The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot’s landmark 1922 poem, is full of rich symbolism. But its symbolism is also highly ambiguous, making it difficult to explain the poem by appealing to a particular symbol or image alone. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most important symbols in […]
Tag: The Waste Land
The Anglo-Saxon Waste Land: The Anonymous Poem ‘The Ruin’
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a minor classic of Anglo-Saxon poetry It’s a sobering thought that all of the Anglo-Saxon poetry that has survived is found in just four manuscripts which escaped the ravages of time, the pillaging of the Vikings, and the […]
Modernism’s Other Waste Land: Hope Mirrlees’ Paris
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle discusses the remarkable modernist poem, Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees ‘April is the cruellest month.’ The opening line (although it’s worth remembering that ‘April is the cruellest month’ is not the full line) of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 […]
Reading T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land in the Age of Brexit
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle rereads T. S. Eliot’s classic poem about a Britain in decline It’s nearly a century since T. S. Eliot, having just turned thirty, announced his intention to write a long poem about the contemporary world. Several letters he wrote […]
A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘What the Thunder Said’
A reading of the fifth section of The Waste Land – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle ‘What the Thunder Said’ concludes The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot’s landmark 1922 work of modernist poetry. In many ways, this is the most difficult section of The Waste Land to analyse. Nevertheless, what follows […]