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T S Eliots The Waste Land was first published in 1922 , seven years after the last volume of Sir James Frazers The Golden Bough (1890-1915) . Any essay dealing with the question of myth in The Waste Land must necessarily discuss it in relation to The Golden Bough, because much of the mythic symbolism in The Waste Land is derived from this work, and also from Jessie Westons From Ritual to Romance (1920) , which itself was much influenced by Frazers great anthroplogical work. In fact, the title The Waste Land was suggested by Westons book , and the description of the waste land itself seems to derive from descriptions given by Frazer in The Golden Bough .
Myth is used in The Waste Land for two reasons. ... The waste land in which parts of the poem are set is a place where all mythic traditions come together, but are still meaningless.
This leads into the second reason for the use of myth. In an essay on Ulysses by James Joyce, Eliot claimed that myth "is simply a way of controlling, or ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." In The Waste Land, myth is used in this way not only to giving meaning to history, but to human spirituality. In The Waste Land, the protagonist is searching for spiritual meaning (Eliot was many years away from the conversion to Anglo-Catholicism that fulfilled his own spiritual needs ), and myths are used in the poem as specifically spiritual and religious components. ...
Although the underlying myth of The Waste Land, (and those which Eliot himself ascribed the most importance to in his notes to the text ), are those of the Fisher King and Grail quest from Westons book, and the fertility god of The Golden Bough, Eliot does not use only one particular myth or tradition in The Waste Land.
Approximate Word count = 1480
Approximate Pages = 5.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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