An Analysis of the Polyphony of the Waste Land from Bakhtin's

Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to a number of people who have given me valuable advice and encouragement in writing this thesis. Without their help, this thesis would have never come into being. I must, first of all, express my thanks in particular to my tutor Professor LinYupeng whose help plays a decisive role in my choosing this topic. His suggestive and constructive views on multi-voice in The Waste Land offer me much help and are indispensable to the completion of this thesis. 1am also grateful to my teacher Professor Han Jianghong，who has constantly been a source of encouragement and useful advices. And thanks also go to Professor Hu Zuoyou, Professor Ren Jingsheng, Associate Professor Tang Jun and Professor Zhao Sumei who have greatly benefited my intellectual growth through their kind suggestions. My special thanks also go to Prof. Wang Dongfeng, dean of the School of Foreign Studies in Zhongshan University. After listening to his lecture, I began to take interest in the life and theories of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin. Besides, the heartfelt thanks are given to my dear sister, Mao Junlin, who helped me find documents in national library of China and send these papers to me by air from Beijing. I also own a debt of gratitude to my parents for their love and support. 复义之声颠覆之音—巴赫金复调理论读《荒原》摘要《荒原》是托·斯·艾略特的代表作，该诗彻底打破了以往的文学传统。“复调”思想是巴赫金理论体系中最重要的思想之一。本文透过巴赫金的复调思想这个独特的视角解读《荒原》，发现在《荒原》一诗隐含了众多的声音。如在第一章《四月的葬礼》中隐含了神谕的声音和世俗的声音；过去的声音，现在的声音和未来的声音；人物的声音作者的声音。在第二章《对弈》中隐含了神话的声音和现实的声音，男性的声音和女性的声音；神圣不可侵犯的声音和亵渎的声音。在第三章《火诫》中隐含了严肃的和讽刺的声音，长者的声音和幼者的声音；佛教的观点和基督教的教义。在第五章《雷霆的话》中隐含了社会的声音和宗教的声音，以及 DA 这个词体现的多声部的复调特点。《荒原》一诗中多元的声音蕴含着颠覆权威的力量，有助于重建疲惫无力的战后社会。隐含在《荒原》中众多平民阶层的声音旨在颠覆疲惫无力的官方话语。通过巴赫金复调理论对艾略特《荒原》一诗的解读不难发现，诗歌字里行间里隐含着众多声音。《荒原》里的所有声音都是平等的，它们从占统治地位的权威声音中脱离出来，自由的发表各自的看法，体现出《荒原》中蕴含的民主思想。本文共分为六章，第一章介绍艾略特的生平、艾略特最有影响力的著作《荒原》以及《荒原》一诗的社会背景。第二章总结了东西方文学批评界对艾略特《荒原》一诗的研究评论。第三章的理论框架简单阐释了巴赫金的复调思想。第四章是文章的主体，就《荒原》每一章的复调特色逐一解析。第五章阐述了在巴赫金复调理论的视角下，《荒原》一诗显现出的社会价值。第六章得出结论：《荒原》中复义的声音中蕴含着颠覆的力量有助于实现明主理想，重建人类文明。关键词：复调，《荒原》，复义，颠覆的声音 Voices of Plurality and Subversion – An Analysis of the Polyphony of The Waste Land from Bakhtin’s Theory ABSTRACT The poem The Waste Land is the masterpiece of T.S Eliot, which totally breaks up with the previous literary trend. This paper aims to analyze Eliot’s famous poem The Waste Land by applying Bakhtin’s polyphony theory, which is one of the most important theories in Baktin’s theory system. It is discovered that there exist polyphonic features in almost every part of The Waste Land . For instance, there are oracular voices and individual voices; past，present and future voices, character’s voices and the poet’s voices in “The Burial of the Dead”; there are mythic voices and realistic voice, feminine voices and masculine voices and inviolable voices and profaned voice in “A Game of Chess”; there are serious and ironical voices, aged voices and youthful voices ,the Buddhism and Christianity voices in “The Fire Sermon”; and there are social voice and religion voice and the polyphony of the thunder’s word “DA” in “What the Thunder Said”. By analyzing The Waste Land from Bakhin’s polyphonic theory, the hidden voices between the lines are released from the dominate power, each voice is equal and is free to express their own viewpoint which adds to the democratic feature of The Waste Land. The plural voices own the subversive power, which aims to rebuild the restless and futile society. The voices of common people from every social status are heard; therefore the subversive plural voices are with the purpose of fighting against the disabled official voices. This thesis is divided into 6 chapters. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the life of T.S Eliot together with his most influential work The Waste Land and the social background information of The Waste Land. Chapter 2 is a summary of the critical reviews both from western critical circle and from Chinese scholars who have done industrial study of The Waste Land. Chapter3 is the theoretical framework, which is a general introduction to Bakhtin and the polyphonic theory. Chapter4 is the main part of the thesis. It discusses the polyphonic feature of The Waste Land in each episode and the social value of The Waste Land in Chapter5. Finally, Chapter 6 is a conclusion that the voices of plurality own the subversive power, which is useful for us to realize the democratic social ideality and to restore the glory of human civilization. Keywords：polyphony, The Waste Land, plurality, subversive voice Table of Contents Chapter1 Introduction...………………………………………………………..........1 1.1 Introduction of T.S Eliot and his The Waste Land………………………………1 1.1.1 Introduction of T.S Eliot……………………………………………….1 1.1.2 Introduction of The Waste Land……………………………………………..2 1.2 Social Background of The Waste Land……………………………………………2 Chapter2 Literary Review…………………………………………………………4 Chapter3.Theoretical Framework……………………………………………….. 9 3.1 Bakhtin………………………………………………………………………..9 3.2 Polyphony Theory……………….