A Semiotic Key to The Waste Land

Abstract

Abstract This paper applies my expanded version of Michael Riffaterre’s theory of the semiotic structure of modern poetry to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Contrary to Riffaterre, multilingual examples show that modern poetry is built around not one but two central propositions. Moreover, the ability of the modernist work to change the preconceptions of the reader must be accounted for. This involves a triadic system whose interpretant is seen to have a counterpart in the sociolect, which has similar vocabulary but contrasting internal structure – a contrast that produces a change in the mind of the reader. My analysis shows that this long poem is based on just two kernel propositions, which generate two sets of variant images throughout the text. The result is that the poem has the capacity to change the reader’s preconceptions along religious lines. This influential poem has frequently been misunderstood as simply reflecting the depredations of post First World War Europe. From my analysis we can conclude that, while one proposition is concerned with the degraded state of faithless post-war European society, the other constitutes a semiotic key to the rehabilitation of that society.