DOI: 10.70650/rvimj.2025v2i800028

  DOI URL: https://doi.org/10.70650/rvimj.2025v2i800028

Abstract: This research article investigates the transformative dialogue between the classical imperatives of Aristotelian poetics and the aesthetic of fragmentation that defines literary Modernism, specifically as manifested in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and the broader “Wasteland” milieu. At the centre of this inquiry is the perceived collapse of the Aristotelian mythos—a unified, teleological plot structure—under the weight of modern trauma, and its replacement by a “spatialized” or “mythical” method of composition. The study explores the semantic instability of catharsis, contrasting the classical view of emotional purgation or cognitive clarification with the Modernist experience of “secondary witnessing” and unresolved trauma. By analysing the structural roles of the tragic hero, the three unities, and the formal enactment of trauma, the report argues that Modernism does not merely reject Aristotelian principles but adaptively subverts them to represent a “dissociation of sensibility.” Through a comparative analysis of Eliot’s allusive techniques and Ezra Pound’s ideogrammatic method, the research demonstrates how fragmentation serves as a new, non-linear form of coherence a “reparative” strategy that seeks a spiritual and cultural resolution within the ruins of the Western canon.