Multimedia
From The Waste Land Wiki
| Line 13: | Line 13: | ||
Elsewhere in the vast expanse of ''The Waste Land'' and its web, works like [http://visualandcriticalstudies.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/t-s-eliots-the-waste-land-an-infographic-by-berny-tan/ A Visual Guide to References in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land], by Berny Tan of the School of Visual Arts, begin to offer a broader overview of the poem in such a way as can be taken like a fragment--in a single glance. This enormous map lists out a number of different categories of references used in the poem, colour codes them, and proceeds to mark them all out in a series of coloured lines that resembles more closely a DNA assay than a piece of literature. Quantitative data on a traditionally qualitative, literary work, this guide breaks boundaries and serves as a key, a Rosetta stone, to the everyday reader. Here, the focus is ''not'' on the interpretation--the authors use the work not to tell the reader what to read, but ''how'' to read it for himself. | Elsewhere in the vast expanse of ''The Waste Land'' and its web, works like [http://visualandcriticalstudies.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/t-s-eliots-the-waste-land-an-infographic-by-berny-tan/ A Visual Guide to References in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land], by Berny Tan of the School of Visual Arts, begin to offer a broader overview of the poem in such a way as can be taken like a fragment--in a single glance. This enormous map lists out a number of different categories of references used in the poem, colour codes them, and proceeds to mark them all out in a series of coloured lines that resembles more closely a DNA assay than a piece of literature. Quantitative data on a traditionally qualitative, literary work, this guide breaks boundaries and serves as a key, a Rosetta stone, to the everyday reader. Here, the focus is ''not'' on the interpretation--the authors use the work not to tell the reader what to read, but ''how'' to read it for himself. | ||
| + | Along with the derivative works and spinoffs that comprise the more recent layers of the palimpsest, the option remains to explore such forms of media as played a major or minor role in the inspiration and influences of ''The Waste Land'', to study alternative media archives of Eliot's time, and to pull these older layers into play. Some have been mostly lost--scraped off by the years and lost between archives. Others, however, have survived long enough to be digitized and made available for casual or serious study. | ||
| + | |||
| + | <blockquote><videoflash>TpXlPlRqFPA</videoflash></blockquote> | ||
| + | "That Shakespearean Rag," from which are taken the lines "O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag - / It's so elegant / So intelligent," for example, has proven thus far impossible to find. References are made in other works to the actual song, suggesting its existence at some point in time, but the nearest actual recording that can be found is "That Mysterious Rag" by Irving Berlin and Ted Snyder--supposedly the song off of which "that Shakespeherian Rag" was based. While we may not be able to verify the actual tune, we can certainly access something of the feel, the abandon, the frivolous contrast to the sterility and bleakness of the poem's landscape. Such recordings provide some insight into the scene in which the lines appear, especially when paired with the dramatic readings of Fiona Shaw, whose brilliant performance of "My nerves are bad tonight" brings to life the tension between the cheerily domestic housewife and her traumatized, war-veteran partner. | ||
| + | |||
| + | <blockquote><videoflash>9OK31j2Lcsc</videoflash></blockquote> | ||
==Images== | ==Images== | ||
