Abstract for Dante’s Impact on TS Eliot
By Sophie Sajnani
The gloomy state depicted in The Waste Land
Dante’s work influenced a generation of 20th century Modern English writers, particularly TS Eliot and his poem The Waste Land. Eliot was drawn to Dante’s work at a young age and outwardly shared his appreciation for Dante in his public speeches and allusions to The Divine Comedy in his poems. Just like Dante wrote The Divine Comedy after being exiled, Eliot wrote The Waste Land after experiencing mental health struggles and emotionally dealing with the aftermath of World War 1. With both authors harboring from similar past experiences and political turmoil, there are many parallels between their poems - some direct and others more subtle.
My paper aims to explore such parallels. As stated in a book by Yale literature professor Pericles Lewis, scholars “have identified allusions in the first section of [The Waste Land] to: the Book of Common Prayer, Geoffrey Chaucer… Dante - [with] about one allusion every two lines” (129). For example, in the beginning of The Waste Land, Eliot depicts a gloomy London inhabited by dead souls, inspired by Dante’s opening setting of a dark forest. The narrator then goes on to recognize and talk with one of the souls, similar to Dante’s many encounters in the Inferno. Other parallels discussed relate to the symbolism, language, and characters.
To conclude, Dante has heavily impacted Eliot, and there are many references to The Divine Comedy in The Waste Land. However, Dante’s influence on Modern English writers does not stop with Eliot; The Waste Land went on to inspire others from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemmingway: “When writers found in The Waste Land what they considered to be a most graphic picture of their own materialistic society, when they found what they felt was an honest, lucid, and bitter comment on the loss of ultimate values, they made of the poem a stepping stone in their own expression of post-World War 1 disillusionment” (Elliot 2). With Dante as his inspiration, Eliot was able to put his emotions into writing - emotions that were shared amongst other writers and that inspired their future works. Through Eliot, Dante subconsciously influenced many, proving that past works serve as inspiration for their contemporary counterparts.
Works Cited
Castellano, Daniele. The Waste Land illustration. 2022. The Atlantic, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/ts-eliot-the-waste-land-poem-anniversary/672231/.
Elliot, Ruth. Echoes of Eliot's The waste land in three modern American novels. University of the Pacific, 1966, scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2620&context=uop_etds. Thesis.
Lewis, Pericles. The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Yale Campus Press, campuspress.yale.edu/modernismlab/the-waste-land/.