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    EnglishModernistPoetry T.S.eliotsTheWasteLand

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    This document provides a summary and analysis of T.S. Eliot's modernist poem "The Waste Land". It begins by defining literary modernism and placing it in the context of the postwar period. It then analyzes themes in the first section of the poem, including the sense of collapse after WWI. Next, it examines the poem's style as a dramatic monologue that shifts perspectives and uses free verse without rhyme. In concluding, the document notes the challenging nature of interpreting Eliot's poem.

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    EnglishModernistPoetry T.S.eliotsTheWasteLand

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    This document provides a summary and analysis of T.S. Eliot's modernist poem "The Waste Land". It begins by defining literary modernism and placing it in the context of the postwar period. It then analyzes themes in the first section of the poem, including the sense of collapse after WWI. Next, it examines the poem's style as a dramatic monologue that shifts perspectives and uses free verse without rhyme. In concluding, the document notes the challenging nature of interpreting Eliot's poem.

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    This document provides a summary and analysis of T.S. Eliot's modernist poem "The Waste Land". It begins by defining literary modernism and placing it in the context of the postwar period. It then analyzes themes in the first section of the poem, including the sense of collapse after WWI. Next, it examines the poem's style as a dramatic monologue that shifts perspectives and uses free verse without rhyme. In concluding, the document notes the challenging nature of interpreting Eliot's poem.

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    EnglishModernistPoetry T.S.eliotsTheWasteLand

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    This document provides a summary and analysis of T.S. Eliot's modernist poem "The Waste Land". It begins by defining literary modernism and placing it in the context of the postwar period. It then analyzes themes in the first section of the poem, including the sense of collapse after WWI. Next, it examines the poem's style as a dramatic monologue that shifts perspectives and uses free verse without rhyme. In concluding, the document notes the challenging nature of interpreting Eliot's poem.

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    English Modernist Poetry - T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land

    Article · November 2017

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    Álvaro Marín
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    1

    Álvaro Marín Castañeda


    University of Newcastle
    A.Marin2@newcastle.ac.uk
    20th November 2017
    Introduction to Literary Studies I

    ENGLISH MODERNIST POETRY: T. S. ELIOT, THE WASTE LAND

    The Burial of the Dead


    Unreal City,
    Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
    A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
    I had not thought death had undone so many.
    Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
    And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
    Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
    To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
    With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
    There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
    “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
    “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
    “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
    “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
    “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
    “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
    “You! hypocrite lecteur! —mon semblable, —mon frère!”

    Abstract: This essay will answer the following question: What is Modernism? We will
    answer to this question by analysing T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. Firstly
    thematically and after that focusing in its style form and meter.

    Keywords: Modernism, T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, poetry, WWI.


    2

    What is Modernism? Modernism is an artistic and aesthetic movement developed


    between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This movement tries to depart from
    classical and traditional forms. To understand the literary movement, first, we need to
    place it in context i.e. Modernity Period. The era of modernity is characterized by
    industrialization, the loss of certainty provoked by the new scientific approaches bringing
    about an awakening of secularization, and by reactions against cruelty caused by the
    World War I.

    Concretely, in poetry these poets wrote in reaction to Victorian works. They were
    influenced by the best practices of earlier poetry such as: French symbolism form
    Baudelaire, the Metaphysical poets, Aristotelian, Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, etc.
    (Blamires, 98).

    During this period we can find great authors like: Erza Pound, James Joyce, D. H.
    Lawrence or our main target T. S. Eliot among others. Concretely, we will focus on his
    poem The Waste Land (1922) in order to identify within it the most relevant
    characteristics of modernist poetry.

    The Waste Land is a long poem structured in 5 sections – in this essay we will
    only focus on the first one: “The Burial of the Dead”-. “The Waste Land is a text of the
    First World War and its aftermath” (Cooper, 63). The sense of collapse and chaos
    produced by the First World War is one of the main topics of T. S. Eliot’s poem e.g. “I
    had not thought death had undone so many. / Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, /
    And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.” (Eliot, lines 63-65). Moreover, we can
    understand Eliot’s poem as a critique of modern society. It can sound nostalgic at the
    beginning of the extract when he says “Unreal city, / Under the brown fog of a winter
    dawn, / A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had
    undone so many.” (60-63) because he depicts the image of sadness and regret felt by the
    European’s population.
    3

    Besides, another interesting subject to analyse is the influence of other authors


    presented in this extract. Eliot added some quotations that may serve us as an explanation
    i.e. Dante’s Inferno “I had not thought death had undone so many. / Sighs, short and
    infrequent, were exhaled,” (Eliot, lines 62-63), or Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal
    “hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, – mon frère!” (Eliot, line 76). Eliot’s idea of
    collapse and chaos is reinforced with Dante’s quotation since he is trying to make us
    think that these people neither are alive nor dead: they could be somewhere else like
    Dante’s limbo.

    Subsequently of the analysis of some of the main themes presented in the poem,
    now we will focus on an analysis of its style, form and meter. The Waste Land is a
    dramatic monologue, that is, a kind of poem written in the form of an individual
    character. This kind of writing is very common in other Eliot’s writings such as: The
    Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock or Gerontion. However, The Waste Land is not a single
    monologue because it shifts between monologue and dialogue. Another interesting
    feature is its disjointed structure –really common in Modernist works-. Eliot is capable to
    change from one voice or image to another without warning the reader, which makes a
    sense of confusion.

    After the analysis of the style our next step will be: form and meter. Modernist
    poets have often rejected formal structure, they prefer an abstract environment rather than
    a real one. The Waste Land is written in free verse, with no evident structure i.e. it does
    not use regular rhyme or meter patterns. Hence, enjambment – an incomplete sentence at
    the end of a verse which continues on the following- is the clearest example of this
    irregularity e.g. “To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours / With a dead sound on
    the final stroke of nine.” (Eliot, lines 67-68). Moreover, if we try to analyse the rhyme
    scheme of this extract we clearly realise that there are not many rhyming verses e.g. “A
    crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so
    many.” (Eliot, lines 62-63).
    4

    Throughout this essay, we have explained the main features of modernist poetry,
    illustrated with examples of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Firstly, we have put in context
    the poem in order to analyse its main topics and after that we have focused our attention
    into an analysis of the style, form and meter of the poem. But maybe, we should follow
    Cooper’s advice “The key to the poem may lie, paradoxically, in the fact that there is no
    single key to its meaning. Indeed, the poem needs to be read in a way that was unfamiliar
    to many contemporary readers of poetry in 1992 and still challenges readers today” (64).

    .
    5

    Works cited:

    Blamires, Harry. Twentieth-Century English Literature. 2nd ed., Houndmills,


    Basingstoke, Hampshire, Macmillan, 1986.

    Cooper, John Xiros. The Cambridge Introduction to T.S. Eliot. Cambridge, Cambridge
    University Press, 2006.

    Potter, Rachel. Modernist Literature. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

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