The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot
Assigned by 2 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1922
- Form
- Lyric poetry
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 25 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Formidable5 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendThe Waste Land and Other PoemsFaber and Faber, 2002Prints the poem with Eliot's own notes; Lawrence Rainey's annotated edition is the one to use if you want the allusions tracked line by line.
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A poem of about four hundred and thirty lines in five parts, cut to its present shape with Ezra Pound's help. Fragments of speech, quotation and scene follow one another without connecting narrative: a woman remembering a sled ride in the mountains, a fortune teller's cards, crowds flowing over London Bridge, a nervous conversation in a rich room, a pub monologue about false teeth, a typist and a clerk, the burning of Carthage and the Buddha's fire sermon, drowned Phlebas the Phoenician, and a waterless journey to a chapel. Eliot's notes point to the Grail legend, Dante, Shakespeare and the Upanishads.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns The Waste Land are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
