The Waste Land: General

Question 1

Where is the epigraph from?

Answer 1

• the‘Satyricon’
• the Sibyl (a woman with prophetic powers who ages but never dies) looks at the future and proclaims that she only wants to die - exactly the same situation as ‘Tithonus’ by Alfred Tennyson
• the Sibyl’s predicament mirrors what Eliot sees as his own
• he lives in a culture that has decayed and withered but will not expire, and he is forced to live with reminders of its former glory

Question 2

Which two texts influenced The Waste Land most?

Answer 2

Jessie Weston‘From Ritual to Romance’

Sir James Frazier ‘The Golden Bough’

Question 3

What are the significance of the two works?

Answer 3

• both works focus on the persistence of ancient fertility rituals in modern thought and religion
• of particular interest to both authors is the story of the Fisher King
• has been wounded in the genitals and whose lack of potency is the cause of his country becoming a desiccated “waste land”
• if you heal the Fisher King, the legend says, the land will regain its fertility

Question 4

How does Eliot use the ‘Fisher King’?

Answer 4

• picks up on the figure of the Fisher King legend’s wasteland as an appropriate description of the state of modern society
• important difference is that in Eliot’s world there is no way to heal the Fisher King - perhaps there is no Fisher King at all
• legend’s imperfect integration into a modern meditation highlights the lack of a unifying narrative (like religion or mythology) in the modern world

Question 5

What does Michael Levenson say on the effect of wartime on ‘TWL’?

Answer 5

• ‘The Waste Land’ owes everything to the effects of wartime geometry

Question 6

How does Levenson say that Eliot creates a vocal ‘doubleness’?

Answer 6

• used often-biblical tones of a third-person voice, sometimes articulates a cacophony of voices
• the synthesis of these two techniques has often been called ‘Montage Modernism’
• they preserve the principle of the luminous details and the radiant epiphany but are now integrated into a pattern of details, a matrix of epiphanies
  (compared with the use of epiphany in James Joyce’s ‘Dubliner’s’ especially - Eliot is saying that fertility and revival lies in individuality, we have to be a montage of individuals and not just a mass)

Question 7

What is the significance of the vegetation myths?

Answer 7

• vegetation deities arenature deitieswhose disappearance and reappearance, orlife, death and rebirth, embodies the growth cycle of plants
• deitycan be agodorgoddesswith the ability toregenerateitself
• often afertility deity
• deity typically undergoes dismemberment, scattering, and reintegration, as narrated in amythor reenacted by a religiousritual

Question 8

What is the Osiris myth?

Answer 8

• the cultural achievements ofOsirisamong the peoples of the earth provokes the envy of his brotherSet, who kills and dismembers him
• Osiris’s wifeIsismakes a journey to gather his fourteen scattered body parts
• in some versions, she buries each part where she finds it, causing the desert to put forth vegetation
• in other versions, she reassembles his body and resurrects him, and he then becomes the ruler of the afterlife

Question 9

What was the Battle of Mylae?

Answer 9

• 260 BC: occurred during theFirst Punic War
• first real naval battle betweenCarthageand theRoman Republic
• fought over control of Sicily
• tested the new naval fleet of Rome (build in 60 days) - displayed Roman innovation and creativity

Question 10

What is another poem of Eliot’s that raises questions about origins of words/ authorial originality etc.?

Answer 10

Mr Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service

• opens with what appears to be a wholly original word “polyphiloprogenitive”
• actually has a rich etymological history
• even the use of the word - being one of compound parts demonstrates how words and poems are constructed from the origins of various different threads

Question 11

How could we say that Mr Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service is different to TWL?

Answer 11

• was not published with explanatory notes (and it is a poem that certainly would warrant them)
• exists in exclusive isolation from any effort to engage readers
• uses the term ‘polyphiloprogenitive’ in a humorous context which adds another layer of taunting - turns the joke back onto his reader
• OR perhaps he privileges the intellect of his readers by not publishing explanatory notes that really just added to the exploitative/ alienating aspects of TWL because some were considered to be faked/ misleading etc.

Question 12

What is the significance of the title ‘He do the Police in different voices’?

Answer 12

• took his original title from Dickens’ ‘Our Mutual Friend’ - scene of working-class characters speaking aloud
• simple pleasures in reading aloud, even if there is a lack of understanding from her side, epitomised in this line which is grammatically incorrect
• clearly wants to associate his poem with that message

Question 13

How does the OED summarise the modernist technique behind Eliot’s poetry?

Answer 13

“breaking down the traditional poetic aesthetic and building it up again using fragments of the old techniques alongside the sounds of modern life”