Reading
Read T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” We have linked to a hypertext edition of the text that comes with notes.
Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land. W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. ISBN: 9780393974997.
Group Project and Essay
The assignment for each group will be to take one assigned section of the poem, identify some passages that seem of particular interest or importance, and prepare to lead a discussion centered on those passages for 20–30 minutes of next class. We will look together at the last two sections of the poem and each group should be prepared to make an argument (claims backed up by evidence, perhaps related to the sections you worked on) about how these concluding sections should be understood.
Begin by reading the whole poem, preferably without stopping to look anything up, maybe even out loud—just hear it. If anything strikes you, highlight it as something to come back to. Look up the things you need to look up or check on the second or third reading. (And notice that some of the footnotes in the annotated version will be Eliot’s own.)
I would suggest that each group member pick a passage that interests you (say, 10–20 lines, more if you want, but not much more). Share with your group, comment on each other’s passages—questions, thoughts, votes—and try to converge around the passages you would like to bring into class. Whatever your process, you should memorize at least five lines from your section of the poem.
Come into class prepared to talk about your ideas, raise questions, and lead a discussion. Use (or don’t use!) any kinds of presentation tools you think will be helpful, but that shouldn’t be the point of the exercise. This is your time, and your chance at working together with the tools we’ve developed and your own analytic skills on a famously difficult and memorable and compelling poem. It’s not necessary to explain or claim to understand everything about “The Waste Land.” Sometimes simply describing an opaque passage can prove very helpful; ditto asking the kinds of questions about syntax, lexical levels, sound, rhythm, and other irregularities and irregularities that we’ve been talking about over the last few weeks. These are areas where I’m very confident you can come up with some truly interesting and original insights; the same is not true for the poets’ biography or historical context. (Sorry, but that kind of work has its own challenges and it’s not what we’re setting up to do at this moment).
Finally, keep your notes as the basis for a five page essay to be worked up in the future (and after an expansion and revision of one of your three short papers).
Report on “The Waste Land”
This paper should have two parts (which don’t have to be rhetorically unified—just draw a line!): 1–1.5 pp. report of process of your presentations (how your group approached working on the poem, what you yourself did and tried to do with the poem, anything you might do differently); 3.5–5 pp. on your findings. (The essay as a whole should be roughly 5 pages or 1300–1700 words).
The second part of the paper should look more like the revision you just completed than like the short reports. How does your section of the poem work (give an overview), and what kinds of conclusions can you how reach about it? With those insights in hand, what kinds of larger observations, questions, or arguments are you led to about the poem more broadly? It’s appropriate to register your level of certainty or uncertainty about any conclusions; and as always, to credit others in your group or the class (etc.) whose ideas helped advance your thinking, as well as to footnote outside sources.
General quality control: when you are writing about a piece of literature, imagine that what you writing should make sense to someone who has also read the poem but does not have the text in front of them. So you will need to quote text that you want the reader to think about or notice things about, and you should also give enough context that the reader can place the quotation—both locally (what’s happening, who’s speaking, etc.) and more generally (where are we in the section—early, late, in a long para, a single line fragment—etc.). Best practice is usually to quote a phrase rather than isolated words (esp. words of different kinds), and make sure the grammar of that phrase is clear.
Example:
Here I’m quoting an entire line, but in a way that’s unclear and confusing because the syntax is incomplete—and context is missing:
“In section 1, it says ‘My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled.’”
This would be better:
“Early in section 1, a cosmopolitan aristocrat named ‘Marie’ recalls a visit to ’the archduke’s, my cousin’s’ house, when ‘he took me out on a sled, and I was frightened.’”
I’m adding in the next line, about her reaction, because it begins to suggest the emotional tone of the memory and thus why it is significant to the character and thus the poem.
