ASSIGNMENT:106
Exploring Intertextuality in T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land’
1. Personal Information:-
Name:- Hardi Vhora
Batch:- M.A. Sem.:2 (2023-2025)
Enrollment No.:- 5108230032
Paper No.:- 106
Paper Name:- The Twentieth Century Literature: 1900 to World War II
Paper Code:- 22399
Roll No.:- 08
e-mail:- hardivhora751@gmail.com
# Table of Content:-
Personal Information
Abstract
Keywords
General Introduction of The Waste Land
Introduction of T.S. Eliot
Historical Context of The Waste Land
Fragmentation and Collage Technique
Five Sections
Narrative and Mythical Allusions
Parallelism and Contrast
Cyclical Structure
Conclusion
This paper delves into the intricate structure of T.S. Eliot's seminal work, 'The Waste Land', with a focus on exploring the concept of intertextuality within its narrative framework. By employing a close textual analysis, this study aims to unravel the complex web of literary references, mythological allusions, and historical contexts that permeate Eliot's poem. Through a meticulous examination of Eliot's use of intertextuality, this paper seeks to elucidate how the poem's fragmented structure serves as a metaphor for the disillusionment and fragmentation of post-World War I society. Drawing upon theories of intertextuality, this analysis highlights how Eliot seamlessly weaves together disparate literary sources, ranging from classical mythology to modernist literature, to create a rich tapestry of cultural and literary references. Furthermore, this paper explores the ways in which Eliot's utilisation of intertextuality not only enriches the poetic texture of 'The Waste Land' but also invites readers to engage in a deeper exploration of themes such as spiritual desolation, cultural decay, and the search for redemption. By contextualising Eliot's intertextual approach within the broader framework of modernist literature, this study offers valuable insights into the poem's enduring significance as a seminal work of 20th-century literature, while also shedding light on the broader implications of intertextuality as a literary device.
3. Keywords:-
1. T.S. Eliot
2. The Waste Land
3. Intertextuality
4. Modernist literature
5. Fragmented structure
6. Mythological allusions
7. Post-World War I society
4.General Introduction of ‘The Waste Land’:-
The Waste Land, long poem by T.S. Eliot, published in 1922, first in London in The Criterion (October), next in New York City in The Dial (November), and finally in book form, with footnotes by Eliot. The 433-line, five-part poem was dedicated to fellow poet Ezra Pound, who helped condense the original manuscript to nearly half its size. It was one of the most influential works of the 20th century. The Waste Land expresses with great power the disillusionment and disgust of the period after World War I. In a series of fragmentary vignettes, loosely linked by the legend of the search for the Grail, it portrays a sterile world of panicky fears and barren lusts and of human beings waiting for some sign or promise of redemption. The depiction of spiritual emptiness in the secularised city—the decay of urbs aeterna (the “eternal city”)—is not a simple contrast of the heroic past
with the degraded present; it is rather a timeless simultaneous awareness of moral grandeur and moral evil.
5. Introduction of T.S. Eliot:-
T.S. Eliot: American-English poet, playwright, critic, and editor
Born: September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Died: January 4, 1965, in London, England
Leader of the Modernist movement in poetry
Notable works: "The Waste Land" (1922) and "Four Quartets" (1943)
Exercised strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s onward
Revitalised English poetry through experiments in
diction, style, and versification
Shattered old orthodoxies and established new ones through critical essays
Publication of "Four Quartets" led to recognition as the greatest living English poet and man of letters
Awarded the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948
6. Historical Context of The Waste Land:-
T. S. Eliot’s landmark modernist poem The Waste Land was published in 1922. Divided into five sections, the poem explores life in London in the aftermath of the First World War, although its various landscapes include the desert and the ocean as well as the bustling metropolis. The poem is notable for its unusual style, which fuses different poetic forms and traditions. Eliot also alludes to numerous works of literature including the Bible, Shakespeare, St Augustine, Hindu and Buddhist sacred texts, as well as French poetry, Wagnerian opera, and Arthurian legend surrounding the Holy Grail. But the poem is also strikingly modern in its references to jazz music, gramophones, motorcars, typists and tinned food. Not long after its publication, The Waste Land became a talking-point among readers, with some critics hailing it as a masterpiece that spoke for a generation of lost souls, and others denouncing it for its allusiveness (the US poet William Carlos Williams disliked it because it ‘returned us to the classroom’) or for its unusual modernist style. It continues to divide readers, but its reputation as one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century is secure.
