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The Waste Land(1922)
T. S. Eliot
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Purpose of The Waste Land
To convey the souls and civilizations
sense of emptiness, confusion, and
aimlessness after WWI
To provide a means of regeneration for the
soul and civilization
To revitalize poetry
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Objective Correlative
The only way of expressing emotion in the
form of art is by finding the objective
correlative, in other words, a set of objects,
a situation, a chain of events which shall be
the formula of that particular emotion; such
that when the external facts, which must
terminate in sensory experience, are given,the emotion is immediately evoked.
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The Objective Correlative
The waste land is the situation that
signifies human despair and fear of
death
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Premise of The Waste Land
We need to accept that all wars are one war,
all battles are one battle, all journeys one
journey, all rivers one river, all rooms oneroom, all loves one love, and ultimately, all
people one person.
All of the specific examples of these thingsin the poem are in every case representative
of their kind.
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The Meaning of The Waste Land
convey the state of post-war civilization and
the soul through the heap of broken
images
transcend the ego by identifying with the
continuity of significant tradition, of the
inherited wisdom of the human race
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External Sources
Biographical and historical background
The collective vision
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The Waste Land: Biographical and Historical
ContextsModern Aimlessness
T. S. Eliot Post-war society
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Biographical Context
met Ezra Pound, who introduced him to
several modernist poets
married Vivien Haigh-Wood
worked at Lloyds Bank
had a nervous breakdown; recuperated in
Margate and Lausanne, Switzerland
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Historical Context: WWI
had laid the battlefields to waste
had spiritually scarred soldiers and the
population at large
had physically weakened populations,
enabling the Spanish flu to kill over 50
million people
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The Waste Land: Regeneration
Carl Jung
The Golden Bough
From Ritual to RomanceThe Tarot
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Carl Jungs Collective Unconscious
the unconscious inherited wisdom of therace
contains all of the images, archetypes, thathave ever given rise to myths
archetypes, to be of value, must be recreated
in collaboration with the consciousintelligence into a process of orderedgrowth, of transformation
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Jungs Archetypes of
Transformation refers to the integration of the personality
occurs with the detachment from the world
of objective reality as the center of
experience and the finding of a new
dimension in which to live
involves the death of an old pattern of lifeand the birth of a new
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Jungs Archetypes of
Transformation During the process of transformation, certain
archetypical images occur, forming a continuity
and an interaction of symbols expressing thedisintegration and death of the old pattern and the
gradual emergence of the new.
After the transformation, the center of the
personality shifts from the ego to a point ofequilibrium between the individual consciousness
and the collective psyche.
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Jessie L. Weston:From Ritual to
Romance (1920) an attempt to explain the roots of the legend of the
Holy Grail
enumerates the seemingly inexplicable elements ofthe quest--The Fisher King, The Wasteland, theChapel Perilous, and the Grail Cup itself
ties them to the symbols and initiatory rites of the
ancient mystery religions whose common sourcewere the vegetation rituals and fertility rites
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The Legend: The Curse
concerns a land which has been blighted by
a curse so that it is arid and waterless,
rendering it infertile linked with the plight of a ruler, the Fisher
King, who as a result of an illness or a
wound has become sexually impotent
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The Legend: The Curse
removed when a Knight appears who must
ask the question as to the meaning of the
Lance and the Grail the lance which pierced Christs side at the
Crucifixion
The cup from which Christ and the disciplesdrank at the Last Supper
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The Legend: Other Versions of the
Curse removed when Knight asks why this curse
has taken place
removed when the Knight undertakesvarious ordeals, culminating in that of the
Chapel or Cemetery Perilous
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James Frazer: The Golden Bough:
A Study of Magic and Religion
(1890-1915) reads a bit like a novel that touches on
almost anything
explores the roots of mythology, folklore,magic, and religion from the far East, thenear East, Africa, Europe, America andmore
shows the parallels between these andChristianity
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Significance of The Golden Bough
Its thesis is that ancient religions were fertility
cults that centered around the worship of, and
periodic sacrifice of, a sacred king, the incarnationof a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who
underwent a mystic marriage to a goddess of the
earth, and who died at the harvest and who was
reincarnated in the spring. It claimed that this legend was central to almost all
of the world's mythologies.