…………………………………………..9 Chapter4 Polyphony in The Waste Land……………… ……………………………….11 4.1 Polyphony in the epigraph……………………………………………………...11 4.2 Polyphony in “The Burial of the Dead”………….…………………………….12 4.2.1 Past voice, present voice and future voice...……………………………12 4.2.2 Character’s voice and the poet’s voice …………………………………13 4.2.3 Oracular voices and individual voices ………………………………….15 4.3 Polyphony in “A Game of Chess”…………………...………………………….16 4.3.1 Mythic voice and realistic voice…………………………………………...16 4.3.2 Feminine voices and masculine voices…………………...........……..17 4.3.3 Inviolable voice and profaned voice…..……………………………...19 4.4 Polyphony in “The Fire Sermon”……………….………………..….………….20 4.4.1 Serious voice and ironical voice…………………………………………20 4.4.2 Aged voices and youthful voices…..…….………………………….….…22 4.4.3 Buddhism and Christianity…………………………………………..……25 4.5 Polyphony in “What the Thunder Said”…………..…………………………….27 4.5.1 Religion and society…………………………………………………….…27 4.5.2 Polyphonic “DA” in fable of Upanishad…………………………….…….28 4.5.3 Polyphonic “DA” in The Waste Land………………………………………….29 Chapter5 Social significance of polyphony in The Waste Land ……………...…..32 5.1Similar social reason of emergence of polyphony and Eliot’s The Waste Land ……………………………………………………………………………………33 5.2 Social value of polyphony theory applied in The Waste Land ………………..33 Conclusion……..………………..………..……………………………………..…36 Work Cited…………………………………………………………………………..37 Appendix I 攻读研究生期间发表的论文..............................................................41 . Chapter One INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction of T.S Eliot and his The Waste Land 1.1.1 Introduction of T.S Eliot Thomas Stern Eliot, poet, dramatist, and critic, was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A, 1888. He studied at Harvard, where he was influenced by the New Humanist scholar and critic, Irving Babbitt, from whom he derived an attitude of opposition to 19th century Romanticism. Then he went to Europe and studied at Oxford and the Sorbonne in Paris, where he made himself familiar with the symbolist poets. During his studies, he mastered French, Italian, and English literatures, as well as ancient India philosophy and literature. He was probably the most erudite poet of his time. After settling in England, he first worked as a school teacher, then as a bank clerk. Meanwhile, he was also associated with Yeats and Ezra Pound, who encouraged him to write poetry. Eliot’s first important long poem The Love of J. Alfred Prufrock was published in 1917. His best known poem of The Waste Land was published in 1922.He founded and edited The Criterion, an influential literary review, then became, in 1925, the director of London publishing house, Faber & Faber Ltd. In 1927, he became a British subject and joined the Church of England. He declared that he was “classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion” (Liu, 2004:484) . As a dramatist, he wrote seven plays. He made experiments in reviving verse drama which had flourished in Shakespeare’s time. Between 1935 and 1941, he published 4 long poems, Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, which were collected and republished as Four Quartets in 1943. Eliot was also a very influential and important critic. His essay Tradition and the Individual Talent appeared in his first volume of critical essays, and his The Sacred Wood was a manifesto of modernist poetry. In 1948 he was awarded the Nobel Prize of 1 Literature. 1.1.2 Introduction of The Waste Land The Waste Land is a poem of 433 lines, mainly free verse with occasional snatches of rhyme and with many quoted lines, references and allusions. Published in 1922 and regarded as a land mark of English poetry, it ended Romantic period and signified the emergence of Modernism. The Waste Land is divided into 5 parts: “The Burial of the Dead”, “A Game of Chess”, “The Fire Sermon”, “Death by the Water” and “What the Thunder Said.” As The Waste Land is difficult to understand by readers and critics, Eliot himself added many explanatory notes to it. The poem was dedicated to Ezra Pound. In January 1922, in Paris on the way back from Switzerland to London, Eliot showed Pound the manuscript of a chaotic poem of about a thousand lines, which was the original size of The Waste Land. Then Pound helped him to reduce it to the present 433 lines. The poem was first published in the UK, without the author's notes, in the first issue of The Criterion, a literary magazine started and edited by Eliot. The first appearance of the poem in the US was in the November 1922 issue of The Dial magazine. 1.2 Social background of The Waste Land The social context of The Waste Land was the First World War and its aftermath. The immediate postwar situation in Britain and Europe added to the sense of collapse and chaos. The disorder in Europe was particularly upsetting. In England, unstable governments and uncertain policies had lead to rising unemployment and general sense of drift when decisive leadership was needed.

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