Reading the More-Than-Human World in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land

Abstract

This article offers an ecocritical reading of The Waste Land, arguing that Eliot’s magnum opus can be read as an ecopoem that anticipates the woes of the Anthropocene, finding evidence for this in the many references to the human-induced environmental degradation and anthropogenic detritus that are scattered throughout the poem. In the aftermath of the Great War, amidst the disintegration of the mind of Europe in an increasingly secularised world, Eliot strives to find solace not only in the spirit, but also in the more-than-human world as represented by mountains, water and birdsong that emulates the sound of dripping water. Yet in Eliot’s conceptualisation, the more-than-human world is tinged with the transcendent and the divine, as his ecologism is deeply ethical and spiritual.