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Article: Eliot, Frazer, and the myhtology of modernism. (influence of anthropologist James Frazer on poet T.S. Eliot)
- Article from:
- The Southern Review
- Article date:
- January 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Louisiana State University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Back in the '50s, T. S. Eliot took the wind out of Eliot studies by describing his notes to The Waste Land as "a remarkable exposition of bogus scholarship." When Valerie Eliot published the original drafts of the poem in 1971, critics were quick to point out that the manuscripts could not support the claim in the notes that The Golden Bough and From Ritual to Romance were central to the work. Where, for instance, was the Grail legend in the original "Death by Water," in which a dead New England sailor (head full of Dante, Coleridge, and Tennyson) recounts colliding with an iceberg? Since the '70s, the critical tendency has been to see Eliot's invocation of James Frazer and ...