Saturday, February 18, 2006

Traveling, Journeying, Questing, and Pilgrimage...ing

I list this smaller question under the umbrella of the first essay topic:
Distinguish traveling from journeying from questing; which does this text narrate? Why?
In looking over a half dozen approaches to this essay, I've found that I probably presented this question poorly. I'm not asking you to define all three terms in your essay; instead, I'm asking you to think carefully about the way the text characterizes the motivation for and goal of travel.

Now, if you're comparing "The Waste Land" to "Sailing to Byzantium," you might want to carefully distinguish one as quest or pilgrimage from the other as journey. All I'm saying here is that if you are writing exclusively about "The Waste Land" you might not need to define journey and travel if you're most interested in the poem as quest.