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The Waste Land

The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important English language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line[A] poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's magazine The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and "These fragments I have shored against my ruins".[6]

For other uses, see Wasteland.

The Waste Land

United Kingdom

  • 16 October 1922 (UK)
  • c. 20 October 1922 (US)

434[A]

The Waste Land does not follow a single narrative or feature a consistent style or structure. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy, and features abrupt and unannounced changes of narrator, location and time, conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures. It employs many allusions to the Western canon: Ovid's Metamorphoses, the legend of the Fisher King, Dante's Divine Comedy, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and even a contemporary popular song, "That Shakespearian Rag".


The poem is divided into five sections. The first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, "A Game of Chess", employs alternating narrations in which vignettes of several characters display the fundamental emptiness of their lives. "The Fire Sermon" offers a philosophical meditation in relation to self-denial and sexual dissatisfaction; "Death by Water" is a brief description of a drowned merchant; and "What the Thunder Said" is a culmination of the poem's previously exposited themes explored through a description of a desert journey.[7]


Upon its initial publication The Waste Land received a mixed response, with some critics finding it wilfully obscure while others praised its originality. Subsequent years saw the poem become established as a central work in the modernist canon, and it proved to become one of the most influential works of the century.

History[edit]

Background[edit]

While at Harvard College Eliot met Emily Hale, the daughter of a minister at Harvard Divinity School, through family friends. He declared his love for her before leaving to live in Europe in 1914, but he did not believe his feelings to be reciprocated.[8][9] Her influence is felt in The Waste Land, and he would renew his correspondence with her in 1927.[10][11]

Contents[edit]

Title[edit]

Eliot originally considered entitling the poem He Do the Police in Different Voices,[87] and in the original manuscripts the first two sections of the poem appear under this title.[88] This phrase is taken from Charles Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend, in which the widow Betty Higden says of her adopted foundling son Sloppy "You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices."[87] In the end, the title Eliot chose was The Waste Land. In his first note to the poem he attributes the title to Jessie Weston's book on the Grail legend, From Ritual to Romance.[89]

1922 in poetry

Eliot's essay ""

Tradition and the Individual Talent

Bedient, Calvin (1986). He Do the Police in Different Voices. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  0-226-04141-7.

ISBN

Brooker, Jewel; Bentley, Joseph (1990). Reading the Waste Land: Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.  0-87023-803-5.

ISBN

Claes, Paul (2012). A Commentary on T.S. Eliot's Poem The Waste Land: The Infertility Theme and the Poet's Unhappy Marriage. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen.

(1977). T. S. Eliot's Personal Waste Land. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01237-4.

Miller, James

Reeves, Gareth (1994). T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.  0-7450-0738-4.

ISBN

Southam, B. C. (1996). A Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot. San Diego: Harcourt Brace.  0-15-600261-2. OL 967559M.

ISBN

at Project Gutenberg

The Waste Land