The Waste Land as Satire

[David Simpson]

There is another sense in which The Waste Land qualifies. Among other things
it offers a fair example of "Menippean" satire  (to use a term from Northrop
Frye's ANATOMY OF CRITICISM that would also seem to apply particularly well
to Pynchon's novels.) Named for a Greek poet (whose works are now lost), the
Menippean work, according to Frye, is characterized by multiple styles
(including the mingling of prose and rhyme, polished verse and doggerel),
outrageous or vivid characters, plots laden with theories and ideas,
fragmentary composition, and lavish displays of learning. This seems to me
to be a useful, if inadequate, description of  Eliot's poem (I agree that
The Waste Land simply has too many powerfully emotional and elegiac elements
to be completely reduced to the cartoonlike status of the Menippean mode).
It also seems like a fairly dead-on characterization of V. and Lot 49.

Thomas Eckhardt wrote:

>
>
> I am not convinced, but would be sincerely interested in hearing more
> about this without having to read the works of criticism Terrance
> mentioned - I just don't have the time for that at the moment.
>
>

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