T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965) - THE WASTE LAND

It’s a central English poem of the 20th century.
It was originally a London sequence.
It was composed in 1921 when he was on the merge of a nervous breakdown. From this poem we can see something about Eliot’s personal condition and the crisis he underwent.
It’s been criticized for its discontinuity and obscurity.
It’s modernist: mix of techniques; we can find historical, literary and mythical allusions.
Allusive method: it constantly alerts the reader who has to decode all the references and quotations.
From the structural point of view the poem is fragmented, there is juxtaposition of different things.
It was written after World War 1, but it’s not a land wasted by war even if the shadow of the war is always there. It’s a cultural and spiritual waste land. It’s populated by people who are living a kind of death in the mist of their lives. We have LIFE IN DEATH & DEATH IN LIFE.
There are many different voices and there is no united belief in God.
Eliot drew upon his contemporaries such as Frazier.
We find cultural confusion, sterile relationships and spiritual desolation. For Eliot people are unable to bring together all the small pieces of their lives to create a whole
He uses the free verse.
Influences: Whitman, Mallarmé.
Hypertext: Gérard Genette (hypertextuality: rewriting something – intertextuality: direct quotation).

5 sections:
1. The Burial of the Dead
2. A Game of Chess
3. The Fire Sermon
4. Death of Water
5. What the Thunder Said

THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
There are
Epigraph from the Satyricon of Petronius
Dedication to Ezra Pound
Quotation from Dante’s Divina Commedia
Ing forms + focus on the 1st noun of the next line
Seasons:
Winter: shelter, nourishment (paradox)
Spring: cruelty, death
Last section: quotations from foreign languages (German, French – Baudelaire, Le Fleur du Mal) -> intertextuality and complexity
Unreal city: it’s London
Reference to the London Bridge and everyday life (anonymous crowd) -> historical
Allusions to the fourmillante cité (Baudelaire) and to Dante’s Inferno -> mythological references
The workers are oppressed by their routine -> sense of death
There are geographical references (Saint Mary Woolnath = Anglican Church in London)
There are multilayer references to the death:
Corpse
Dante’s Inferno
Battle of Mylae
Victims of WW1