7. Fragmentation and Collage Technique:-
Because The Waste Land is securely established as one of the most significant poems of the twentieth century, we are in danger of forgetting that it is, by any standard, an extremely eccentric work. Many of its peculiarities have been attributed to the various influences operating upon Eliot, and to the spirit of protest against nineteenth century conventions characteristic of the art of the early twentieth century, but explanations of this sort do not do justice to the poem's Promethean originality. Critics seeking illuminating analogies from the other arts for the anomalous construction of The Waste Land have turned most often to music; the poem has been compared to a Beethoven symphony and other musical forms, and its method has been termed a "music of ideas." However, if Eliot's departures from traditional poetic methods are considered, not merely as indications of influence or rebellion, but as expressive resources which suited
his intentions and corresponded to his feelings, another parallel suggests itself. The sensibility displayed by The Waste Land's stylistic innovations resembles that which animated the technical experiments of the Cubists, Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists, Eliot's contemporaries in the graphic arts. Each of these
movements had its literary aspect, but it is, curiously enough, in the paintings,which in most cases proved to be the most successful results of their experiments, that the closest analogies to the methods of The Waste Land are to be found. The Waste Land is generally described as a collection of fragments. The five sections into which it is divided do not claim to be complete in themselves; further, each of these contains passages which abut upon each other without transitions, and within these appear even smaller units, sometimes single words
or phrases, that are incomplete in form and apparently unrelated to their contexts. But, as Edmund Wilson, Cleanth Brooks, and other critics have shown, Every part of it is connected with the others, not in a conventional way, but by means of a complicated system of echoes, contrasts, parallels, and allusions. The lines from Wagner's Tristan in the first section for example, are formless scraps that retain little of the quality of the work from which they are drawn, but they do support the themes of loss and love in the poem as a whole. The dominant figures of the Grail Knight, the Fisher King, and Tiresias, all taken from well developed traditions of their own, appear only sporadically. The two women in "A Game of Chess" have no actual connection with each other, but the poem relates them within its own design as two contrasting illustrations of the failure of love in modern society. Their stories, as they stand, are incomplete; yet in the context of the poem they form a completion larger than themselves.
The fragmentation and re-integration observable in The Waste Land can be regarded as the same process as that used by the Cubists and Futurists, springing from a similar intention, and having a comparable effect. The Waste Land sees history as a spiritual epic. Using its theme of the decline and renewal of faith as its centre of relevance, it successfully combines fragments from the myth of Tiresias, the Grail Legend, and the theories of J. G. Frazer and Jessie L.Weston, the Upanishads, and many other sources, both fictional and historical. In presenting such different personages as Tiresias, St. Augustine, and the young man carbuncular as characters in a single drama, Eliot diminishes-though he does not eliminate-our sense of their separation. The process, an exercise in the unification of sensibility, consists of seeing the theme of the poem reflected in widely scattered instances, and using these to give a fuller sense of it than could be drawn from any single subject, no matter how exhaustively it might be treated. It creates that sense of circling about the model and seeing it from many different points of view that is characteristic of analytic Cubism.
8. Five Sections:-
T.S ELiot’s poem The Wasteland divided into five parts.
The Burial of the Dead: Introduces themes of despair and disillusionment
A game of Chess: Uses alternating narratives to show the emptiness of characters’s lives
The Fire Sermon: A philosophical meditation on self denial and sexual dissatisfaction
Death by Water: A brief description of drowned merchant
What the Thunder Said: Explores themes from the poem through a description of a desert journey
The poem is written in free verse and blank verse and is made of 433 lines. It includes many quotations from classic works of world literature.
9. Narrative and Mythical Allusions:-
T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" is hailed as a seminal work, delving into the collapse of Western civilization and the spiritual emptiness of modernity. While many critics have explored its societal, religious, and mythical dimensions, fewer have scrutinised Eliot's use of voice and narrative style, including monologues, dialogue, and free indirect speech. The poem's rich tapestry of literary allusions serves a unique purpose compared to other modernist works. Critics have noted its fragmented structure and juxtapositions, often linked to its symbolic religious themes.
Eliot's modernist writing style is both a product of its time and influenced by social and ecological concerns. Unlike traditional analyses focusing on rhyme, rhythm, and imagery, understanding the poem's narrative style poses challenges regarding structure and characters. This paper, drawing on Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan's narratological framework, examines how Eliot employs different poetic voices to shape the narrative, emphasising the interplay between "story," "text," and "narration."
