
        (2) T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and “Hamlet and His Problems” (CT, 761–766)

        Question: In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot offers what he describes as an “impersonal theory of poetry”; yet he identifies “the relation of the poem to its author” as one “aspect” of this theory (762b). What is that relation?

        Note: Class will meet at 2:10 on this day, which is a Brandeis Thursday.

        Reading: TBA

        Assignment for third paper (4–6 pages): Compare the views of three of the five writers listed below on the question whether, or in what way, truthfulness in some form is essential to the value of a literary work. You should identify the points on which your chosen writers agree and disagree (to the extent that their claims pertain to common topics), and, where they disagree, you should make an assessment of their competing arguments.
        Bear in mind that truthfulness may be attributed either to the expression of the writer’s thought or feeling (a truthful expression is a genuine or sincere one) or to the representation of something external (a truthful representation is an accurate or faithful one).

        1. William Wordsworth, “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads (see esp. pp. 441–442)
        2. John Stuart Mill, What Is Poetry? (esp. p. 552)
        3. Matthew Arnold, “Preface” to Poems
        4. Emile Zola, The Experimental Novel
        5. Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying