Allusions in Context
From The Waste Land Wiki
(→Looking at Allusions with Gephi) |
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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. | 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. | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
