Wasteland Modernism

This book proposes a renewed myth-critical approach to the so-called ‘wasteland modernism’ of the 1920s to reassess certain key texts of the American modernist canon from a critical prism that offers new perspectives of analysis and interpretation. Myth-criticism and, more specifically, the critical survey of myth as an aesthetic and ideological strategy fundamental for the comprehension of modernist literature, leads to an engaging discussion about the disenchantment of myth in modernist literary texts. This process of mythical disenchantment, inextricable from the cultural and historical circumstances that define the modernist zeitgeist, offers a possibility for revising from a contemporary standpoint a set of classic texts that are crucial to our understanding of the modern literary tradition in the United States. This study carries out an exhaustive and updated myth-critical examination of works by T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Djuna Barnes to broaden the scope of familiar themes and archetypes, enclosing the textual analysis of these works in a wider exploration about the purpose and functioning of myth in literature, particularly in times of crisis and transformation.

The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem explores how cultural responses to the trauma of the First World War found expression in the form of the modernist long poem. Beginning with T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Oliver Tearle reads that most famous example of the genre in comparison with lesser known long poems, such as Hope Mirrlees's Paris: A Poem, Richard Aldington's A Fool I' the Forest and Nancy Cunard's Parallax. As well as presenting a new history of this neglected genre, the book examines the ways in which the modernist long poem represented the seminal literary form for grappling with the crises of European modernity in the wake of World War I.

Current debates about birth control can be surprisingly volatile, especially given the near-universal use of contraception among American and British women. Conceived in Modernism: The Aesthetics and Politics of Birth Control offers a new perspective on these debates by demonstrating that the political positions surrounding birth control have roots in literary concerns, specifically those of modernist writers. Whereas most scholarship treats modernism and birth control activism as parallel, but ultimately separate, movements, Conceived in Modernism shows that they were deeply intertwined. This book argues not only that literary concerns exerted a lasting influence on the way activists framed the emerging politics of contraception, but that birth control activism helped shape some of modernism's most innovative concepts. By revealing the presence of literary aesthetics in the discourse surrounding birth control, Conceived in Modernism helps us see this discourse as a variable facet rather than a permanent bulwark of reproductive rights debates.

The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot. The poem merges the myth of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King, with illustrations of early 20th century British society and is generally considered to be a central work of modernist poesy.

This Companion offers fresh critical perspectives on T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land that will be invaluable to scholars, students, and general readers.

This book offers fresh commentary on T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, a book of modernist poetry published in 1922. It aims to be both a part-by-part analysis of the poem with periodic summations and a meditation on the limits of interpretation and the problematic nature of reading in the late 20th century. Bringing both Eliot's philosophical writings and contemporary theory to their interpretation, the authors aim to demonstrate that in his early essays and poems, Eliot anticipated by over 50 years basic insights of contemporary theory. Using The Waste Land as their reference point, they clarify the manner in which modernist texts both insist upon and defeat interpretation.

An Introduction to the Book'Modernism In TS Eliot`s The Waste Land: Decoding Elements of Modernism in Literature' is a short and critical essay on T. S. Eliot`s 'The Waste Land' as a text of modernist poetry. The book examines the prominent and easily discernible elements in the poem The Waste Land that make it a profoundly modernist text of poetry. For students to acquaint themselves with the literary subject of modernism in literature, the author has devoted a separate chapter to the topic under the heading of, An Introduction to Modernism in 20th Century Literature.In addition, the book also contains a supplementary essay on W. B. Yeats`s poetry entitled 'Unity of Being as a Philosophy in Yeats`s Poetry'. It will be especially helpful in understanding his poem Among School Children.In short, whether you are studying Eliot as an undergraduate or graduate student, this book is a must-read in the sense that it deals with modernism in Eliot`s poetry in a detailed and well-researched manner. For a complete appreciation of The Waste Land, undertaking the study of literary modernism is extremely important. It will be helpful in dealing with the poetry of T. S. Eliot in particular, other modern poets in general.About the AuthorShafqat Mushtaq holds masters in English Literature from the University of Kashmir. He is the author of Blossoms from Elsewhere, Defy Odds and Be Unstoppable, JM Coetzee`s Disgrace and Racism in Post-Apartheid South Africa, 1984 George Orwell (Book Analysis): Reading the Novel in Post-Trump Context by Shafqat Mushtaq and is published frequently in leading English dailies of Kashmir.

