bring out the significance of the title the wasteland
The Waste Land In the end, the title Eliot chose was The Waste Land. In his first note to the poem he attributes the title to Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend, From Ritual to Romance. The allusion is to the wounding of the Fisher King and the subsequent sterility of his lands; to restore the King and make his lands fertile again, the Grail questor must ask, "What ails you?" A poem strikingly similar in theme and language called "Waste Land," written by Madison Cawein, was published in 1913 in Poetry.[21]