Building an Unreal City: Reading the Construction of St. Louis in Eliot'sThe Waste Land

In 1959, T. S. Eliot said of his poetry, “My urban imagery was that of St. Louis.” This paper reads Eliot's The Waste Land in light of this comment, investigating the extent to which the construction of his hometown, St. Louis, in the nineteenth century, impinges upon the poem. The paper outlines the cultural conditions of St. Louis's construction as part of a settler colonial project, heavily influenced by certain narratives of quest and conquest. Throughout the construction of St. Louis, geographical and historical realities were continually replaced by an urban landscape which served to reflect these settler narratives. Using three separate case studies – the construction of the Eads Bridge, the destruction of the Cahokia mounds, and the St. Louis fire of 1849 – this paper makes the case that Eliot's characterization of urban space in The Waste Land as “unreal” is rooted in the construction of his hometown.