Table of Contents
Preface ix
A Note on the Texts xiii
Introduction xvii
Poetry 1
Prufrock and Other Observations 3
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 5
Portrait of a Lady 9
Preludes 13
Rhapsody on a Windy Night 15
Morning at the Window 17
The Boston Evening Transcript 18
Aunt Helen 19
Cousin Nancy 20
Mr. Apollinax 21
Hysteria 22
Conversation Galante 23
La Figlia Che Piange 24
From Poems (1920) 25
Gerontion 25
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar 28
Sweeney Erect 30
A Cooking Egg 32
The Hippopotamus 34
Whispers of Immortality 36
Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service 38
Sweeney Among the Nightingales 40
The Waste Land 43
I The Burial of the Dead 45
II A Game of Chess 48
III The Fire Sermon 51
IV Death by Water 56
V What the Thunder Said 56
Eliot's Notes to The Waste Land 61
Contexts 67
Sources of the Waste Land 69
The King of the Wood Sir James G. Frazer 69
The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation 70
The Killing of the Divine King 72
[Adonis and Christ] 73
[The Grail Legend] Jessie L. Weston 75
[The Grail Quest] 76
[The Tarot Pack] 77
The Fisher King 78
[The Perilous Chapel] 79
[Conclusion] 79
[Madame Sosostris] Aldous Huxley 81
To the Reader Charles Baudelaire 83
The Seven Old Men 84
[Cornelia's Dirge from The White Devil] John Webster 86
[The Blinding of Tiresias] Ovid 86
[The Story of Tereus and Philomela] 87
That Shakespearian Rag Gene Buck Herman Ruby 92
The Fire-Sermon Gotama Buddha 96
From Prothalamion Edmund Spenser 97
[Olivia's Song from The Vicar of Wakefield] Oliver Goldsmith 98
[Elizabeth and Leicester] James Anthony Froude 99
From Confessions St. Augustine 99
From The King James Bible • [The Road to Emmaus] 100
[The Extra Man] Sir Ernest Shackleton 101
[The Downfall of Europe] Hermann Hesse 102
From Brihadaranyaka Upanishad • The Three Great Disciplines 104
From Pervigilium Veneris 105
From The Spanish Tragedie Thomas Kyd 106
Composition and Publication of the Waste Land 109
[The Composition of The Waste Land] Lyndall Gordon 109
[Publishing The Waste Land] Lawrence Rainey 117
Eliot on the Waste Land 135
[The Disillusionment of a Generation] 135
[A Piece of Rhythmical Grumbling] 135
[On the Waste Land Notes] 136
[Allusions to Dante] 136
Eliot: Essays and London Letters 139
Reflections on Vers Libre 139
From Reflections on Contemporary Poetry 145
From Tradition and the Individual Talent 147
Hamlet and His Problems 154
From The Metaphysical Poets 158
Ulysses, Order, and Myth 165
The True Church and the Nineteen Churches 168
[The Rite of Spring and The Golden Bough] 169
Criticism 171
Reviews and First Reactions 173
From The New Poetry Arthur Waugh 173
[Review of Prufock and Other Observations] Ezra Pound 176
Prufrock and Other Observations: A Criticism May Sinclair 180
Is This Poetry? Virginia Woolf 186
[Eliot Chants The Waste Land] 188
Times Literary Supplement • [Mr. Eliot's Poem] 189
The Poetry of Drouth Edmund Wilson 189
Mr. Eliot's Slug-Horn Elinor Wylie 195
An Anatomy of Melancholy Conrad Aiken 198
[The Dilemma of The Waste Land] Malcolm Cowley 203
[The Waste Land and Jazz] Ralph Ellison 206
Twentieth-Century Criticism 207
["Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar"] Laura Riding Robert Graves 207
Prufrock of St. Louis Hush Kenner 212
From The Poetry of T. S. Eliot I. A. Richards 218
[The Significance of the Modern Waste Land] F. R. Leavis 221
The Waste Land: An Analysis Cleanth Brooks, Jr. 233
T. S. Eliot as the International Hero Delmore Schwartz 259
A Sphinx without a Secret Maud Ellmann 265
[Eliot's Waste Paper] Tim Armstrong 283
Reconsiderations and New Readings 291
[Inventing Prufrock] Flelen Vendler 291
[Rereading Eliot's "Gerontion"] Marjorie Perloff 297
From T. S. Eliot and Cinema David Trotter 315
[The Gramophone in The Waste Land] Juan A. Suarez 322
[Violence in The Waste Land] Sarah Cole 329
T. S. Eliot: A Chronology 337
Selected Bibliography 341