Tuesday, February 16, 2016

How is classical allusion evident in the story of Babylon Revisited?

The title of the story is in itself a biblical allusion:
the people of ancient Babylon were known to be decadent and sinful, and were eventually
punished for it. The protagonist of the story "revisits" the site of his earlier
transgressions: he was involved in a decadent Roaring Twenties lifestyle in Paris, and
became an alcoholic who behaved irresponsibly, and caused the accidental death of his
wife, and his daughter was put into the care of his wife's sister. He has returned to
show he has changed, that he is no longer irresponsible, but through an unfortunate
misunderstanding and overreaction, his wife's sister deems him an unfit parent and
refuses to allow him to take his daughter home.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...