The Waste Land
Four hundred and thirty-four lines assembled from overheard voices - a countess, a fortune teller, typists and clerks, a pub at closing time - cut against fragments of Dante, Shakespeare, the Grail legend and the Upanishads. It was written in the aftermath of one war and Eliot's own breakdown, and cut hard by Pound into the shape that was published. A broken mosaic of a civilization after the war; myth and memory glinting through the rubble.
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Lineage
- influenced by ↑ The Divine Comedy
- influenced by ↑ Le Morte d'Arthur
- alludes to ↑ Our Mutual Friend
- ↑ Ecclesiastes
- ↑ Gerontion
- ↓ Herzog
- ↓ The Grass Is Singing
- ↓ Spring and All
- ↓ A Handful of Dust
Attributes
Genre
Plot structure
Emotional arc (story shape)
Quest object (Greimas)
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Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 51% · 10 shared
- 47% · 11 shared
- 46% · 11 shared
- 46% · 10 shared
- 46% · 9 shared
- 45% · 8 shared