Restoring Order:an Analysis Of The Waste Land From The Perspective Of Myth-Archetypal Criticism

The Waste Land, an important literary work of20th century, exerts lasting influence on the literary circle and society. This poem is unique in respect of the technique of expression and structure. And with the allusion to many literary and religious works of the oriental and occidental areas, the meaning of this poem is too rich to be exhausted. It can be said, to some degree, that The Waste Land is a summary of the civilization of mankind. Consequently, a large amount of criticism has been made on this poem. However, the critics are mostly obsessed with the disillusionment of the poem, neglecting an important theme:restoring order.T. S. Eliot believes that the disillusionment of the west comes mainly from the disrespect for tradition, culture and ethics. Since the industrialism, human beings start to adore materialism and pursue profit through the exploitation of natural resources. Meanwhile, the fear of religious deity and ethics used to be observed by human beings are replaced by the strong belief in Liberalism and the power of mankind, the only possible result of which, as is noted by Eliot, is death and desert. Based on the social criticism of Eliot and the myth-archetypal criticism, this thesis is to analyze the theme of The Waste Land:saving the waste land through restoring order.The Waste Land, with the many allusions to literary and religious works of oriental and occidental areas, is deeply influenced also by an anthropological work—The Golden Bough, making it a perfect case for the application of archetypal criticism. As there are too many archetypes in this poem, this thesis divides them into three groups:archetypes from the natural world, archetypes from the human world and archetypes from the social world. And three different worlds are defined respectively.This thesis is to reveal the ways to restore order proposed in The Waste Land through the three aspects:the natural world, the human world and the social world. There are three parts in this thesis:introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction provides a brief account of T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, literature review and myth-archetypal criticism and a presentation of the research framework and innovation points. The body part consists of three chapters. The first chapter analyzes the author’s proposal for restoring order in the natural world through the analysis of selected archetypes, namely desert, lilacs, water and red rock. The analysis of the archetypes illustrates the barrenness of the wasteland and the potential power to restore order in it. The second chapter reveals the author’s approaches to the construction of order in the human world through the analysis of the archetypes from the legends of Holy Grail. Eliot is attempting to restore the belief in the king of the society and the king of the world through "Fisher King" and "Grail Hero". And the third chapter examines the two pillars for the construction order in the social world—religion and tradition—through the archetype:Tiresias. The conclusion of this thesis is that The Waste Land is Eliot’s proposal and declaration for the restoration of order. Eliot is in attempt to restore the fear of religion and tradition through The Waste Land so as to restore order.