The Rhetoric of Art in Consumer Culture
PWR 1 Spring Quarter 2006
Jonah G. Willihnganz
Stanford University

Sample Entry for the Annotated Bibliography
generated by students in class, 2004

by Casey Driskill
      Jackie Goldman
      Lora Oehlberg

Suarez, Juan A. “T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the Gramophone, and the Modernist Discourse Network.” New Literary History, 2001. 32:747-768. (secondary source)
 
Argument: Suarez argues that Eliot’s work the Waste Land is influenced by devices like the Gramophone, which mechanically recorded voices and sounds and then reproduced them at a later time and context. He relates aspects of recorded sound like fragmentary recording and out-of-context ‘noise’ to specific lines and phrases in the Waste Land. He also relates recorded sound to the study of psychology and thought, using as evidence Freud’s use of recorded sound to transcribe his sessions with patients and thus record both his patients’ unconscious as well as his own thoughts. 
 
Methodology: He looks at direct quotations from The Wasteland, and applies a rhetorical analysis within a specific, well-defined historical and psychological context. He provides the background of Edison’s actual development of the gramophone, later presenting this information as evidence that Eliot’s work also reflects the cultural impact the gramophone had at the time.
 
Evaluation: It seems to be credible since it has been published in a well-known journal. Its specific focus is a strength, along with its in-depth analysis of Eliot’s work. It also comprehensively analyzes the entire work, instead of simply focusing on one section or moment, which definitely supports its argument and makes the poem’s dependence on the gramophone less of a coincidence.
 
Value: This source will be extremely useful in looking at the disembodied voice, since this aspect is often used as an argument to relate the gramophone to Eliot’s work. It will be a good reference for deciding which parts of the poem to focus on and analyze for our argument, and then later on compare with Suarez’s analysis. Suarez also focuses on the broader issue of mechanization and its effects on modernist culture and culture in general, which will be useful in applying specifically to the telephone.