The Fisher-King is an important figure in the Waste Land

Go here for a radio program on the Fisher King

Here is a link to an essay on the Fisher King in "The Waste Land".

The following is from the University of Idaho student research project on the Fisher King:


(IV) THE WASTE LAND: The concept of physical sterility carrying over into other spheres of life was an appealing objective correlative for poets in the wake of the first World War (used most effectively by T.S. Eliot to symbolize social and moral decay). But the intimate relationship existing between a monarch and his provinces probably relates back to a pagan strand from much earlier times. The waste land ultimately springs from an old Celtic belief in which the fertility of the land depended on the potency and virility of the king; the king was in essence espoused to his lands. In his comprehensive study, The Golden Bough, J. G. Fraser identifies a similar ritual in various cultures the world round. "The king's life or spirit is so sympathetically bound up with the prosperity of the whole country," he writes, "that if he fell ill or grew senile the cattle would sicken or cease to multiply, the crops would rot in the fields, and men would perish of widespread disease." Such is the case in the Grail legends as well. The woes of the land are the direct result of the sickness or the maiming of the Fisher King. When his power wanes, the country is laid waste and the soil is rendered sterile: the trees are without fruit, the crops fail to grow, even the women are unable to bear children. To suggest that the waste land functions at the very heart of the problem seems a gross understatement indeed. Once again, Weston takes the matter one step further: "In the Grail King we have a romantic literary version of that strange mysterious figure whose presence hovers in the shadowy background of the history of our Aryan race; the figure of a divine or semidivine ruler, at once god and king, upon whose life, and unimpaired vitality, the existence of his land and people directly depends."

In the case of the waste land the solution assumes the form of the questing Grail Knight. He is the one who must ask the loaded question that restores fertility to king and land alike. However, as Cavendish notes, the healing of the Fisher King and his lands is never satisfactorily resolved in the medieval romances that have been handed down:

The tradition of the king as the mate of his land lies behind the Waste Land theme in the Grail legends, but the theme in incoherent and amorphous. The pattern ought to be this: a king is crippled or ill; as a result his land is barren; the hero heal s the king and fertility is restored to the land; probably, the hero's feat shows that he is the rightful heir. There is no Grail story in which this simple and satisfactory pattern appears (nor has any Celtic story survived which contains it). In the First Continuation there is a waste land which is restored, but no crippled or ill king and consequently no healing. In Parzival there is a crippled king who is healed by the hero, but there is no waste land. In Perlesvaus there is an ill king and a waste land, but no healing.


Finally you can always check out Wikipedia for general info.