"the waste land":the mythical background.
Eliot wanted to find a literary method which may show the relationship of the present with the past.The problems of the mankind are the same,though spaced by time.The solutions tried in the past and which have proved successful,could be tried in the present because the two types of crisis are not dissimilar.eliot therefore chose the mythical method to establish parallel between the ancient wolrd and the modern world.He had read two important books which threw light on ancient and primitive myths.These two books are Jessie Weston's book From Ritual to Romance,and James Frazer's famous book The Golden Bough.Eliot clarifies the mythical method in his won comment on James Joyce's Ulysses:"I hold this book Ulyssis to be more important expression whioch the present day has found...In using the myth,in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporareity and antiquity,Mr.Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him.They will not be imitators anymorethan the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his won independentinvestigations.It is simply a way of controlling,or ordering,or giving a shape and singnificance to the intense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history....Psychology....Ethology...and The Golden Bough have concurred to make possible what was impossible even a few years ago.Instead of narrative methodwe may now use mythical method.It is,I seriously believe,a step toward making the modern world possible for art,towards....order and form."
The essence of the mythical efford lies in establishing a parallel between the past and the present.The comparison and contrast between the myths of the past and the solutions in the modern world bring out the poet's meaning.Indirectly the poet gives his comment through the myths.
Eliot has used myth as an objective co-relative in The waste Land.An objective co-relative according to Eliot,"is set of objects,situations and a chain...
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