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Traversing Boundaries: An Analysis of the Unremitting Psychic Unity in The Waste Land

Author

SRUTHI S., Research Scholar, Centre for Advanced Studies and Research in English Language and Literature, Department of English, Farook College (Autonomous), Calicut, affiliated to Calicut University, Kerala, India

Known as ‘Pope of Russel Square’ in the history of English literature from the 20th century, T. S. Eliot’s, literary ingenuity augmented the modernist writings. ‘The Waste Land’ is one such eventuality that, retrospectively from the publication, permuted worldwide, giving boundless definitions and ceaseless critical appraisals. Contriving the idiom of modern poetry, his career as a part never went over the hill since it was chiselled out of the emotional and intellectual retaliation to a gest which was his life itself. The close-grained, fragmented study of his works, has seemingly been immense and comprehensive. Being portrayed as the literary arbiter, his personal life was lucid and full of drama. The oeuvre hence hollers the zeitgeist of his era. As a philosopher, his happy hunting ground was both religion and the emphasis on conforming to the basic moral values of life. His ethical involvement with life emanates from the underlying desolation and devastation regarding his personal life. When he assiduously carried his position in poetry, politics, and literature, he was tagged as heedless in his personal life. The childhood limitations sprouted out from the complications of inguinal hernia, later when he was at Harvard while studying Sanskrit and Indian philosophy, the commencement of WWI and the escape from Oxford after witnessing a society which was wartorn, a love affair with Emily Hale which closed out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and the hasty entry into wedlock with Vivienne Haigh-Wood whose alleged adultery with Bertrand Russel and her ailment that followed took a toll on his burgeoning literary career. The shuffling was wilfully implemented, as alluded to by many critics. But for a feeler who, exasperated by the atrocities of war, could not necessarily keep the word restrained to the end and the overscrupulous side of Eliot could not have missed the slightest of the change either.

Keywords: Psychic unity, Devastation, Relationships, Faith, Resurrection, Spirituality, Asceticism, Buddhism

References:

Bloom, Harold. The Waste Land. Infobase Publishing, 2009.

Booth, Allyson. Reading the Waste Land from the Bottom Up. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2015.

Baudlaine Charles, ‘Flowers of Evil’ Les Fleurs du mal, Auguste Poulet-Malassis,1857.

Stephen Spender, ‘The Temporal City of Total Conditioning’, Eliot (Great Britain: Fontana Press, 1986) 106.

Drew, Elizabeth, editor. ‘T. S. Eliot’, Major British Writers. Vol. 2, Harcourt Brace, 1954.

Keown, Damien. Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2013.

North, Michael, editor. T S Eliot: The Waste Land. 1st ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Salinger, L.G. ‘T.S. Eliot: Poet and Critic’, The New Pelican Guide to English Literature. Vol. 1, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.

How to Cite

MLA 9th Edition

Sivanandan, Sruthi. “Traversing Boundaries: An Analysis of the Unremitting Psychic Unity in the Waste Land.” BL COLLEGE JOURNAL, vol. 5, no. 2, Dec. 2023, pp. 138–45. https://doi.org/10.62106/blc2023v5i2e14

 

APA 7th Edition

Sivanandan, S. (2023). Traversing Boundaries: An Analysis of the Unremitting Psychic Unity in The Waste Land. BL COLLEGE JOURNAL5(2), 138–145. https://doi.org/10.62106/blc2023v5i2e14

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