This document discusses T.S. Eliot's use of mythical techniques in his poem "The Waste Land". It notes that Eliot was considered a "mythic poet" because he used mythic perspectives to view the world as unified despite contradictions. It discusses how Eliot drew from myths of the Fisher King and the wasteland to symbolize the spiritual decay of modern times. Eliot defined his technique of drawing parallels between the contemporary era and mythology as "the mythical method". The document explores some of the mythical backgrounds that influenced Eliot, including the works of Jessie Weston and James Frazer that he drew upon.

1. Mythical technique in “The Waste Land”.
Name :- Neelamba R Sarvaiya.
M. A. Sem-3
Paper no-9 “The Modernist Literature”.
S.B.Gardi English department
M.K. Bhavnagar University.
Year-2013-2014

3. T.S.Eliot was considers as a
‘Mythic poet’
Eliot was considers as mythic poet not because
he uses a known myth for the skeletal structure of
the poem but because his artistic point of view is
always formed by mythic perspective.
Mythic conscious conceive a real world as
unified, individual and self-contained despite
apparent contradiction in both the universe and
human affairs.

4.  The profane world of illusion which an
ordinary man thinks to be real is not more than
“a broken bundle of mirrors”--- in words of
Pound, a fragrant that never cohere.
 Here April as a cruelest month
The beneficent death by water
that transformed the father’s bones into
something rich and strange that drowning of
Phelbas, without hope of transformation.

5.  All other mythic conscious are brought to
bear on his opposition of the meaningful
sacrificial death and the pointless death in life
which are the condition of the waste land.
There are many features that we can observe
in The Waste Land.
 The complexity and the fragmentation of
modern life is reflected in the fragmented style
of the poem and the juxtaposition of different
images (a visual parallel could be drawn with
certain paintings by Picasso and Braque).

6.  Each section of the poem is formed by several
fragments put together whose narrative continuum
is achieved through consistent tone and atmosphere.
These emphasize the sterility of the present as
contrasted to the fertility of a mythical past.
 Eliot defined this technique as "the mythical
method", a constant parallel between the writer's
contemporary age and the past achieved through
mythological references in the depiction of ordinary
and common sketches. Eliot concluded that this
techniques was "a way of . . . giving a shape and a
significance to the immense panorama of futility and
anarchy which is contemporary history".

7. Ø The Mythical Background
 On the eve of the composition of the waste land, T.S.
Eliot had been reading Jessie Weston’s book from Ritual to
Romance, and James Frazer’s famous book the Golden
tough. The poet himself has acknowledged that he was
deeply influenced by these works or anthropology, and
the ancient and primitive myths and legends which from
the mythical background to poem are derived from these
books Miss Weston’s book supplied him with the legend
of the Grail and the Eisner King, and from the Golden
Bough he derived his knowledge of a number of
vegetation and fertility myths and rituals, especially those
connected with Attics, Adonis and Osiris.

8. Mythical
technique
The Fisher
King
His Desolate
Land
The Grail
Legend
It’s Symbolic
Significance

9. The mythical land of the fisher king
symbolizes contemporary decay and
spiritual sterility. The Sick king
symbolizes the sick humanity and this
sickness results, as in the case of the
fisher king from its Sexual sins. It has
been degraded to mere ‘animal
copulation’, and this Sexual perversion
has led to Spiritual death. Spiritual
health can be regained only through
penance, suffering and self-discipline.

10. conclusion
myths as “Objective co-relatives” one aspects of
Eliot’s use of the mythical technique is his use of
ancient myths as “objective correlatives.’ Eliot
defined objective correlative as a, “set of objects, a
situation, and a chain of events” which shall be
formula for some particular emotion of the Poet, so
that when the external facts are given, the emotion
is immediately evoked’. The waste Land contains,
according to A.G. George.

11.  “A series of emotions and impressions of the
poet which are expressed through the objective
correlative of the mythical waste lands, a series of
emotions and also impressions which originate in
the Poet’s mind as he surveys human life in the
present as well as in the past.”
 The ancient myths act as objective co-relatives
for the poet’s emotions, in ancient
customs and rituals he finds symbols for his
emotions and ideas.