The Waste Land (1922) is widely recognized as a central text of modernism and is often described as the most important poem of the twentieth century.

This guide begins with early reviews and discussions from the 1920s and ‘30s, considered alongside Eliot’s own critical essays, showing how he set the critical terms by which his poem has been read. Examining the ways in which the poem became accepted as a literary classic, the guide then looks at New Critical and Formalist readings. The final chapters examine deconstructive readings that challenge The Waste Land ’s assumed cultural power by looking at it in light of Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytical, and cultural materialist reading practices.