Analysis Of The Wasteland By T. S. Eliot - 2210 Words

Intertextuality in the Wasteland One of the masterpieces of Anglo-American modernism, â€Å"The Wasteland† by T. S. Eliot, was published in a time when European society had just emerged from World War I, a war that had traumatized and destabilized the whole continent and its society making it reconsider much of its beliefs and previous assumptions. A sense of disillusionment and cynicism grew among people who did no more believe in the humanity and order of the world surrounding them. Eliot has succeeded to represent all those feelings in his poem which soon became known as â€Å"the work that best expressed the mood of postwar generation disillusioned by the loss of ideals and faith in progress† (Dupree 7). In the poem, Eliot suggests a path to escape the degrading condition of modern society through a return to previous civilizations and cultures bringing into light their ideals, beliefs and experiences as a model for the restoration and reformation of the lost and fading away European identit y and culture. Delmore Schwartz states that â€Å"Eliot’s theme is the rehabilitation of a system of beliefs, known but not discredited (209). The mosaic picture of different cultures, myths and civilizations produced throughout the poem is the product of a wide-ranging use of intertextuality. The Waste Land is a scene of various literary, historical and cultural encounters, weaving a solid inter-textual fabric. In this essay I attempt to study the instances of intertextuality in T. 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