What type of study is this?

This is a Literature Review study.

September 10, 2025

Symbols in the Digital Waste Land: Reinterpreting Eliot through Media Theory

Puntos clave

Eliot's symbols provide insights into modern digital phenomena, highlighting identity in the infosphere.
The research identifies three mechanisms—structural homology, affective resonance, and diagnostic transposition—that extend symbol relevance.
Combining media theory and symbolic anthropology enables a deeper understanding of Eliot's poem in the context of digital age challenges.
The findings address cultural despair reflected in Eliot's work while aligning it with contemporary issues like information overload and virtual disconnection.

Resumen

The article evaluates T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) to demonstrate how its symbolic elements reveal modern digital experiences. The research combines literary criticism with media theory and symbolic anthropology to analyze how the Fisher King, Unreal City, and Water imagery symbols in the poem serve as diagnostic tools for understanding digital-age phenomena. The "infosphere" concept developed by Floridi (2014) explains how identity spreads across digital spaces, which directly relates to the shadowy multitudes in Eliot's Unreal City. The study reveals three mechanisms that allow these symbols to move beyond their original time period: structural homology, affective resonance, and diagnostic transposition. The analysis demonstrates that Eliot’s broken poetic structure, which depicted post-war cultural despair, now helps explain digital space problems, including information overload, virtual disconnection, and scarcity of meaning.

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Cite This Study

Nemickienė et al. (Fri,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/68c1b80c54b1d3bfb60ebae1 https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.55220/2576-683x.v9.517

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