After the Author: T.S. Eliot, Intertextuality, and a Dialogue with Per Jonas Nordell

By Frantzeska Papadopoulou Skarp[*]Professor private law, Chair Intellectual Property Law, Law Faculty, Stockholm University.

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” – T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land[1]‘The New Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot’ (Cambridge University Press & Assessment) <https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/subjects/literature/english-literature-1900-1945/new-cambridge-companion-t-s-eliot> accessed 20 May 2026., [2]RJ Owens, ‘T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”’ (1963) 9 Caribbean Quarterly 3.

There are texts that never entirely belong to the person writing them. They appear instead through conversations, borrowed voices, intellectual encounters, and unfinished discussions.

This article is such a text.