The Flowers Of Evil:the Transforming Power Of Urban Life In The Waste Land

The Waste Land exerts much impact on the modernist poetry not only from the ways it represents the modern civilization and modern values, but also from the ways it conveys the urban poetics which is different from that of romanticism. The Waste Land is undoubtedly a poem about the city of London as well as some other European cities. Since its publication, many scholars have focused their criticism on the dark side of urban life that Eliot portrays in The Waste Land and agreed that the poem depicts a decadent, fragmented London after World War I where the modern people lead a meaningless life and much more attention has been paid to the urban evils in the field of literary studies. In the present thesis, inspired by Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life, I will explore the hidden transforming power of urban life revealed in The Waste Land from the perspectives of flaneur, anders-streben and ekphrasis, attempting to break away from the conventional interpretations of the urban writing. Eliot’s inter-art poetics applied in The Waste Land endows the ordinary urban life with the transforming power of diversity and unique aesthetic features, and enables its readers to see through the essence of the urban everyday life which is in the disguise of a degenerated, sordid wasteland.The thesis begins with a concise introduction to The Waste Land, the literature review at home and abroad and the research purpose and significance. In my first chapter, I explicate the foundation of T. S. Eliot’s urban writing, reflecting on Eliot’s urban experiences which provide a rich source of inspiration and materials for his urban poetry and a foundation for his inter-art poetics, followed by a discussion of the influence of Charles Baudelaire on Eliot, in a new way of illuminating the city life with modern artistic techniques. The following chapters are an in-depth study of The Waste Land, exploring how T. S. Eliot realizes his aesthetic turn of the modernist urban poetry through the perspectives of the flaneur, anders-streben and ekphrasis:the second chapter concerns the image of the flaneur who is both an outsider observing the urban landscapes and urban life, and an insider pursuing subjectivity in the city and constructing his or her own imaginary city; the third chapter is a study of Eliot’s employment of anders-streben which brings a variety of sensory and aesthetic experience to its readers; the fourth chapter culminates with the analysis of ekphrasis by bringing Wagner’s opera, ragtime music, da Vinci and Brueghel the Elder’s paintings into The Waste Land. The final part is the conclusion which sums up the main arguments of the thesis and analyzes the internal relationships among the three poetic techniques in The Waste Land, thus shedding light on the significance of this study.