T.S.Eliot Video

Jesse McBride

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The video discussed Ezra Pound's central role in the production of the "The Waste Land." Taken with Eliot's extensive use of quotation/allusion this suggests a modern view of the author as more a cobbler than a divine creator. Eliot brought a bunch of pieces into relationship with each other, and then Ezra Pound cut it all down into the poem, which Eliot published. But, according to one interviewee on the video, it wasn't until sometime after "The Waste Land" had been published that Eliot came to see it as a coherent whole. Who's the creator here? Does it matter? Also, in regards to this being a course in American Literature: is there anything about "The Waste Land" that makes it American, besides the fact that its author grew up in Missouri? I couldn't help noticing that every person in the video had a British accent and referred to this poem as a great turning point in European literature. The poem itself refers to England in its English and to other parts of Europe in its other languages. Have we just appropriated it because it's famous and Eliot was born on our soil? Is American culture a subset of European?

Abigail Andrews' Response:

I experienced the same dilemma in questioning why we were reading “The Wasteland” in a Modern American Literature course.  Last semester, I took “Modern British Literature,” and we read “Murder in the Cathedral,” one of Eliot’s well-known plays.  I was therefore surprised to see that I would be studying Eliot again.  It appears that both American and British critics wish to claim Eliot as their own.  Although the poem does mention London and other aspects of British life, the techniques which Eliot employs in his work may possibly be characteristics of both American and British modernist movements.  While American culture is not necessarily a subset of European culture, many similarities did exist between the two, especially in the context of literary movements.  Many American modernist writers were influenced by European authors and ideas.  Some even moved to Europe to write in comparative freedom.  Since “The Wasteland” was a turning point in European literature, it would be interesting to study the effects that it may have had on American modernist writers.  That could prove to be the reason for why it is included in a class on Modern American Literature. 

Andrew Heil's Reponse:

Literature and innovation are constantly appropriated from one side of the Atlantic (or world) to the other, and to miss out on "The Wasteland"--- which is apparently the best thing ever written, according to the video--- just because of some doubts about nationality and such would be pretty sad. Sure, Eliot was an expatriate most of his life, but his work influenced American modernism and our conception of what modernism is to such a degree that we need to include him in our studies.