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The Waste Land Final Powerpoint
The Waste Land Final Powerpoint
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
• Born in St. Louis in 1888
• Moved to London just before
WWI; eventually became a
British subject
• New Criticism
• Scholar (languages,
philosophy)
• Married Vivienne Haigh-
Wood in 1915, but the
marriage was not a success
– Neurotic
• 1917-1925: worked at Lloyds
Bank in London
• Nobel Prize
“The Waste Land”
• first published in 1922
• The manuscript was heavily edited by
Ezra Pound: original drafts contained twice
as much text as in the published version
– “il miglior fabbro”
• Hailed as the most important Modernist
poem; still highly influential
• Always consider the poem in the context
of post-War Europe
“The Waste Land” Themes
• Sweet As!
• Post WWI-Europe:
– fragmented, destroyed
• Sexuality
– frustration, repression
• Globalization
– Technological advancements, communication
– Multiple voices
• Comments on the problems of modern society
– “Turning and turning in the widening gyre”
– Lacks spirituality, lacks community
Repeated Symbols, Motifs, and
Keywords
• Complex imagery; multiple voices; myriad
allusions
• Earth, air, fire, water
• Death; Something being lost or destroyed
• The future and prophecy
The Epigraph
• The Sibyl
• Deiphobe, the Sibyl of Cumae was an oracle. She was granted long life by
Apollo, as many years as grains of sand she held in her hand, but she had
forgotten to ask to retain her youth. With her aging she withered away and
she was suspended in a bottle in the temple of Hercules at Cumae (near
Naples).
• The Aeneid
• In Virgil's Aeneid the hero, Aeneas, meets the Sibyl and uses her as a guide
in a trip to the underworld to meet the shade of his dead father. In Virgil's
account he was previously told how
the Sibyl wrote Apollo's oracles on leaves which the wind could scatter. The
Sibyl gave no help in reconstituting the oracle. Thus, just as in The Waste
Land, assembling the fragments to mean something has the work of the
reader. Aeneas, not wanting to have to piece together Apollo's oracle, asked
the Sibyl to tell it to him orally.