Don't forget the note mentioning Frazer and Weston. They were dealing in ritual.


On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 12:45:10 -0700, Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Modes of Ritual in 'The Waste Land'

One of the radical poetic experiments most obvious in the composition of The
Waste Land is to see if the rehearsing of certain rituals imposes patterns
of coherence and order on certain chaotic fragments of a wasteland. It is
well worth taking into account rituals, implicit as well as explicit, that
are discernible in the body of the text. No critical account, I suppose, can
afford to set aside such a consideration in any meaningful appreciation of
the work. Here's a tentative outline. It is remarkable that these rituals
cease to operate in a wasteland, not without, however, making their absence
felt rather painfully through their memory. Their invocation is finally
answered, though, in terms of rain.