Modern Poetry and Fiction: Analysis of the Selected Poems of Eliot and Yeats; Novels of Woolf and Joyce
MODERNISM IN CONTEXT
1. Essay----Any One: 1. Comment on the characters in THE WASTELAND. The poem was written in 1922 immediately after the first World War and the poet makes a statement on the decadence and degradation in human values that had led to the war.It is a masterpiece of modernist poetry written in five sections. Europe is alluded to as the modern wasteland and the poem is largely located in London and the river Thames. The protagonist in the poem is Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes who had to convey to Oedipus the meaning of the riddle connected with Oedipus.In this poem Eliot has woven a an intricate pattern of verse which despite its interwoven strands, taken from history, anthropology, myths, of countries and cultures which were once famous and well known. These allusions and references from the past and the present , present a visual and metaphorical collage of seemingly disparate ideas, joined together to a theme of life, decadence,death,and rebirth. The poem is narrated in the first person narrative voice of Tiresias, the narrator -protagonist who has seen it all--past , present as well as future. Eliot has depended for his source on two seminal contemporary works- Frazer's Golden Bough, and Jessie L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance. While the frist deals with the myth of the Fertility cults which formed an integral part of Eastern civilization; the second one describes the Legend of the Holy Grail.In both the stories there is a quester who seeks to release the waste land from the curse it is suffering from. The first section titled 'Burial of the Dead', begins with the narrative voice of Tiresias , voicing the condition and ethos of the inhabitants of the waste land. They consider April to be
1. Essay----Any One: 1. Comment on the characters in THE WASTELAND. The poem was written in 1922 immediately after the first World War and the poet makes a statement on the decadence and degradation in human values that had led to the war.It is a masterpiece of modernist poetry written in five sections. Europe is alluded to as the modern wasteland and the poem is largely located in London and the river Thames. The protagonist in the poem is Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes who had to convey to Oedipus the meaning of the riddle connected with Oedipus.In this poem Eliot has woven a an intricate pattern of verse which despite its interwoven strands, taken from history, anthropology, myths, of countries and cultures which were once famous and well known. These allusions and references from the past and the present , present a visual and metaphorical collage of seemingly disparate ideas, joined together to a theme of life, decadence,death,and rebirth. The poem is narrated in the first person narrative voice of Tiresias, the narrator -protagonist who has seen it all--past , present as well as future. Eliot has depended for his source on two seminal contemporary works- Frazer's Golden Bough, and Jessie L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance. While the frist deals with the myth of the Fertility cults which formed an integral part of Eastern civilization; the second one describes the Legend of the Holy Grail.In both the stories there is a quester who seeks to release the waste land from the curse it is suffering from. The first section titled 'Burial of the Dead', begins with the narrative voice of Tiresias , voicing the condition and ethos of the inhabitants of the waste land. They consider April to be