Browsing by Author "Aurangzeb"

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    A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF T.S.ELIOT'S THE WASTE LAND
    (Departmentof English & Applied Linguistics, University of Peshawar, 2002) Aurangzeb; Supervisor Dr Mujeeb Rahman
    The poem, The Waste Land has been chosen as the sole object of analysis for the present work for a number of reasons; the foremost being its obscurity. Immediately after its publication, a number of literary critics alleged that it was mere a fusion of five disproportionate poems, lacking coherence and thematic unity — a broken bundle of images. The multiplicity of myths makes it a cultural ramble rather than a well-organised poem. I, however, contend that a great piece of literature by a poet of Eliot’s stature, and with such an ambitious claim for the poem, cannot be mere a conglomeration of references and allusions without any coherent pattern or unity. The poet himself claims that The Waste Land is an epic in miniature, not dealing with a generation, but with modern humanity. The poem undoubtedly abounds in literary, mythological, anthropological and religious allusions, demonstrating the poet’s erudition. Despite its being one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century, no concerted effort has been made so far to highlight the coherence of the poem. I maintain that every great piece of literature qualifies the test of time and that The Waste Land seems no exception to this rule. Therefore, through this work, an effort has been made to spotlight the coherent pattern of the poem both aesthetically and linguistically. Being intellectually challenging and packed with a great deal of cross-cultural allusions and references, the poem cannot be holistically appreciated through a simple, syntactic analysis. Therefore, a broad-based eclectic approach has been adopted to cater to the needs of the multi-dimensional nature of the poem at various levels. First, the individual parts of the poem are analysed and their coherence established with their respective titles. Then all the five parts are evaluated in the light of the main title of the poem, and the trans-sectional unity established through lexical items having the highest frequency occurrence. Finally, a broad-based coherence is established through a tripartite relationship of the aesthetic, lexical I (sectional) and lexical II (inter-sectional) levels. Our findings reveal that the poem’s cohesive pattern may appear allusive at syntactic level, but it has a coherent pattern both at the micro and macro levels. And like a gigantic symphony, each small piece, seemingly a discord contributes to the broader harmony of the poem.