Archival Group

Caitlin worked on the poem’s relationship to the culture of the world at that time. Comparing ''The Waste Land''’s structure to a cubist painting of St. Severin’s cathedral, and making connections between the various fragments of European culture scattered throughout both Eliot’s work and similar works at the time. Reading through the two magazines in which Eliot published ''The Waste Land'', the culture of post-World War I Europe and America made itself clear. The content of ''The Dial'' imported European culture to the United States. Post-WWI Americans were confident and proud; ads for European imports, expensive products, and entire anthologies of literature filled the pages of ''The Dial''. ''The Criterion'', on the other hand, was more focused on literary works condemning the culture that led up to the war. A poem by William Butler Yeats follows Eliot’s Waste Land in the 1922 edition of The Criterion; Yeats’s The Player Queen held similar images of Eastern religion and Christian allusions, much like Eliot’s work. Yeats also makes allusions to works in English culture; the title itself being a reference to Shakespeare’s ''Hamlet''. This eye on the past is evident throughout The Criterion, and emphasizes the feeling of disillusionment with modernity felt after World War I.

Caitlin worked on the poem’s relationship to the culture of the world at that time. Comparing ''The Waste Land''’s structure to a cubist painting of St. Severin’s cathedral, and making connections between the various fragments of European culture scattered throughout both Eliot’s work and similar works at the time. Reading through the two magazines in which Eliot published ''The Waste Land'', the culture of post-World War I Europe and America made itself clear. The content of ''The Dial'' imported European culture to the United States. Post-WWI Americans were confident and proud; ads for European imports, expensive products, and entire anthologies of literature filled the pages of ''The Dial''. ''The Criterion'', on the other hand, was more focused on literary works condemning the culture that led up to the war. A poem by William Butler Yeats follows Eliot’s Waste Land in the 1922 edition of The Criterion; Yeats’s The Player Queen held similar images of Eastern religion and Christian allusions, much like Eliot’s work. Yeats also makes allusions to works in English culture; the title itself being a reference to Shakespeare’s ''Hamlet''. This eye on the past is evident throughout The Criterion, and emphasizes the feeling of disillusionment with modernity felt after World War I.