Considered to be a seminal1 Modernist work, The Waste Land2 was written in the aftermath of3 the First World War by American-born poet, playwright4 and literary critic Thomas Stearns Eliot. A 434-line poem divided into five parts, it addresses themes of death, loss and confusion. While The Waste Land is intentionally hard to decipher, lines and expressions evoke visceral images that can be universally understood.
MODERNISM
Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888, T.S. Eliot moved to England in 1914 and renounced his US citizenship5 in 1927. He became the most influential voice of the Modernist literary movement, arguing that, in modern times, “the poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language to his meaning.” Eliot’s poem The…
