Experiencing “The Waste Land”: A Four-Day Unit for Teaching T. S. Eliot’s Masterpiece

Steer your students away from the question “What does The Waste Land mean?”, a question that still baffles literary critics. Instead, get them to ask “What does The Waste Land express?” Rather than getting them to interpret the poem; have them experience it. A four day course of 90 minute classes, for high school and undergraduates, based on a theoretical framework laid out in my essay “What The Waste Land Expresses: An Experiential Approach to T. S. Eliot’s Poem.”

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The Early History of Metafiction

What are the earliest instances of metafiction, or fiction about fiction? I don’t know much about early Chinese literature, but the story I told of the invention of writing in Hunters, the First Readers to Write a Story could be called metafictional, since it is a story about the invention of writing itself.

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