Literature

1. Waste Land
English Literature for Exams* T.S. Eliot Waste Land
ÎN DESFĂȘURARE
LITERARY TREND AND AUTHOR CANON
 Representative modernist writer;
 Uses myth to describe the human experience;
 Depicts human existence as fragmented, atomised;
 Combines different voices, traditions, and discourses;
 Considers that the form of poetry also carries meaning;
 Relies on figurative language;
 Uses fragmented structure in his poems;
 Allusive and musical language.
 Themes: the exhaustion and cultural crisis in the aftermath of the First World War.
THE WASTE LAND (1922)
LITERARY GENRE AND TECHNIQUES
Literary Form – an epic poem
THEMES
Main theme: the past and memory.
The poem is a diagnosis of the chaos of modernity and also provides an example of how
art can order the experience. It tries to preserve the cultural memory, which the author
feels is extraordinarily important for humankind. Modern society is presented as suffering
from cultural amnesia, which has led to a moral decline, caused by the fact that people
fail to understand their cultural history. The poem juxtaposes fragments of various
elements of literary and mythic traditions with scenes and sounds of modern life. The
poetic collage leads to a reinterpretation of canonical texts and creates a historical
context for the examination of humanity.
Related themes:
 Literature
 History
 Myth and religion
Other themes:

2.  Isolation
 Appearances
The poem’s content
1.The Burial of the Dead
The first section of The Waste Land takes its title from a line in the Anglican burial service.
It is made up of four vignettes, each seemingly from the perspective of a different
speaker.
 Marie’s childhood memories;
 Description of a waste land;
 Fortune reading by Madame Sosostris;
 People flying over London.
2.A Game of Chess
The section’s title is an explicit reference to a play of the same title by Thomas Middleton;
in which he uses chess as a metaphor for the steps in the process of seduction. The
section is written as two dialogues focusing on female characters (an elegant and
superficial woman, concerned with her looks and a married woman). Both are equally
unhappy and poisoned by the roles they assumed.
3.The Fire Sermon
Description of the river Thames turns to a scene of death and decay and reveals the
corruption of contemporary society.
References to myth and literary tradition:
 The Greek myth of Philomel;
 The blind prophet Tiresias;
 The goddess Hera
4.Death by Water
The brief scene describing death and decay at the bottom of the ocean.
5.What the Thunder Said
In a stone desert, visions of the apocalyptic destruction caused by the war. The end is a
reference to Hindu myths, in which the creator shows people that if they follow the

3. principles of giving, compassion, and self-control, they could reach peace and
understanding.
STYLE
Verse:
 Mixed meters
 Free verse (blank verse, “low class” language, popular songs quotations, enjambment).
 Enjambment example “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land,
stirring.”
 Use of refrain to convey the uniformity of existence
Dramatic monologue: the speaker is constantly shifting between personalities, cultures,
and historical moments. This results in a panoramic quality of the poem and makes it
very fragmented.
Visual imagery focused on decay and death;
Quotations from other works, meant to include the poem in a larger lyrical tradition.
Similar to Joyce’s “Ulysses” in creating a polyphony of voices, which aim to describe the
feeling of modern living.