Reading the Wreckage: De-Encrypting Eliot's Aesthetics of Empire

Authors

Paul Douglass, San Jose State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-1-1997

Publication Title

Twentieth Century Literature

Volume

43

Issue Number

1

First Page

1

Last Page

26

Abstract

The writer examines an aesthetics of empire evident in Eliot's The Waste Land. He contends that though this work's formal innovations appear “revolutionary,” its aesthetics fit into modernism's reactionary character and reflect the cultural politics of the British conservatism that Eliot had adopted. In decoding the poem's fragments and allusions, he illustrates Eliot's preoccupation with empire. He also shows how The Waste Land may be seen as part of a British literary tradition of “reading the wreckage” that goes back at least to Edward Volney's Ruins (1791).

Comments

Copyright © 1997 Hofsta University

Recommended Citation

Paul Douglass. "Reading the Wreckage: De-Encrypting Eliot's Aesthetics of Empire" Twentieth Century Literature (1997): 1-26. https://doi.org/10.2307/441860