Rimmon-Kenan's theory suggests that narrative fiction involves a succession of events, implying multiple narratives within "The Waste Land." Thus, the poem is classified as a narrative poem, given its abundance of narrations, descriptions, and dialogues. The analysis explores how these elements contribute to Eliot's modernist narrative style, shedding light on the poet's transformation and the evolution of the narrator's voices.
As a poem representative of 20th century modernism, The Waste Land’s writing style has powerfully reshaped conceptions of subjectivity, discourse and cultural hierarchy. The seven languages Eliot uses in The Waste Land indicate certain limitations generally in relation to the notion of translatability. Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan (1983) conveys how the story is an abstract form derived from the specific style of the text in question, the language in which it is written, as well as the medium or sign-system. Coyle (2009) stresses that despite " The Waste Land" comprising narrative fragments, it does not present itself as a narrative, given the absence of an identifiable locational logic that sustains the poem’s “story”. Nevertheless, beginning with the story—modernist literature's inner core—as opposed to the text from which meaning may be derived in an abstract manner, the story may be more transferable across mediums, across languages and within the same language. The difficulties which readers continue to struggle with in The Waste Land are more apparent in the epigraph to the poem. Nevertheless, this does not affect the narrative structure, which is dependent to a greater degree on the extensive practice of reading and telling stories. Therefore, readers can still understand Eliot’s intended meaning by reading and rereading the poem. Despite its superficial fragmentation, The Waste Land establishes a form of inherent unity. Suarez (2001) uses “gramophone” technology, which seeks to consider how The Waste Land relates to other perspectives such as language, media and culture, which, in turn, influences and reshapes the view portrayed of writing techniques, literary discourse and cultural hierarchy. Narrative refers to the narration of a succession of fictional events, rather than merely setting the context as “once upon a time”. In contrast to traditional narration, in The Waste Land time past is time present. Therefore, when absorbing the text, which involves an abundance of characters and events drawn from different time and space, readers will need to invest additional effort in order to understand what the story is seeking to convey.
Eliot's The Waste Land employs fragmentation to juxtapose perspectives on life, blending disorder and order. Critics like Penda (2011) analyse its aesthetic of disorderly order, while Bruno (2013) explores Buddhist influences. Eliot's use of "time" ironically underscores life's fleeting nature. Tiresias symbolises unity and prophetic insight, blurring poetic and prophetic boundaries. In the typist's story, Tiresias embodies witness and character, reflecting on loveless sex with detachment. Eliot's shifting between darkness and light mirrors life's complexities.
10. Parallelism and Contrast:-
Eliot’s purpose in writing The Waste Land is undoubtedly to depict the profound panorama of futility and anarchy of the present civilization. In order to do this Eliot follows the mythical method. He thinks that this method would enable him to give shape and significance to the disordered condition of contemporary life. He finds a recurring pattern in various myths and by using them he has been able to concretize parallelism between the past and the present.
Eliot speaks of a number of waste lands which are so much alike : the Biblical waste land, the waste land of King Oedipus, the waste land of Fisher King and the modern waste land. The sterility and desolation of these waste lands were due to the loss of moral values and sexual perversion. One of the important myths, which is all pervasive, is that of birth, death and rebirth. This was the foundation of vegetation, and rituals in ancient Egypt. In the Christian faith it is represented by crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. The historical myths of the Fisher King and Oedipus of Thebes refer to the consequences of sin, which affected the rulers and their lands. Subsequently through repentance and penance, the rulers regained their health and their lands became fertile and productive. The idea is that redemption and salvation is possible through sufferings and purification. Similarly the modern waste land for all its spiritual barrenness and sexual perversity can be saved by self-reformation and life of faith, service and dedication to moral values.
Parallelism may be traced in the character portrayal also. The tragedy of guilty love is portrayed in the story of Tristan and Isolde, and the Hyacinth girl of to-day. The figure Belladonna, The Lady of the Rocks is a woman of the waste land, both ancient and modern. The death-in-life of the original
wasteland finds a parallel in the passage which describes the plight of the crowd of people ‘flowing’ over London Bridge. The modern city becomes “unreal” like the mediaeval waste land, like Dante’s Limbo and like Baudelaire’s Paris. Again the violation of the Thames daughters corresponds to the rape of the maidens in the Grail legend which brought down a curse upon gods and men. This parallel emphasises the damage done by love which is sordid and sterile in the modern times.
