Please help me (THE WASTE LAND) analysis

Hello

Please I want you to help me and give me some information about (theme, figures of speech ,style, rhym and diction) of THE WASTE LAND by T.S.ELiot


Please I need for these elements before my exam it will be after 4 days:bawling:

I'm no expert on Eliot or modernism (shudder), but some themes that the poem addresses are death, man's mortality, the relationship between man and nature, and sex.

The big clue for me was always the title which invokes a phrase from Weston's book that explores the pagan origins of the Holy Grail myth in Arthurian literature. From what I've learned in my Arthurian classes, the medieval Welsh believed that in order for their lands to be fertile and bear crops, there had to be a harmonious and productive relationship between the royal couple - meaning they could produce heirs. Now the queen was always believed to be an incarnation of the sovereignty goddess (basically, the Earth goddess). If there was strife or barrenness between the human king and his divine queen, then - it was believed - the land would be barren. Hence, the "Wasteland". The only way to restore the land's fertility, then, would be for some worthy rival to kill the old inept king and take his place beside the queen.

This belief was then absorbed into Christianity and Arthurian romance. In this version, the sovereignty goddess is symbolized by the Holy Grail (a la the argument in the Da Vinci Code). And the human king is a Christ-figure but, more importantly, the keeper of the Holy Grail. The most famous of these keepers is the Fisher King, whom Sir Perceval encounters on his Grail quest. The Grail Castle, where the Fisher King lives, and the surrounding lands are barren - a wasteland. For some reason the Fisher King is always injured in some way - wounded in the leg or groin. When it's the latter, it's sometimes interpreted as a castration wound. When seen in the light of the "pagan" source, it makes sense that the Fisher King's castration would result in a wasteland. (In some versions, the weapon that wounded the Fisher King is the Lance of Longinus, the same lance that pierced Christ on the cross.)

Perceval is always depicted as knight who has the potential to save the Fisher King and restores his lands to fertility. Depending on who you read, the way (or even IF) he saves the Fisher King varies. But in Malory, Percival is actually one of only three knights who actually succeeds in finding the Grail. So Percival himself is another Christ figure.

That was probably more than you ever wanted to know about the origins of the "Wasteland", but hopefully it helps you see some of the themes that are illustrated in the poem. Eliot, of course, takes this legend into a whole new direction.

Thanke you very much

The West Land was written at a time when Eliot was interested in the theory of the poet as inheritor and bearer of tradition. As a classicist, he felt he was bound to owe allegiance to an authority outside himself. To accept and follow authority showed a humble conscience, as he said in one of his essays. His use of quotations therefore is an index of his veneration for the Literature of other languages and other times. The string of quotations, especially at the end of the poem, may look gibberish to some but at the risk of being thought mad, loke Hieronyno in Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Eliot resorts to snatches from various languages in order to show that all ages and all languages are one. The only answer to critics such as Graham Hough is that the residue, when all the sourse hunters have done their work is preciesely a governing voice, tone and emotion which comes through the surface variety, allusive though this be. Not all his allusions, however, are easily traceable, some of them are remote and recondite.
Eliot's sourses are many and varied. Scraps from such diverse writers as Dante, Shakespeare, Baudelaire and Kyd and snatches and echoes from nursery rhymes and the music hall are interwoven into the intricacy of the poetic mosaic.

:eek2: Hell!! When did Eliot write The West Land?? He was no Christopher Columbus, sailing west in search of Indies...the poem is titled The Waste Land, if i may kindly inform you, Mr Guha. Is it fair to mercilessly slaughter an amazing piece of literary work like The Waste Land on a forum like dis?