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T. S. EliotA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The Waste Land is an unapologetically ambitious poem, a public poem in which Eliot—like many of the modernists—perceived the function of the Poet, capital P, not as some transcriber of private confessional emotions but rather as a priest with a wide-lens perception of the era. The Poet, then, is commissioned by virtue of that perception to perform a public role: the responsibility to direct, guide, and minister to a wounded and troubling society, to deliver, as part of that imperative, difficult insights about itself. People live in a waste land and do not even know it, the poet says. Come, the poet invites, and “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” (Line 30). Although every generation since antiquity thinks it is the world’s last, for Eliot, the evidence that Western civilization was lost was compelling. Eliot, whose vast education grounded him in the wide-ranging study of Western civilization, perceived in his moment clear indications of Western civilization’s undeniable lapse into fragmentation, moral dissolution, spiritual drift, and psychological paralysis. In this, Eliot assumes the role of prophet—a visionary cursed with insight, able to see what others blithely ignore.
By T. S. Eliot
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday
T. S. Eliot
East Coker
East Coker
T. S. Eliot
Four Quartets
Four Quartets
T. S. Eliot
Journey of the Magi
Journey of the Magi
T. S. Eliot
Little Gidding
Little Gidding
T. S. Eliot
Mr. Mistoffelees
Mr. Mistoffelees
T. S. Eliot
Murder in the Cathedral
Murder in the Cathedral
T. S. Eliot
Portrait of a Lady
Portrait of a Lady
T. S. Eliot
Preludes
Preludes
T. S. Eliot
Rhapsody On A Windy Night
Rhapsody On A Windy Night
T. S. Eliot
The Cocktail Party
The Cocktail Party
T. S. Eliot
The Hollow Men
The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot
The Song of the Jellicles
The Song of the Jellicles
T. S. Eliot
Tradition and the Individual Talent
Tradition and the Individual Talent
T. S. Eliot