It is true that when a reader approaches a text, their primary and most important tools of interpretation are the words on the page, an idea which lends itself well to the impression that the author is therefore irrelevant in the relationship between reader and text (Barthes, 1977); Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author argument is indeed a convincing one. To apply this principle to Modernist literature, however, is to undermine the form’s metatextual significance. In T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, for example, a hyper awareness of the author is part of what defines the artistic movement as distinct from its predecessors. The text works not just as a poem, but a commentary on poetry, vividly aware of the author’s role as the conductor of the piece. The Waste Land depends on Eliot’s presence—not as a singular storyteller but as an orchestrator of meaning; even in its fragmentation, the poem reinforces the author’s role as a curator of cultural memory. The Modernist literary movement seems deeply concerned with though suspicious of, the role of the author; in a time of social upheaval and moral uncertainty, writers purposefully fractured the established tools of artistic expression, finding them no longer suited to express unique modern concerns. Indeed, as Woolf argues, ‘For us, those conventions are ruin, those tools are death.’ (1924, p. 16) The Waste Land, acutely self-aware, rather than dissolving the author, ultimately reaffirms his presence as an architect of literary tradition.
The matter of external artistic influences and inspiration, present in all texts, is paradoxically damning evidence both for and against an author’s authority over their work. Perhaps, as Barthes argues, there is no such thing as an original text; all authors use the same basic materials of letters and words, thus amassing a multi-dimensional culmination of many unoriginal writings or ideas into ‘a tissue of quotations’ (Barthes, 1966, p. 146). Yet this argument does not deny the importance of the author as a curator of language and history. This is particularly evident in Eliot’s The Waste Land, not only through the rich cultural allusions woven throughout, but also the persistent footnotes; by guiding his readers so purposefully, by ensuring the allusions are not missed, Eliot asserts that his intended framework matters. Though Barthes’ argument of the reader’s unique power to revive meaning from words (Barthes, 1977) may stand in most texts, Eliot’s controlled use of allusion directs the reader towards a specific intellectual and emotional experience. The instructional tone of the footnotes severs the sense of intimacy that (for example) the Romantics sought to foster with their readers, but also assigns Eliot the role of the trustworthy teacher, guiding his readers. The footnotes are peppered with authorial interjections – ‘The Hanged Man [a tarot card] fits my purpose… because he is associated in my mind with…’ (footnote on line 46) – giving the text a self-referential quality in which Eliot demands recognition. F.O. Matthiessen claims that Eliot’s oversight of these allusions is unnecessary, as “if one reads these lines with an attentive ear … the contrast between the actual Thames and the idealized vision of it is sharply conveyed … whether or not one recognizes the refrain to be from Spenser.”(Matthiessen, 1958, p. 47) But what this argument fails to understand is that the references also function independently to their meaning; to some extent, what the quotation says is less significant than the fact that it is a quotation. In most cases, Eliot gives no explanation in his citations (eg. ‘176. V. Spenser, Prothalamion’, or ‘411. Cf. Inferno, XXXIII, 46:’), as the poem does not function as a self-contained composition, but instead as demonstrative evidence of the existence of a literary canon (with references to Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, etc.). This is reflective of the uncertainty that prevailed in the wake of the Great War which shattered beliefs in the unwavering durability of Western civilization. On one hand, Eliot’s references suggest a desperate attempt to salvage meaning from the past; on the other, the fragmented and obscure nature of these references highlights the difficulty of establishing a cohesive worldview in a post-war society. Importantly, this web of meaning is not self-evident to a passive reader, and as such to deny Eliot’s guidance is to lose the metatextual power of his poetry, thus demonstrating that full separation between author and text remains elusive.
Eliot’s deliberately-fragmented manipulation of mythological and religious allusion serves not only to illustrate the spiritual disintegration of the modern world but also to reaffirm the inextricable link between author and text, as the poem’s complex intertextuality is shaped by his careful arrangement of cultural memory and theological doubt. Myth and religion are enmeshed in the poem; in the first section, The Burial of the Dead, Eliot incorporates a truncated allusion to the Sibyl of Cumae’s despairing wish for death with a reconstruction of the word of God in Psalms (‘Son of Man…’, line 20). Eliot also secularizes many of his Biblical allusions; “By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept” (line 182) reworks the lament from Psalm 137, replacing the revelatory city of Babylon with a lake in Geneva. Ironically, Eliot uses rich cultural and religious history to describe the bareness of modernity, reflecting how the traditional, once-sacred wisdom of the Bible now exists as part of a decayed cultural inheritance. Faith and scripture, once a binding force, are now scattered and incapable of offering true guidance. Indeed, as Eliot himself argues, “Myth is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which contains contemporary history.” (Eliot, 1923) Therefore, the incomplete religious and mythological allusions suggest the collapse of traditional morality and the fading relevance of biblical authority in a disillusioned, secularized world. Crucially, this fragmentation is not organic; it is a direct product of Eliot’s authorial design. Rather than allowing his allusions to exist independently, Eliot manipulates them to expose their insufficiency, ensuring that their function within the poem is entirely dependent on his arrangement.
One of The Waste Land’s most radical disruptions of traditional authorship is its fluid, unstable voices. Distinctly characterized narrators shift without clear demarcation, resisting a single narrative perspective, which initially seems to reinforce Barthes’ idea that authors write to produce something separate from themselves (1977). However, despite its multiple voices, the poem returns to a consistent sensibility—a tone of disappointment and despair:
(Section I, lines 62-65) A man watching commuters cross London Bridge – ‘So many,/ I had not though death had undone so many./ Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,/ And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.’
(Section II, line 58-59) A married woman speaking with a friend in an East London Pub – ‘I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,/ It’s them pills I took
(Section III, line 250-252) Tiresias describing a typist after a dissatisfactory love affair – ‘Hardly aware of her departed lover;/ Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:/ “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”’
Even as the poem disperses into fragmented perspectives, there is an underlying coherence that reflects Eliot’s structuring mind. The poem lacks a traditional narrator, but it does not lack an overarching authorial consciousness. Though Eliot is not a conduit of fiction or narrative voice, he periodically becomes a moral instructor throughout the poem; “O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, / Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.” (line 312) Eliot interrogates the authority of the author by asserting himself as a guiding figure within the fiction while also urging us to perceive Phlebas as a cautionary example as well as a fictional character (Uroff, 1980). Contradictorily, Eliot bridges the gap between himself and his readers by assuming an advisory role in their futures, yet simultaneously interposes a poetic image as a barrier between them. Eliot’s construction of the poetic role as both an imagist and a didact heightens the author’s responsibility to the reader, and as such when considering the relationship inversely, the reader cannot neglect the author’s dictatorial role in the composition of a text.
Ultimately, while the reader occupies the central role in constructing meaning, Modernist literature, in particular Eliot’s The Waste Land, asserts the author as supervisor. It simultaneously reveres and criticises the figure of the author – either way remaining hyper aware of them – when reflecting on the crumbling structures of artistic tradition in a new age of disillusionment and cultural anxiety. Eliot’s intricate layering of fragmented voices, intertextual allusions, and deliberate structuring demands an awareness of his guiding hand. Far from dissolving into an impersonal “tissue of quotations,” (Barthes, 1977) the poem asserts the author’s presence as an exhibitionist of popular imagination and mediator of meaning. Though Eliot momentarily recedes behind competing voices, his influence remains embedded in the poem’s composition, ensuring that his intellectual and artistic authority cannot be fully disentangled from the text.
