From abjection to hyperreality: Rethinking modern malaise in Eliot’s The Waste Land and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

This article offers a new critical pathway for interpreting T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by moving beyond Freudian psychoanalysis and instead employing Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality. It reveals how Eliot’s poems stage the modern crisis not simply as a drama of the psyche but as a cultural and semiotic catastrophe marked by the collapse of meaning, failed rituals, and proliferation of empty signs. Kristeva’s abjection shows how characters and landscapes reflect loss of identity and symbolic order, while Baudrillard reframes the modern subject as endlessly performing hollow gestures. This dual approach situates Eliot’s poetry as a prophetic meditation on modern and postmodern anxieties, providing a model for renewed critical engagement with modernist literature and suggesting pathways for interdisciplinary research. By foregrounding these perspectives, the article underscores Eliot’s continued relevance for debates on identity, authenticity, and meaning. Reading Eliot through abjection and hyperreality illuminates neglected dimensions of his poetry and addresses how modern literature negotiates trauma, ritual, and performance of self in a fragmented world. It expands Eliot criticism and signals new directions for modernist analysis.