This document discusses analyzing T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" and W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" through the lens of a pandemic. It argues that these modernist poems, written during the 1918 influenza pandemic, can provide insight when read with consideration for how the trauma of a pandemic may have influenced the poets and their works. Biographical details are presented showing how Eliot and Yeats were personally impacted by influenza. Elements of the poems like fragmented language, references to fever and exhaustion, and tolling bells may take on new meaning when analyzed in the context of the 1918 pandemic.

1. DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY
The Reading of The Waste Land and The Second Coming
through Pandemic lens

2. Why literary texts are correlative to the pandemic? As we
are suffering from the pandemic to all aspects of society.
How they are written by the poets to study through that
lens? This study is dealing with the two poems The Waste
Land and The Second Coming, poets like T.S.Eliot and
W.B.Yeats, who were in the time of the pandemic are also
studied by their biographical notes which are reflected in
their works. It is the outlook to the poems through
pandemic lens and try to justify the various views for that.

3. • This section argues for a change in our reading
practices, For how to read what is hidden. We
are trained in modernism to see the trauma of
war but not the trauma of the pandemic.
• The Waste Land through pandemic lens and
The Second Coming by pandemic lens

5. • Auto-biography of poet
• Significance of letter
• “I have simply had a sort of collapse; I slept almost continuously for two
days. I feel very weak and exhausted.” In Letter to Henry from Eliot.
• “A new form of influenza… which leaves extreme dryness and a bitter
taste in the mouth” …“hot rainless sprint” – Loddon Letter in The Dial
(july1921).
• ‘Viral Context’
• ‘A delirium logic’
• ‘Feverish hallucination
• Fragmentary language - A Game of Chess
• ‘Tolling of Bells – Bells tolling not for the battle fields
• ‘Viral Resurrection’, in this by influenza not only effect to the people’s
body but the landscapes, cities, minds, vegetation world, language etc
infected by virus