View source for Allusions in Context

by Elizabeth Behm

    Understanding the allusions Eliot uses in the poem, and understanding the context in which the poem was originally published,
    are two extremely important parts of reading "The Wasteland."    
    Allusions: See [[Shoring Up Fragments Against Our Ruin: Quotations and Allusions]].    
    Context: See [[Archival Evidence]].

==Introduction==

The allusions within “The Wasteland” get a lot of attention because the poem’s internal structure and content rely so heavily on allusions. Eliot purposely uses them to convey certain messages. But perhaps equally important are the allusions surrounding the poem. By looking at what other pieces of literature (poetry, drama, fiction) that were published simultaneously with “The Wasteland” in two literary magazines of 1922, the intricate web of things available to be referenced in the minds of Eliot’s audience and contemporaries can be better filled out. With this knowledge, “The Wasteland” itself may even make more sense, especially for modern readers cannot already have all the same background information that someone in Eliot’s time would have had. Indeed, modern readers are mostly unaware of popular music from that era, and they must be wholly unfamiliar with the feeling of living in a post-“war to end all wars” society.

Really, the concept of allusion surrounds “The Wasteland” in surprising ways. For example, in The Dial, there is paged entitled “Notes on the Contributors.” The magazine’s publishers find it relevant to allude to the previous work and the outside life of the authors and artists whose work is found in the magazine. The motivation behind including the page is clear: it is to give credibility to their contributors so that readers will take the magazine and its contents seriously. Interestingly, this is similar to what Eliot did in “The Wasteland”: by alluding to previously accepted works of literature, he gives his poem validity; by alluding to familiar issues, he gives his poem relatability. Apparently this is a concern of both author and publisher. perhaps it may even be generalized to all people in the postwar environment, as they asked themselves questions like, Was the war worth it? Is what I do worthwhile? People longs for validation.

Further on the idea of validation, one way to measure the validity of a work would be to become the object of allusion oneself. On some of the pages with advertisements, The Dial includes the following request: “When writing to advertisers please mention the Dial.” When a reader mentions (alludes to) the Dial, the advertiser knows his ad in that publication was profitable (worthwhile), so they renew the advertisement, which shows the magazine that readers are responding to what they’ve published. Both sides make sales: both sides are validated. Allusion has the potential to be a rather powerful force.

==Looking at Allusions with Gephi==

Network graphs are useful for visualizing information that might otherwise be difficult to inter-relate. Graphing the allusions found in “The Wasteland” and the other contemporary works of literature from the magazines it was published in with a program like Gephi (http://gephi.org/) can show upfront which types of allusions are used the most in which pieces—something that would take a lot of tedious work to deduce by hand. This information can be used as a starting point for analysis.

As with any data-displaying system, subjective decisions have to be made about how to categorize the data and what counts as relevant information at all. I have decided for simplicity’s sake to consider only one degree of allusion in the graphs. For example, when a certain piece of literature is alluded to, its author is also indirectly implied, but I have chosen to include only the name of the literary work itself.

In the networks included on this page, the points on the graph, or nodes, are organized based on the “thing referred to.” For example, in The Player Queen by W.B. Yeats, found in The Dial, one character mentions that “my saviour was content with a stable,” which alludes to the birth of Jesus, so the allusion appears as a node called “Nativity.” From the alluded-to nodes come a variety of lines, or edges, that connect them to nodes with information about their Location (what piece from the magazine they come from, or what section of “The Wasteland” they come from), their Source (Dial, Criterion, or “Wasteland”), and what type of allusion it is (place, religion, literature, etc.). By moving the nodes around to see where their connecting edges are pulled, patterns start to emerge.

Network A: Allusions in “The Wasteland”

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8199/8253245079_a0bd655032_c.jpg

Let’s begin by looking at “The Wasteland” by itself. Network A is a network of the allusions from the poem (See [Shoring Up Fragments]), with the allusions nodes clustered in the middle, the sections of the poem along the bottom, and the types of allusions at the top. Clearly, some types of allusions are far less frequent in the poem than others. For instance, Jews and Gentiles are the only allusions associated with the category “group” [of people]. However, there are clearly a lot more references in the poem to places, religion, and literature. Place includes landmarks, cities, and countries; religion includes references to Christianity, Greek mythology, Buddhism, and mysticism; literature includes poetry and prose from contemporary authors and some from the past. Apparently, these are the traditions that Eliot most heavily relies on to aid his readers in the understanding of his poem.

Identifying these patterns opens up new questions about the nature of the allusions that may never have been asked without visualizing the information in this way. For example, knowing that there are so many subtypes of religious allusions, it might be helpful to picture what that distribution might look like.

Network B: Religion in “The Wasteland”