Archival Evidence

An important aspect of any literary analysis is the investigation of the context in which the text under consideration was created. In many cases, the context of a work can be extremely helpful to its understanding. This is exactly the case with T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Specifically, looking at the literary magazines The Dial and The Criterion in which the poem was originally published in 1922 offers the modern reader a glimpse into the mind of Eliot and his contemporary audience. This type of knowledge cannot but aid in the analysis of the poem’s content and meaning. An examination of this poem’s context as presented in The Dial and The Criterion yields a few interesting discoveries. Some of these include the relationship between the physical layout of the poem and its meaning, the influence of globalization at the time, and the thematic coherence within many of the works published alongside “The Waste Land.”