divThis groundbreaking book of literary detective work alters our understanding of T. S. Eliot’s poetic masterpiece, The Waste Land. Lawrence Rainey not only resolves longstanding mysteries surrounding the composition of the poem but also overturns traditional interpretations of the poem that have prevailed for more than eighty years. He shines new light on Eliot’s greatest achievement and on the poem’s place in the modern canon. Far from the austere and sober monument to neoclassicism that admirers have praised, The Waste Land turns out to be something quite different: something grim and wild, unruly and intractable, violent and shocking and radically indeterminate, yet also deeply compassionate. Rainey looks at how Eliot went about writing the poem and at the sequence in which he composed the parts. Arriving at new insights into the poet’s intentions, Rainey unsettles tradition-bound views of the poem and shows us that The Waste Land is even stranger and more startling than we knew./DIV

An exploration of the legacy of The Waste Land on the centenary of its original publication, looking at the impact it had had upon criticism and new poetries across one hundred years.

In a comparative and interdisciplinary analysis of modern and postmodern literature, film, art, and visual culture, Monika Kaup examines the twentieth century's recovery of the baroque within a hemispheric framework embracing North America, Latin America, and U.S. Latino/a culture. As "neobaroque" comes to the forefront of New World studies, attention to transcultural dynamics is overturning the traditional scholarship that confined the baroque to a specific period, class, and ideology in the seventeenth century. Reflecting on the rich, nonlinear genealogy of baroque expression, Neobaroque in the Americas envisions the baroque as an anti-proprietary expression that brings together seemingly disparate writers and artists and contributes to the new studies in global modernity.

Presenting work from scholars of various ranks and locations—including Canada, Romania, Taiwan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the UK, and the USA—this volume offers critical perspectives on what is often considered the most important poem of literary modernism: T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The essays explore such topics as Eliot’s use of sources, his poem’s form, his influences, and his alleged misogyny. Building off contemporary work on Eliot and his poem, these essays illustrate the continued importance of The Waste Land in our understanding of the last century. This book should be of interest to students and scholars of modernism and modernist poetry.

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Duisburg-Essen, language: English, abstract: This paper examines selected literature of the Modernist Era and the search for identity in and outside of the United States during this time. One of the characteristics of Modernism in America is the development of changing attitudes towards religion, and in particular Christianity, which was seen as the traditional religion that had, up until then, been a pillar of American beliefs. These changed attitudes ranged anywhere from questioning one’s religion or faith to having flat out aversions to even the idea of (any) God. (my emphasis) In the late 1800’s, under the influence of the idea of successful Manifest Destiny, and major advances in sciences and technology, people were generally high-spirited, grounded in their beliefs. They minded their own business, followed their goals and dreams. They witnessed, or even experienced abundance, and paid little attention to things that they felt did not concern them, including foreign affairs.

The Waste Land is a 434-line modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called one of the most important poems of the 20th century. Despite the poem's obscurity-its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures-the poem has become a familiar touchstone of modern literature. 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 probably worked on what was to become The Waste Land for several years preceding its first publication in 1922. In a letter to New York lawyer and patron of modernism John Quinn dated 9 May 1921, Eliot wrote that he had "a long poem in mind and partly on paper which I am wishful to finish."

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 3, University of Coimbra, language: English, abstract: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal“, T.S. Eliot once said himself. What he probably wanted to express with that statement was the fact that every poet takes ideas from his role models and transforms them into something new – even though one would not necessarily call this procedure “stealing”, but rather “adoption”. This is going to be also the topic of the following essay: the adoption of a certain subject-matter over several centuries. The major part of my investigations is going to deal with T.S. Eliot’s famous poem The Waste Land. After giving a short summary of the background and creation of the poem, I am going to depict the references between Eliots poem, Geoffrey Chaucer ́s The Canterbury Tales and David Lodge ́s novel Small World by the example of their description of the month april. In doing so, I am going to analyse the similarities and differences concerning contents, style and adaptation of the literary material and deconstruct how the material that was first elaborated by Chaucer later is readopted and converted into a modern poem resp. narrative by Eliot and Lodge. The following questions are going to lead through the whole essay: What are the basic issues that all of the three discussed writers deal with? How was the subject-matter that first turned up in Chaucer ́s writings transformed by Eliot and Lodge? What is the main difference between the text from the 14th century and the modern readings? The aim of this essay is to demonstrate how intertextuality works and the phenomenon that no piece of poetry is thinkable without its reference to the entirety of earlier writings.