The Waste Land

by T. S. Eliot

Overview

The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line^[B] poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruelest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", "These fragments I have shored against my ruins" and the Sanskrit mantra "Shantih shantih shantih".^[C]

Eliot's poem combines the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many allusions to the Western canon: Ovid's Metamorphoses, Dante's Divine Comedy, Shakespeare, Milton, Buddhist scriptures, the Hindu Upanishads and even a contemporary popular song, "The Shakespearean Rag." The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, and time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.

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 address those themes experientially. "The Fire Sermon", the third section, offers a philosophical meditation in relation to the imagery of death and views of self-denial in juxtaposition, influenced by Augustine of Hippo and Eastern religions. After a fourth section, "Death by Water", which includes a brief lyrical petition, the culminating fifth section, "What the Thunder Said", concludes with an image of judgment

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781774419632
Publisher:	Binker North
Publication date:	06/04/2023
Pages:	34
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.07(d)

About the Author

Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (26 September 1888 - 4 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry. Through his trials in language, writing style, and verse structure, he reinvigorated English poetry. He also dismantled outdated beliefs and established new ones through a collection of critical essays.[3]Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on to settle, work, and marry there. He became a British citizen in 1927 at the age of 39 and renounced his American citizenship.[5]Eliot first attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" from 1914 to 1915, which, at the time of its publication, was considered outlandish.[6] It was followed by The Waste Land (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943).[7] He was also known for seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry"

Table of Contents

Introduction     7
Biographical Sketch     14
The Story Behind the Story     19
List of Characters     22
Summary and Analysis     26
Critical Views     53
Eleanor Cook on Maps of The Waste Land     53
Louis Menand on Nineteenth Century Style     57
Sandra M. Gilbert on Eliot's Mourning of a Friend     68
Michael Levenson on Eliot's Views of Postwar London     74
Juan A. Suarez on the Meaning of the Gramophone     85
Shawn R. Tucker on Anxiety in The Waste Land     89
Thomas Dilworth on Sex Between the Typist and the Young Man     94
Camelia Elias and Bent Soerensen on the Influence of Ovid     97
Works by T.S. Eliot     101
Annotated Bibliography     103
Contributors     105
Acknowledgments     108
Index     110

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