【正确答案】正确答案：(1)The subject; The Waste Land, Eliot" s most important single poem, has been hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th-century English poetry, comparable to Wordsworth" s Lyrical Ballads. With bold technical innovations in versification and style, the poem not only presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation in the modern Western world, but also reflects the prevalent mood of disillusionment and despair of a whole postwar generation. (2)The poem" s significance: The Waste Land is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning, significance and purpose. The poem has developed a whole set of historical, cultural and religious themes; but it is often regarded as being primarily a reflection of the 20th-century people" s disillusionment and frustration in a sterile and futile society. The horror and menace, the anguish and dereliction, and the futility and sterility expressed in his poetry had been afflicting all sensitive members of the postwar generation. What" s more, the new styles like making use of phrases in foreign languages and rich extensive use of other writers" works, other cultures and classics enlighten the following writers much. This poem is the milestone of modern poetry. (3)Feature Appreciation: The style of the work in part grows out of Eliot" s interest in exploring the possibilities of dramatic monologue. Eliot also enjoyed the music hall, and something of the flavor of this popular form of entertainment gets into the poem. It follows the pattern of the musical fugue, in which many voices enter throughout the piece re-stating the themes. Above all perhaps it is the disjointed nature of the poem, the way it jumps from one adopted manner to another, the way it moves between different voices and makes use of phrases in foreign languages, that is the most distinctive feature of the poem" s style. (4)Maybe Eliot was influenced by Homer, Sophocles, Petronius, Virgil, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Middleton, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and Walt Whitman for pieces of their works are frequently seen from this poem.

【答案解析】解析：(本题考查对美国诗人艾略特的著作《荒原》的掌握情况。)