MYTH AND MODERNISM IN T.S. ELIOT'S THE WASTE LAND
I. Modernism (approx. 1914-1965) traits :
 uncertainty and cynicism (World War I experience)
 experimental spirit, break with traditional forms
 personal vision of "reality" (aided by psychology)
Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) "the most important publication in England in the period" (Holman and
Harmon, Handbook to Literature)
II. Relation to myth in Eliot's poetry:
 The double (diachronic and synchronic) aspect of literary myth: re-formulation/expression of Jungian
archetypes in the collective unconscious (Frasier, Weston).
 "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1917): literary continuum (past exists in the present).
 “Ulysses, Order and Myth."(1923): mythical method (structure and communicability).
III. Structural mythologies of TWL:
 Cumaean Sibyl
 The Fisher King and Percival (Arthurian Grail legend)
 Tristan and Isolde
 Adonis
 The Buddha’s "Fire Sermon"
 Dante’s "Inferno" and “Purgatorio”
 Christianity
 Tarot card pack
 Philomela
 Thames nymphs/ Rhinemaidens (Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Niibelungen)
 Ovid's and Sophocles' Tiresias
 The Upanishads
—>IV. Tiresias emerges as the central figure:
 note on line 218 of TWL
 appears in all the major themes in the poem, sustaining positive message (quest)
1) Disillusionment with modern life
2) Knowledge through suffering; movement towards rebirth and change
3) Lack of sexual/social communication, sterility (Vivienne Haigh-Wood?); androgyny
5) Eliot in Tiresias; movement towards Christ/salvation; unification as theosis.
V. Criticism on classical myth (especially Teiresias) in The Waste Land:
Dean, Michael P. “T.S. Eliot’s Tiresias: A Unifying Force in The Waste Land.” (1984).
Drew, Elizabeth. 'T.S. Eliot: The Mythical Vision." (1992).
Foster, Genevieve. 'The Archetypal Imagery of T.S. Eliot." (1945).
Frye, Northrop. T.S. Eliot (1963).
Headings, Philip Ray. 'The Tiresias Tradition in Western Literature." (1959).
Johnson, Carol S. 'The Oedipal Eliot; Or, The Waste Land, A Complex Complex." (1993)
Keogh, J. G. "O City, City: Oedipus in The Waste Land" (1987).
Martin, Stephen H. “A Comparative Study of Androgyny in Twentieth-Century Experimental Literature.”
(1984).
Rodgers, Audrey. “‘He Do the Police in Different Voices’: The Design of The Waste Land.” (1983).