Eliot's Literary Theory And Its Application In The Waste Land

It is well known that as a bridge to link the literary works and readers, the literary criticism offers indispensable theories and approaches to analyze and appreciate the literary works. T.S. Eliot is best known as an influential critic as well as a poet. He made decisive achievement in initiating New Criticism. As for him, the literary theories he advocates is also what he strictly observes in poem production. Eliot sees his literary criticism as a way of improving the appreciation of his own art. He stresses that "criticism is as inevitable as breathing". In The Waste Land, Eliot greatly extends and develops the poetic techniques. He applies his literary theory of "historical sense", "organic unity", "the impersonal theory of poetry" and "objective correlative" in his production of The Waste Land. This thesis is focused on Eliot's literary theory and its appliance in The Waste Land.To start with, this thesis reviews the history of study on Eliot and The Waste Land in brief the introduction to study is given according to different periods in the 20 century. The following parts including part two, three, four, and five serve as a main body, respectively dealing with how Eliot applies his theory of "historical sense", "organic unity", "the impersonal theory of poetry" and "objective correlative" in The Waste Land production. Among them, the "historical sense" part stresses the embodiment of three traditional historical cultures in The Waste Land. The consciousness of aboriginal phallism conceived in The Waste Land is the core of primitive culture; the power of Christianity derives from its ethic and morality; the legend of the immortal bird and the narration of nirvana and incarnation implied in The Waste Land has relation with the oriental religion culture. Besides these, other literary works such as ancient Greek myth and legends, Baudelaire's poetry,works of Dante and Shakespeare are quoted to further demonstrate the profound sense of history in The Waste Land.In the following, the thesis deals with the embodiment of organic unity in The Waste Land. Five major symbolic images (including the Fisher King and Vegetation Gods, abnormal sexual relationship, fire, water and Tiresias) are to be analyzed. In The Waste Land, its abundance in literal allusions and images earned the poem the fame of "chaotic poem". This part tries to illustrate that underneath chaos and disorder, the poem has achieved a unity of imagery and theme. The superficial disorder is intended to be in accordance with the age of chaos, so as to maintain a unity of content and form.As for the embodiment of "the impersonal theory of poetry" in The Waste Land, the thesis starts with Eliot's attitude towards romanticism. Eliot opposes romanticism because of its subjectivity. He puts forward that "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality." The thesis holds that the "escape" means the poet's production should not be provoked by some particular emotion, on the other hand, it must reflect the thinking of the age and the society. This part ;:s a tentative endeavor to explore how Eliot makes use of modernistic art techniques such as montage, modernistic painting and the music technique in The Waste Land to reflect the realistic world.In order to explicate the appliance of "objective correlative" in The Waste Land, series of objective images are also found in the poem. Also the images form a real material and spiritual waste land. It is suggested in this thesis that without the poet's private and personal experience, the purpose of the poet's production are conveyed in the poem and the in-depth and width of The Waste Land are revealed to thereaders. Part 6, as a conclusion, is a summary of the whole thesis.As one of the representative works of modernism, The Waste Land brings great impact to Western poetry. Its abundance in literal allusions and images earns the poem the "fame" of "chaotic poem". Various of experts have made...