The Wasteland of T.S.Eliot【艾略特长诗《荒原》的主旨+背景+框架+内容的概括分析】(全英文).pdfVIP

Dr. Richard Clarke LITS3001 Notes 11 1 T.S. ELIOT : THE WASTELAND This poem was written for the most part while in a sanatorium in Lausanne in Switzerland recovering from nervous ex haustion (not the least cause of which was his marriage to Viv ). A rev olutionary poem both stylistically- and thematically-speaking, Pound described it as the ‘j ustification of our modern experiment, since 1900’. Although this is a difficult poem to sum up (the vastness of its scope has made some critics describe it as the epic of the Twentieth century and even Eliot conceptualised it as a collection of separate poems rather than one whole poem), there are a number of technical and thematic features which are worth noting. Formal Strategies: Heteroglossia / Montage: multiple voices succeed each other with alarming and bewildering rapidity. There is, notwithstanding a bizarre footnote crediting the figure of Tiresias with more importance in this respect than he has, no single, central speaker who unifies the m ultiplicity of perspectives offered in the poem. This is not a single dramatic monologue. Rather, many different chunks of the text (there are no clear demarcations) seem to be snatches (mini-monologues) uttered by different, individually recognisable personalities. At other times, there are passages seemingly uttered by oracular voices possessed of an almost v isionary, prophetic, even Biblical quality (e.g. in the f irst and f inal sections). At other points, the voice is almost incantatory: e.g. the beginning where a speaker or perhaps a chorus of voices seems to lament the return of life in springtime. The Absence of a Traditional Narrative Development: no plot, no consistent flow of thought (logical or associational) to assist the reader in making sense of the poe