Language as Experience in "Gerontion" and The Waste Land

Abstract

This essay attempts some answers to the question, “How do we read The Waste Land?” It is a poem of many fragments and many voices, but the experiencing consciousness is one, symbolized by the impotent prophet Tiresias. The dramatic method, with its limited viewpoints and fragmented identities, derives from the Victorian dramatic monologue, filtered through the ironies of Jules Laforgue and the innovative versification of the Jacobean playwrights. This way of reading the poem is demonstrated through readings, first, of the monologue “Gerontion,” and then of key passages in The Waste Land itself.