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The Waste Land is a poem dominated by extreme states in terms of the weather and elements. Fire. Fire is especially important in the third part of The Waste Land, ‘The Fire Sermon’. In the Buddhist Fire Sermon, the Buddha states that everything is on fire: our lives are dominated by the ‘burning’ of passions, desires, and human suffering.
- The Waste Land
A reading of the fifth section of The Waste Land – analysed...
- The Waste Land
The Waste Land. Summary & Analysis. T. S. Eliot opens The Waste Land with an epigraph taken from a Latin novel by Petronius. The epigraph describes a woman with prophetic powers who has been blessed with long life, but who doesn’t stay eternally young. Facing a future of irreversible decrepitude, she proclaims her longing for death.
The Burial of the Dead. April is the cruellest month The Waste Land begins with a subversion of the first lines of the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. He paints April as a month of restorative power, when spring rain brings nature back to life: “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote / The droghte of March ...
The Waste Land Summary & Analysis. T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" is considered one of the most important poems of the 20th century, as well as a modernist masterpiece. A dramatic monologue that changes speakers, locations, and times throughout, "The Waste Land" draws on a dizzying array of literary, musical, historical, and popular cultural ...
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- I. The Burial of the Dead. April is the cruellest month, breeding. Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing. Memory and desire, stirring. Dull roots with spring rain.
- II. A GAME OF CHESS. The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass. (…) Spread out in fiery points.
- III. THE FIRE SERMON. The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf. Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind. (…) But at my back in a cold blast I hear.
- IV. DEATH BY WATER. Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell. And the profit and loss.
The Waste Land is one of the major poems of the twentieth century. Published in 1922, T. S. Eliot’s landmark work of modernism may ‘only’ be just over 430 lines or around 20 pages in length, but its scope and vision are epic in terms of historical and geographical range, spanning from modern-day London to the deserts of the Old Testament.
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The Waste Land, first published in 1922, is arguably the most important poem of the whole twentieth century. It remains a timely poem, even though its origins were very specifically the post-war Europe of 1918-22. Written by T. S. Eliot, who was then beginning to make a name for himself following the publication (and modest success) of his ...
