The Waste Land: A Norton Critical Edition / Edition 1

by T. S. Eliot, Michael North

Overview

The text of Eliot’s 1922 masterpiece is accompanied by thorough explanatory annotations as well as by Eliot’s own knotty notes, some of which require annotation themselves.

For ease of reading, this Norton Critical Edition presents The Waste Land as it first appeared in the American edition (Boni & Liveright), with Eliot’s notes at the end. "Contexts" provides readers with invaluable materials on The Waste Land’s sources, composition, and publication history. "Criticism" traces the poem’s reception with twenty-five reviews and essays, from first reactions through the end of the twentieth century. Included are reviews published in the Times Literary Supplement, along with selections by Virginia Woolf, Gilbert Seldes, Edmund Wilson, Elinor Wylie, Conrad Aiken, Charles Powell, Gorham Munson, Malcolm Cowley, Ralph Ellison, John Crowe Ransom, I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis, Cleanth Brooks, Delmore Schwartz, Denis Donoghue, Robert Langbaum, Marianne Thormählen, A. D. Moody, Ronald Bush, Maud Ellman, and Tim Armstrong. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393974997
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/28/2000
Series:	Norton Critical Editions Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was one of the fathers of modernism and a defining voice in English-language poetry. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.

Michael North is a Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language, and Twentieth-Century Literature, The Final Sculpture: Public Monuments and Modern Poets, Reading 1922: A Return to the Scene of the Modern, The Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, and Henry Green and the Writing of His Generation, as well as many articles on various aspects of twentieth-century literature.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	A Note on the Text	xi
	The Text of The Waste Land	1
	Eliot's Notes to The Waste Land	21
	Contexts
	Sources
	The King of the Wood	29
	The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation	30
	The Killing of the Divine King	31
	[Adonis and Christ]	32
	[The Grail Legend]	35
	[The Grail Quest]	36
	[The Tarot Pack]	37
	The Fisher King	38
	[The Perilous Chapel]	38
	[Conclusion]	39
	[Madame Sosostris]	40
	To the Reader	42
	The Seven Old Men	43
	[Cornelia's Dirge from The White Devil]	45
	Ovid
	[The Blinding of Tiresias]	46
	[The Story of Tereus and Philomela]	46
	That Shakespearian Rag	51
	The Fire-Sermon	54
	From Prothalamion	55
	[Olivia's Song from The Vicar of Wakefield]	57
	[Elizabeth and Leicester]	57
	From Confessions	58
	From The King James Bible [The Road to Emmaus]	59
	[The Extra Man]	60
	[The Downfall of Europe]	60
	From Brihadaranyaka Upanishad The Three Great Disciplines	62
	From Pervigilium Veneris	63
	From The Spanish Tragedie	64
	Composition and Publication
	[The Composition of The Waste Land]	67
	The Waste Land: Paris 1922	72
	The Price of Modernism: Publishing The Waste Land	89
	Eliot on the Waste Land
	[The Disillusionment of a Generation]	112
	[A Piece of Rhythmical Grumbling]	112
	[On the Waste Land Notes]	112
	[Allusions to Dante]	113
	Eliot: Essays and London Letters
	From Tradition and the Individual Talent	114
	From Hamlet	120
	From The Metaphysical Poets	121
	Ulysses, Order, and Myth	128
	The True Church and the Nineteen Churches	131
	[The Rite of Spring and The Golden Bough]	131
	Criticism
	Reviews and First Reactions
	[Eliot Chants The Waste Land]	137
	Times Literary Supplement [Mr. Eliot's Poem]	137
	T. S. Eliot	138
	The Poetry of Drouth	140
	Mr. Eliot's Slug-Horn	145
	An Anatomy of Melancholy	148
	Time Shantih, Shantih, Shantih	153
	Times Literary Supplement [A Zig-Zag of Allusion]	153
	[So Much Waste Paper]	156
	The Esotericism of T. S. Eliot	156
	[The Dilemma of The Waste Land]	163
	[The Waste Land and Jazz]	166
	The New Criticism
	Waste Lands	167
	The Poetry of T. S. Eliot	170
	[The Significance of the Modern Waste Land]	173
	The Waste Land: An Analysis	185
	T. S. Eliot as the International Hero	210
	Reconsiderations and New Readings
	The Word within a Word	216
	The Walking Dead	230
	[The City in The Waste Land]	235
	A Cure for a Crisis of Civilisation?	240
	Unknown Terror and Mystery	246
	A Sphinx without a Secret	258
	Corpse, Monument, Hypocrite Lecteur: Text and Transference in the Reception of The Waste Land	275
	Eliot's Waste Paper	286
	T. S. Eliot: A Chronology	293
	Selected Bibliography	297

What People are Saying About This

Anthony Burgess

The Waste Land remains the best manifesto of modernism in poetry — a triumph of concision, eloquence, colloquialism, symbolism, cinematic cutting, collage of existing literature as well as popular song, all in the service of a kind of purgatorial philosophy, civilization was decaying, man was growing impotent, salvation lay in the injunctions of a Sanskrit Upanishad: "Give, sympathize, control." (Anthony Burgess, from One Man's Chorus)

Editorial Reviews

Written when Eliot was working as a bank clerk and heavily edited by his friend Ezra Pound, 1922's The Waste Land could probably take the prize as the most important English-language poem of the 20th century. This 75th-anniversary edition includes the full text plus notes and an afterword by scholar/editor Christopher Ricks.

Library Journal

Prints the first American edition (Boni & Liveright) of Eliot's most important work, accompanied by the editor's detailed annotations. Eliot's own notoriously inscrutable notes, placed at the end, are also annotated. The abundant explanatory material includes background on the poem's sources, composition, and publication history as well as 25 critical reviews and essays. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews