Thames-daughters

E482008

Thames-daughters are mythic, river-spirit figures in T. S. Eliot’s poem "The Fire Sermon" from *The Waste Land*, echoing the lamenting Rhine maidens of Wagner while embodying the polluted, desolate state of modern London.

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Statements (45)

Predicate Object
instanceOf literary characters
mythic figures in poetry
mythical beings
river spirits
alludesTo Richard Wagner NERFINISHED
Wagner’s Ring cycle NERFINISHED
appearsInSection The Fire Sermon NERFINISHED
appearsInWork The Waste Land NERFINISHED
associatedWithRiver River Thames NERFINISHED
associatedWithTheme disillusionment
environmental degradation
fragmentation
spiritual barrenness
contrastsWith classical river nymphs
idealized nature spirits
createdBy T. S. Eliot NERFINISHED
depicts sexual exploitation in modern London
echoes lament of the Rhine maidens
embeddedIn polyphonic voices of The Waste Land
firstPublicationOfWork 1922
genreContext modernist poetry
hasCulturalContext early 20th-century Britain
hasIntertextualRelation Norse and Germanic river-spirit traditions
Wagner’s Das Rheingold NERFINISHED
inspiredBy Rhine maidens NERFINISHED
language English
linkedToCharacter Tiresias (through shared section The Fire Sermon) NERFINISHED
literaryFunction choric lament
voice of complaint
literaryMovement High modernism
medium poetry
narrativeRole commentators on the state of the river
witnesses of urban corruption
partOf mythic allusion network in The Waste Land
relatedMotif corrupted nature
lamenting maidens
river imagery in The Waste Land
setting London, England
surface form: London
settingDetail banks of the River Thames
symbolizes desolation of modern urban life
loss of mythic purity
moral decay in modern London
pollution of the River Thames
tone lamenting
melancholic

Referenced by (1)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

The Fire Sermon hasCharacter Thames-daughters