The Waste Land

In this study, first published in 1983, Professor Smith makes the argument that although The Waste Land is analogous in form to a musical composition that it is actually made of its literary echoes. He calls these a ‘music of allusions’ and shows the resemblance of this music in its evocativeness to the technique of Mallarmé and the French symbolists. Smith also comments extensively on Eliot’s critical theories as they bear on The Waste Land and traces the development of Eliot’s allusive an...