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Significance
The golden bough is a reference to a mystical tree in aGreco-Roman myth.
In the ancient tale the hero Aeneas consults the prophetess who is
one of the Sybil at Cumae. The Sybil tells Aeneas to break a branch from a certain tree that is
sacred to Juno Inferno.
Then Aeneas is led to the entrance of the Underworld that hedescends.
Aeneas approaches the Stygian lake that Charon will not ferry himacross because he is not dead.
The Sybil who accompanies Aeneas then produces a golden boughthat allows Aeneas entrance into the Underworld.
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The Tarot
Based on similarities of the imagery and
numbering, some associate the Tarot with
ancient Egypt. The pack of cards was used to forecast the
rising and falling of the waters of the Nile.
Cards were used to control the sources oflife.
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The Form of The Waste Land
fragments of human experience of the
present moment
allusions to the significant tradition of thepast
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The Form
The Mythical Method
The Labyrinth
FilmCollage
The Kaleidoscope
Alchemy
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The Mythical Method
The presentation of experience in symbolic
form
The creation of a pattern that brings humanbeings into significant relationship with
mysterious forces outside the actualities of
daily life
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Alchemy
an early protoscientific practice combining elements ofchemistry, physics, astrology, art, semiotics, metallurgy,medicine, and mysticism
most well-known goal was the transmutation of any metalinto either gold or silver
the mythical substance, the Philosophers Stone,believed to be an essential ingredient in this goal
goal of alchemy was really a metaphor for a spiritualtransformation of the self
when reading a book on alchemy, the reader must read"over" the words to figure out the way to followdecoding the secret text to discover its true meaning
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Labyrinths
still being used throughout the world as
meditative and healing tools
suggest going on a pilgrimage to discoversomething about ourselves and God
implies losing ones way and having to start
from the beginning all over again
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Labyrinths
Release of distracting cares as you move toward
the center and let your mind gradually quiet
Receptivity to whatever illumination you receiveas you pause in the center for prayer or meditation
Rejoining the world with your renewed vision or
refreshed spirit as you follow the path outward
again.
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Kaleidoscope
The kaleidoscopeis a tube of mirrors containing loose coloredfragments.
The viewer looks in one end and light enters the other end, reflectingoff the mirrors.
Typically there are two rectangular lengthways mirrors. Setting of themirrors at 45 degrees creates eight duplicate images of the objects, sixat 60 degrees, and four at 90 degrees.
As the tube is rotated, the tumbling of the fragments presents theviewer with varying colors and patterns.
Any arbitrary pattern of objects shows up as a beautiful symmetric
pattern because of the reflections in the mirrors. A two-mirror model yields a pattern or patterns isolated against a solid
black background, while a three-mirror (closed triangle) model yields apattern that fills the entire field.
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Film
made up of images that are spliced (edited)
together to create an emotional reaction
from the viewer can be used to document reality
captures the dynamism and chaos of the
modern age
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Collage
A work composed of bringing together two or
more disparate realities
A new relationship is enacted between lowculture (mass culture) and high culture.
This relationship is felt to be inappropriate,
jarring, or wrongyet interestingly so.
The end result is indecency, paradox, and enigma.
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The Mythical Method
For Eliot, the mythical method was the
means of revitalizing poetry.
According to Eliot, poetry had become in itspresent state too beholden to description,
narrative, discussion, to reflection, to
decoration.
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Meaning: The Mythical Method
For Eliot, the mythical method was the
means of revitalizing poetry.
According to Eliot, poetry had become in itspresent state too beholden to description,
narrative, discussion, to reflection, to
decoration.
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Form: Modern Music and Jazz
imitates the jazz-like syncopation--and, like 1920sjazz, essentially iconoclastic
captures the dissonance and urban rhythms of
modern life parallels The Rite of Springwhich transforms the
rhythm of the steppes into the scream of the motorhorn, the rattle of the machinery, the grind of the
wheels, the beating of iron and steel, the roar ofthe underground railway, and the other barbariccries of modern life; and to transform thesedespairing noises into music