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Nancy Gish wrote: > > > On the other hand, I agree in general about "characters," but there are > some. I think Sweeney is a "character" even outside "Sweeney > Agonistes." And I think Lil and her interlocutor are "characters." > Perhaps the point is that at times Eliot's poems are dramatic or have > dramatic sections, as "A Game of Chess" is. "Character" does ordinarily evoke the question of "character development," as in a novel or drama. And there is certainly not much of that in Eliot's poetry. But it could be used simply to refer to an reference to an agent (other than the poem's controlling voice), however undramatized or undeveloped, that enters the poem. E.g. In the room the women come and go or the small house agent's clerk, or even the "loitering heirs of City directors." Eliot's poems are often populated. I don't know what would be accomplished by looking over characters so identified, but one never knows. Walk-on parts as it were. Carrol