A Study Of Trauma In T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land

This thesis integrates contemporary trauma theory with critical insights concerning language and poetry in T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land,making references to particular contexts of Eliot's own traumatic experiences and the predicament of modernity at large.The thesis firstly analyzes physical and psychological traumatic symptoms rendered in the work in light of trauma theory,and probes into the correlation between the personal life of the poet and the problems of modernity with the traumas delivered in the poem.Through close reading of its peculiar form and rhetorical language,the writer of this thesis purports to illustrate that in Eliot's efforts to deliver trauma,the writing itself is a means to encounter the sufferings of life creatively.The thesis concludes that the poem,for one thing,employs such narrative means as fragmentary and disjointed poetic narration not only to make the writing of the “unspeakable” trauma possible,but to represent the indelible traumatic aftermath.For another,by virtue of metaphorical writing and the space of intertextuality,Eliot constructed a narrative space in which history and life could be hopefully recreated and renewed.Metaphors multiply the poetic meaning by the tension between the language and explanation,rendering the trauma writing possible;through the intertextuality,the past and present could refer to and critique each other,and in the multiplied contexts the signifying process is deferred further,thus to an extent dispelling the traumatic experience.