The Anglo-Catholic Apocalyptic Milieu and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

This article seeks to clarify which apocalyptic elements of the World War I era persist into The Waste Land . It begins with a thick historical contextualization. Then, it looks at contemporaneous media that characterizes the Anglo-Catholic apocalyptic milieu. Next, it examines an adjacent literary parallel: a forgotten play called Armageddon . Finally, I approach the poem itself, teasing out the elements of the Anglo-Catholic milieu and analyzing how Eliot imports and subverts their meaning. I conclude that the Anglo-Catholic apocalyptic helps form the contextual contrast from which the poem’s meanings can be multiplied and reappraised.