T. S. Eliot’s Misreading of Some Mythological Sources in The Waste Land

Reading always entails an act of interpretation and all interpretation involves misreading. All poets cannot be separated from the previous ones. They must read and misread their precursors. T.S. Eliot misreads the mythological sources that he uses in his poem The Waste Land. This misreading is not a mistake, but it is meant to create new meaning to the available text. By misreading the previous texts, the poet creates a space of creativity for himself. There are six ways of misreading as explicated by Harold Bloom. In this article only three ways of misreading will be explained and applied, namely clinamen, tessera, and kenosis.