Thinking activity on The Waste Land

 

"April is the cruellest month"

The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot,[A] widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry.

Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. 

It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih".

Eliot's poem combines the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon, Buddhism, and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, and time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.

The poem is divided into five sections. The first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, "A Game of Chess", employs alternating narrations, in which vignettes of several characters address those themes experientially. "The Fire Sermon", the third section, offers a philosophical meditation in relation to the imagery of death and views of self-denial in juxtaposition influenced by Augustine of Hippo and eastern religions. After a fourth section, "Death by Water", which includes a brief lyrical petition, the culminating fifth section, "What the Thunder Said", concludes with an image of judgment.

Study material

1) The waste land as modern Epic poem.

2) Unit of the poem The waste land.

3) Themes The waste land.

4) The complexity of the poem.

5) The mythical Techniques in the waste land.

6) Comments on five parts of the poem.

7) Universal human law's in the waste land.

8) Autobiographical Elements in the waste land.

Blog activity

1. 'The Waste Land' is an epic of the modern times. Discuss it with the illustrations from the text.

2. Give your comments on the five parts of the poem.

3. Do you find any Autobiographical Elements in this poetic work ? Explain it in details.  

4."Life in Death and Death in Life" Explain this theme with the reference of the poem The Waste Land. 

5. "April is the cruellest month" ; "Shantih shantih shantih." Explain this two lines and its mythical meaning. In which context it is used in the poem?

Citation.

1) The Waste Land. (2021, January 22). Retrieved from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land

2) Barad, D. (2014, October 28). Autobiographical Elements in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/dilipbarad/autobiographical-elements-in-ts-eliots-the-waste-land

3) Barad, D. (2014, July 29). Universal Human Laws in The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot). Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/dilipbarad/universal-human-laws-in-the-waste-land-ts-eliot

4) 9. Mod Lit. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/view/maenglishmkbu/part-2/9-mod-lit

5) https://youtu.be/26YCes_QsHw