Mythological Themes in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land

Eliot’s The Waste Land, enjoying mythopoeia as a modern literary-artistic gnre, contains both ancient and modern myths and archetypes. However, the difference of this mythmaking with other works is that the poet, using the ancient and historical mythical themes, has created the modern myths of his age. In other words, he has modernized the archetypes. The mythic themes analyzed in this reseach have been divided into some groups: the ancient myths, historical-literary myths, modern myths, and the apocalyptic or salvation myth. Through merging these mythical themes, the poet could depict a “waste land” that lies on a bed of 20th century history and culture. The motif of the work is in contemporary environmental disastors and the lack of spirituality that made human life tragic and changed the world as a non-exhistable rocky land where as though the livings are dead. The poet opposes with anti-nature deeds depicting modern chaos. Myths and archetypes discussed in the poem are: Cybele, Tiresias, Hyacinthus, Philomela and Cupidon; historical-literary myths of Carthage, Phlebas the Phoenician, Tristan and Isolde; modern myths such as the waste land, rocky land, Madam Sosostris, the Hanged Man; and the Indian eschatological myth.