LitSpeare

Wasteland by T.S Eliot One of the main harbingers of the Modernist movement in literature, T.S Eliot’s canonical work The Wasteland is a public outcry against the degenerating and decaying modern life devoid of any real values. The lack of hope, the looming uncertainty of the future, and the inevitability of death occupy the base of the various allusions and references made in the poem. The very title of this poem is rich in references. The title evokes associations with vegetation myths which assert that the sterility of the land is due to the impotence of its ruler. And both can be cured by the questing knight asking the right question at a ritual. Eliot has borrowed much from Jessie L Weston’s book From Ritual to Romance (1920) which speaks about the Grail Legend. The Golden Bough by James Frazor is another work from which Eliot has borrowed. According to Weston, the fisher king was the ruler of the land that was cursed with an evil spell that rendered the king impotent. A questing