The road to Eliot's "The Waste Land" seems to pass through Tennyson's "Camelot." The echoes of the "Lotos Eaters" are audible in the "Four Quartets" and the influence of "Maud" on "Prufrock" seems undeniable both in overall design and in verbal details. Even in his most Eliotic moments of ironic self-mockery "Prufrock" sounds like the narrator in "Maud." Eliot's indebtedness to "Maud" is also evident in "The Waste Land." There is more of Tennyson in Eliot's poetry than mere occasional phrasing. Eliot is strikingly Tennysonian not only in imagery but also in reanimating myth as a vehicle for...
The road to Eliot's "The Waste Land" seems to pass through Tennyson's "Camelot." The echoes of the "Lotos Eaters" are audible in the "Four Quartets" a...