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Building an Unreal City: Reading the Construction of St. Louis in Eliot's The Waste Land

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2020

PATRICK TURNER Open the ORCID record for PATRICK TURNER [Opens in a new window]
PATRICK TURNER*
Affiliation:
English/Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies, King's College London. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

In 1959, T. S. Eliot said of his poetry, “My urban imagery was that of St. Louis.” This paper reads Eliot's The Waste Land in light of this comment, investigating the extent to which the construction of his hometown, St. Louis, in the nineteenth century, impinges upon the poem. The paper outlines the cultural conditions of St. Louis's construction as part of a settler colonial project, heavily influenced by certain narratives of quest and conquest. Throughout the construction of St. Louis, geographical and historical realities were continually replaced by an urban landscape which served to reflect these settler narratives. Using three separate case studies – the construction of the Eads Bridge, the destruction of the Cahokia mounds, and the St. Louis fire of 1849 – this paper makes the case that Eliot's characterization of urban space in The Waste Land as “unreal” is rooted in the construction of his hometown.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 576 - 595
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2020

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