摘要：

作为现代主义的代表作之一，托马斯•艾略特的杰作《荒原》对西方文学产生了重大的影响。因为诗中有很多神奇的但又不相连贯的碎片，《荒原》以其复杂性而出名。在现代文学中神话典故的运用是常见的手法，《荒原》中运用了很多神话典故，这些神话典故及其意义对读者来说都是很陌生的。本文将从神话原型批评的角度讨论《荒原》一诗，主要介绍神话原型批评的产生及其派别。通过诗中诸多的神话原型如生--死原型、泰瑞西斯、寻找圣杯、水与火、圆环原型等，一方面，反映当时的堕落、毫无生机的世界，男人与女人之间缺少爱的扭曲的性关系；另一方面，通过这些神话人物，《荒原》将神话世界和世俗世界连接起来，试图构建自己赎罪式的神话。

关键词：荒原；神话原型；神话人物

Abstract：

The Waste Land is an excellent historic work of T.S. Eliot. Many readers hold that it is a poem which is hard to understand. One of the reasons is that Eliot uses a lot of literary quotation. It is a familiar technique to use myth in the work, but the unfamiliarity with the origins of the myths causes the difficulty in its interpretation. In the thesis, I discuss The Waste Land from the perspective of mythological archetypal criticism. It makes a brief induction to the mythological archetypal criticism about its origin and its schools. Besides, it discusses the mythic types such as the death-rebirth archetype, the quest for Holy Grail, water and fire, circle archetype etc. Through these archetypes, its themes are expressed: sterility, failure of spiritual quest and sex without love. On the one hand, the poem reflects a then deteriorated, lifeless, purposeless world with disordered sexual relationship after the First World War. On the other hand, through these mythic figures, the poem also connects the mythology with the secular world in order to construct its redeemable mythology.

Key words: The Waste Land; mythological archetypal criticism; mythic figures

1. Introduction
As a dominant figure in modern literature, T. S. Eliot is one of the most difficult poets for us to appreciate and understand. However difficult he may seem to be, he is still the one who can not be skipped in the review of English literature. In 1921, T.S. Eliot declared that “poets in our civilization… must be difficult” (王敬民 2010). The publication in the following year of The Waste Land served to confirm the truth of this pronouncement. It includes five parts: the burial of the dead, a game of chess, the fire sermon, death by water and what the thunder said. It is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning, significance and purpose. The whole western world is vividly presented as a vast expanse of spiritual waste land.