Reading The waste land: Modernism and the limits of interpretation

by Jewel Spears Brooker

This book offers fresh commentary on T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, a book of modernist poetry published in 1922. It aims to be both a part-by-part analysis of the poem with periodic summations and a meditation on the limits of interpretation and the problematic nature of reading in the late 20th century. Bringing both Eliot's philosophical writings and contemporary theory to their interpretation, the authors aim to demonstrate that in his early essays and poems, Eliot anticipated by over 50 years basic insights of contemporary theory. Using The Waste Land as their reference point, they clarify the manner in which modernist texts both insist upon and defeat interpretation.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Tristan]

I really enjoyed Reading "The Waste Land". This is a close reading of the whole poem that draws heavily on Eliot's philosophical writings and hermeneutical theory to zero in on the patterns of interpretations both in and of the poem that can be seen by looking at the text and the scholarship on it. It rejects Bedient's claim that there is a single narrative consciousness and instead reads the poem as an amalgamation of different speakers and readers, chock-full of conflicting patterns of interpretation that we need to work through ourselves in order to come to an interpretation of the poem and be driven back into the arms of the text itself. By and large, I found Brooker and Bentley's reading to be highly convincing--I don't have the philosophical background to evaluate their discussion of F. H. Bradley and Eliot's writings on, similarities to, and differences from him, but the rest of the reading was very much in line with my English Literature education and allowed me to see the possibilities of reading the poem "straightforwardly" as an assemblage, as mosaic, as working on itself but also without necessarily having a unifying identity.
Well worth reading, highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn more about ways to interpret The Waste Land.

[Satya · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a must book for those who would like to read Eliot at all.