Of Wastelands and Ecopoetics: An Ecocritical Reading of T. S. Eliot’s Poetry.

Abstract

This article is an ecocritical study of three of T. S. Eliot’s most notable works: “The Waste Land”, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, and “The Hollow Men”. The poems are analyzed in detail and in relation with one another to highlight Eliot’s understanding of man’s relationship with nature through an elemental, ecomythical, and ecoreligious study. The article pursues a pattern in Eliot’s writing of a Man-Nature relationship as it focuses on the ways in which nature interacts with and influences man’s life, emotions, and faith.