The Fire Sermon
E111185
The Fire Sermon is the third section of T. S. Eliot’s modernist poem "The Waste Land," depicting spiritual desolation and moral decay in a fragmented urban landscape.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| The Fire Sermon canonical | 3 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T946617 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Fire Sermon Context triple: [The Waste Land, section, The Fire Sermon]
-
A.
Strange Meeting
"Strange Meeting" is a renowned anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen that depicts a surreal encounter between two dead soldiers, powerfully conveying the futility and horror of war.
-
B.
Ash-Wednesday
Ash-Wednesday is a 1930 poem by T. S. Eliot that marks his turn toward Christian faith, blending spiritual introspection with complex, allusive verse.
-
C.
The Black Riders and Other Lines
The Black Riders and Other Lines is a collection of brief, free-verse poems noted for their stark imagery, unconventional style, and early modernist sensibility.
-
D.
Harrow Songs
Harrow Songs are a celebrated collection of traditional school songs closely associated with the culture and history of Harrow School in England.
-
E.
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a comic fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams featuring the eccentric holistic detective Dirk Gently as he becomes entangled with Norse gods and bizarre supernatural events in modern-day London.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Fire Sermon Target entity description: The Fire Sermon is the third section of T. S. Eliot’s modernist poem "The Waste Land," depicting spiritual desolation and moral decay in a fragmented urban landscape.
-
A.
Strange Meeting
"Strange Meeting" is a renowned anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen that depicts a surreal encounter between two dead soldiers, powerfully conveying the futility and horror of war.
-
B.
Ash-Wednesday
Ash-Wednesday is a 1930 poem by T. S. Eliot that marks his turn toward Christian faith, blending spiritual introspection with complex, allusive verse.
-
C.
The Black Riders and Other Lines
The Black Riders and Other Lines is a collection of brief, free-verse poems noted for their stark imagery, unconventional style, and early modernist sensibility.
-
D.
Harrow Songs
Harrow Songs are a celebrated collection of traditional school songs closely associated with the culture and history of Harrow School in England.
-
E.
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a comic fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams featuring the eccentric holistic detective Dirk Gently as he becomes entangled with Norse gods and bizarre supernatural events in modern-day London.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
literary work
ⓘ
poem section ⓘ |
| alludesTo |
Shakyamuni Buddha
ⓘ
surface form:
Gautama Buddha
Mr. Eugenides (Smyrna merchant) ⓘ Augustine of Hippo ⓘ
surface form:
Saint Augustine of Hippo
Song of the Thames-daughters ⓘ Thames ⓘ
surface form:
Thames River
The Tempest ⓘ
surface form:
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
|
| author | T. S. Eliot ⓘ |
| centralTheme |
loss of transcendence
ⓘ
moral decay ⓘ sexual emptiness ⓘ spiritual desolation ⓘ urban alienation ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin | United Kingdom ⓘ |
| firstPublicationYear | 1922 ⓘ |
| followedBy | Death by Water ⓘ |
| follows | A Game of Chess ⓘ |
| form | free verse ⓘ |
| genre | modernist poetry ⓘ |
| hasCharacter |
Eugenios
ⓘ
surface form:
Mr. Eugenides
Thames-daughters ⓘ Tiresias ⓘ clerk lover ⓘ typist ⓘ |
| influencedBy |
Buddhist teachings on desire
ⓘ
Christian confessional tradition ⓘ classical mythology ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| literaryMovement | Modernism ⓘ |
| narrativeTechnique |
fragmentation
ⓘ
multiple voices ⓘ stream of consciousness ⓘ |
| narrativeVoice | Tiresias ⓘ |
| partOf | The Waste Land ⓘ |
| partOfCollection | The Criterion (October 1922 issue, as part of The Waste Land) ⓘ |
| publisherOfFirstBookEdition |
Boni & Liveright
ⓘ
Faber & Gwyer ⓘ |
| references | Buddhist Fire Sermon (Ādittapariyāya Sutta) ⓘ |
| sectionNumber | 3 ⓘ |
| setting |
modern London
ⓘ
urban river landscape ⓘ |
| symbolism |
fire as lust and spiritual torment
ⓘ
river as time and decay ⓘ urban waste as spiritual barrenness ⓘ |
| themeContrast | physical desire versus spiritual emptiness ⓘ |
| tone |
despairing
ⓘ
ironic ⓘ satirical ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: The Fire Sermon Description of subject: The Fire Sermon is the third section of T. S. Eliot’s modernist poem "The Waste Land," depicting spiritual desolation and moral decay in a fragmented urban landscape.
Referenced by (3)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.