The Waste Land: T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land is widely considered the most important poem written in English in the 20th century.

In an attempt to see it 'whole', Matt Simpson considers this complex work in great detail, bringing to life its many arcane-seeming allusions and trying to link together the many disparate fragments out of which it is made. He interprets it primarily as an elegy, a despairing window on lost friendship, disillusion, the breakdown of communal values and the poet's own health, and consequently as a quest for purpose, meaning and possible redemption in an intimidating world.

About the author:

Matt Simpson is the author of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night in the Student Guide Literary Series.

64  pages

ISBN: 978-1-906075-09-5