By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Death by Water’ is by far the shortest of the five sections of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land. The section which precedes it, ‘The Fire Sermon’, is 234 lines – over half of the entire length of the poem. Why is ‘Death by Water’ so short? We’re going to attempt a brief summary of this section of the poem here, along with some words of analysis. You can read ‘Death by Water’ here.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Fire Sermon’ is the third section of T. S. Eliot’s ground-breaking 1922 poem The Waste Land. Its title is chiefly a reference to the Buddhist Fire Sermon, which encourages the individual to liberate himself (or herself) from suffering through detachment from the five senses and the conscious mind. You can read ‘The Fire Sermon’ here; below we offer a short summary of this section of Eliot’s poem, along with an analysis of its meaning.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A Game of Chess’ is the second section of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land, the impact of which was profound and immediate. The title partly alludes to a game of chess played in Jacobean dramatist Thomas Middleton’s play Women Beware Women, but also to another of his plays, A Game at Chess. You can read ‘A Game of Chess’ here; below, we offer a brief summary of this section of Eliot’s poem, but we’ll stop and analyse the more curious aspects of it as we go, pointing out its most curious features.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Burial of the Dead’ is the first of five sections that make up The Waste Land (1922), T. S. Eliot’s landmark modernist poem. What follows is a short analysis of this opening section, with the most curious and interesting aspects of Eliot’s poem highlighted. You can read ‘The Burial of the Dead’ here. What we intend to do is provide a brief summary of what happens in ‘The Burial of the Dead’, but we’ll stop and analyse those features which are especially significant as we go, and point out the meaning of the most important allusions.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A Cooking Egg’ first appeared in T. S. Eliot’s second collection, Poems, in 1919. You can read ‘A Cooking Egg’ here; below are some thoughts on this elusive and difficult poem, designed to serve as a brief analysis of the poem’s meaning and features.