The Waste Land: In The Light Of Intertextuality

This thesis studies The Waste Land, the masterpiece of T.S.Eliot, from a perspective of intertextuality. By defining the term "intertextuality" and discussing the primitive form of intertextuality in Eliot's early poetics, this thesis try to break the conventional interpretative criticism in the light of a new theory by concrete text analysis. The thesis is divided in three chapters:Chapter One: Intertextuality: An Undefmite Term. This chapter mainly introduce theorists from Bakhtin to Culler whose opinions about the term are different. After choosing and synthesizing, this chapter point out the "double focus" of this thesis: On the one hand we can borrow the classification of transtextuality according to Genette and study the phenomenal surface of The Waste Land; On the other hand we can discuss the ideology of The Waste Land and its transplantation of other texts. Besides, this chapter also expound and prove the validity of this study by discussing the relationship between Eliot's early poetics and intertextuality.Chapter Two: Transtextuality and Intertextual Techniques of The Waste Land. There are five types of transtextuality: intertextuality(in narrow sense), innertextuality, paratextuality, hypertextuality and architextuality. And also five intertextual techniques: citation, allusion, parody, irony and collage.Chapter Three: The Ideology of The Waste Land and Its Transplantation of Other Texts. Divided in three sections: section one discuss the unstable subject of The Waste Land, a "subject" different from conventional lyrical subject and "the subject-in-process". So the discussion about ideology will be in progress in two aspects: text and "subject"; section two discuss the ideology of the "subject" as an architect of The Waste Land, for example, the idea of orthodoxy, the anti-Semitism and the ideal of Christianity, etc.; section three discuss the ideology of The Waste Land as a text and its transplantation of other texts.