Question

Les - How do these lines from Eliot's poem make reference to Chaucer's verse, while at the same time making the exact opposite

Answer 1

Answer:

D. Both commemorate April, but Eliot is negative about April while Chaucer is

positive

Explanation:

Answer 2

Answer:

Both commemorate April, but Eliot is negative about April while Chaucer is

positive

Explanation:

Geoffrey Chaucer's (1343-1400) "The Canterbury Tales" (Prologue) starts by mentioning April positively in a sense that in the month of April rain waters the dry ground  (from March) to water flowers' roots. At this happy time people are in good mood, and they want to go on religious pilgrimages.

"Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;"

However T.S Eliot (1888-1965) starts his masterpiece poem "The Waste Land" (1922) by mentioning April negatively by saying;

"APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers"

Presenting a single or definite interpretation of Waste Land would be injustice to this poem. But in simple words, Eliot means to say that April is the cruelest of the months because life has to come out of its comfort zone (hibernation and sleeping) in winter. April is also cruel because its flowers, rains stir a past memory and create a longing for the past.