The Waste Land is replete with so many parallels. The parallels are intended to heighten and accentuate the effect of horror which the thought of the modern waste land is supposed to produce in us. The spiritual bankruptcy of the the modern world could not have been more effectively conveyed to us than through these parallels.
11. Cyclical Structure:-
All the five sections of the poem have a sort of formal structure. The first section ‘The Burial of the Dead’ refers to the burial service of the Christian church and also to the burial of dead fertility shows the theme of spiritual death, sexual perversion and lack of faith. The wastelanders are spiritually dead. Any thought of re-birth is painful to them, so ‘April is the cruellest month’ for them. In the end of this section the poet also says that the hope of regeneration lies in the restoration of faith in church: “There is a shadow under these red rocks.”
The same perversion of life is at the centre of the second section, ‘A Game of Chess’ which is taken from Thames Middleton’s play, ‘Women Beware Women’ where a game of chess is played to distract the attention of an old woman while her daughter in law is indulging in intercourse. In this section the poet indicates the failure of sex relationships in the modern world. The idea behind the tavern scene is that marriage is meant for regulation of sex-instinct only. The perversion of sex has made modern life barren and desolate: “He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time, And if you don’t give it to him, there’s others will, " I said. ………If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said "Others can pick and choose if you can’t.” In the third section, ‘The Fire Sermon’ the title is borrowed from the sermon of Lord Buddha wherein he said that the world is on fire, ‘burning with the fire of hatred, infatuation, birth, old age and death. This section emphasises that the whole world is burning in the fire of lust, anger, sorrows and misery. And it is responsible for the corruption and decay of modern society. This kind of degeneration prevails in all classes of society, the upper, middle and lower class. The typist girl has no sense of regret after the sex act: “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad It’s over.” Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with an automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.” In the fourth section, ‘Death by water’ Eliot shows the significance of water as a means of purification and rebirth. People who devote themselves to worldly pursuits will be punished and drowned in a whirlpool of death and there is no hope of rebirth. It hints at the death of the wastelanders because of their materialistic pursuits:
“A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool.” The fifth section ‘What the Thunder said’ reiterates the moral lesson for the liberation of society from spiritual death and desolation through the three lessons as given by the Thunder- self surrender, sympathising and self control. It talks about a fresh life of death. The poet writes, “We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.” In this way, all the technical devices used by Eliot contribute to a circular shape. The poem ‘The waste Land’ is a poetic expression of the themes of spiritual barrenness, emotional dryness and sexual degeneration. The central vision of the poem is complex and complicated, so it is expressed through an equally complex poetic technique; the mythical framework, various allusions, comparisons and contrasts, rich images and symbols along with the narrator Tiresias who is the most powerful link and narrates everything he looks at. There is no linear development from scene to scene, but a circular one.
12. Conclusion:-
In conclusion, exploring Intertextuality in T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' reveals a multifaceted work deeply entrenched in its historical context, showcasing the disillusionment and fragmentation of post-World War I society. Eliot's innovative use of the collage technique mirrors the chaotic nature of the modern world, while the poem's division into five sections underscores its thematic complexity. Through a myriad of narrative and mythical allusions, Eliot weaves together disparate cultural and literary references, inviting readers to decipher layers of meaning. The juxtaposition of parallelism and contrast throughout the poem further underscores its exploration of human experience and societal decay. Finally, 'The Waste Land's cyclical structure reflects the perpetual cycle of destruction and renewal, echoing the broader themes of modernity and existential crisis. In essence, Eliot's masterpiece stands as a testament to the interplay between tradition and innovation, offering profound insights into the human condition within the context of a rapidly changing world.
13. References:-
Korg, Jacob. MODERN ART TECHNIQUES IN THE WASTE LAND*, vol. 18, no. 4, (Jun.,1960), 456 -463 (8 Pages), https://jstor-mkbu.refread.com/stable/428111?searchText=fragmentation+and+collage+techniques+in+the+waste+land&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dfragmentation%2Band%2Bcollage%2Btechniques%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bwaste%2Bland%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbas.
Kuiper, Kathleen. “The Waste Land | Modernist Poetry, T.S. Eliot, Criticism.” Britannica, 28 March 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Waste-Land. Accessed 24 April 2024.
“T.S. Eliot | Biography, Poems, Works, Importance, & Facts.” Britannica, 29 February 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/T-S-Eliot. Accessed 24 April 2024.
Thank You For Reading...
Happy Learning...Exploring
No comments:
Post a Comment