"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
The dramatic monologue “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was written by Thomas Stearns Eliot and published in June of 1915. Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri on September 26, 1888, where he grew up and lived until the age of eighteen. After high school, Eliot studied at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA and the Sorbonne in Paris, France. Eventually, Eliot ended up in England where he married his wife Vivien and spent the remainder of his life.
Throughout his college years, Eliot was active in the writing of literature, even having some of his early poetry published in the Harvard Advocate. In England, Eliot met and befriended fellow expatriate Ezra Pound, who was very impressed with the quality of Eliot’s work. Pound encouraged Eliot to publish his poetry professionally and “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock” appeared in the June 1915 edition of Poetry. T. S. Eliot is widely recognized as a literary genius and a pioneer of the Modernist movement in literature (T.S. Eliot).
The Modernist Movement ushered in the twentieth century and artists of all genres wanted to create in a new and modern way to express themselves. The early twentieth century was a time of new beginnings; the world was becoming a more industrialized and urban place. People everywhere wanted a new fresh perspective in life and art. Life was faster and artists wanted to shake off the confines of the Victorian Age and let their art reflect the world around them in a more realistic way.
T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound played an important part in the creation of the Modernist Literature movement. .The “real life” aspect of the Modernist Movement changed the arts by
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In the last stanza, Prufrock is with the mermaids who have rejected him, but he is okay with that, it’s what he is used to. Prufrock imagines himself as being part of an undersea world where he can hide from humanity. Time, age and bald spots don’t matter in this place, Prufrock is able to drift along and he even mentions drowning (l.131). Prufrock wants to escape from his mundane existence, but he really doesn’t have the motivation to test his comfort level and change things.
Works Cited
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Inside Literature, Reading, Responding, Arguing. Ed. R. S. Gwynn & Stephen Zani. New York. Penguin. 2007. 996-1000. Print.
"Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." N.p., 28 Feb. 2014. Web. 01 Mar. 2014.
"T. S. Eliot." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 28 Feb. 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
When creating his famous poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", T.S. Eliot was inspired by a character depicted in the novella known as Daisy Miller, written by Henry James. This character, Winterbourne, was intertwined and considered when creating the timid character of Prufrock. It is evident that both men share similar personalities and characteristics that link them together, both being prime examples of emptiness and despair told through theses writings.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. of the year.
J. Alfred Prufrock is a man who is destined to find the right women to with for the rest of his life. He always holds off finding the perfect women to another day, but time is ticking against him and he does not have much time left. In T.S. Eliot’s, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Illustrates Prufrock’s inability to interact with women in the coffee shop, fear of being turned down, and the significance of love and time.
The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a poem that was written by T. S Eliot. The poem introduces the character, Prufrock, as a man who is very pessimistic about everything and is incapable of change. Prufrock sees the society he lives in as a place that is full of people who think alike, and he thinks he is different from them. Though Prufrock, realizes that the society he is associated with needs a change and have more people who think differently, but the fact that he is very concerned about what people would think of him if he tries to speak up to make a change or that he would be ignored or be misunderstood for whatever he says hindered him from expressing himself the way he would like to. Prufrock then decides not to express himself in order to avoid any type of rejection. In the poem, Prufrock made use of several imagery and metaphor to illustrate how he feels about himself and the society he is involved in. Prufrock use of imageries and
By a correct reading of "Prufrock," I mean a reading consistent with the central theme of the poet's belief made mute because the poet lives in a culture of unbelief--that is, the "silence" of the poetic vision in modernity. Prufrock renounces his inherited, romantic role as "poet as prophet" and renounces poetry's role as a successor to religion. The future of poetry may have once been immense, but that future no longer exists for Prufrock, who is faced not only with the certainty of the rejection of his poetic vision but also with a situation in which there are no grounds for rhetoric: "That is not what I meant at all. / That is not it, at all." Fear of rejection leads Prufrock to the ultimate silencing of the prophet and hero within himself, to being "a pair of ragged claws." He cannot share his poetic vision of life: to do so would threaten the very existence of that life. Paradoxically, not to share his light, his "words among mankind," threatens the loss ...
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. ed. M. H. Abrams New York, London: Norton, 1993.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 1996.
Eliot, T. S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Prufrock, and Other Observations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920. N. pag. Bartleby.com. Aug. 2011. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Elliot, T.S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Compact 3rd ed. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1997. 781-785.
Because of Eliot’s economic status, he attended only the finest schools while growing up. He attended Smith Academy in St. Louis and Milton Academy in Massachusetts. In 1906, he started his freshman year at Harvard University studying philosophy and literature. He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy in only three years. Eliot went on to study at the University of Oxford and also at the Sorbonne in Paris. At the Sorbonne, he found inspiration from writers such as Dante and Shakespeare and also from ancient literature, modern philosophy and eastern mysticism. Eliot’s first poem he wrote was “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1915. Eliot converted his religion to Anglo - Catholicism and in 1927, his poetry took on new spiritual meaning. Ash Wednesday was the first poem he wrote after his conversion in 1930. It is said that it traces the pattern of Eliot’s spiritual progress. It strives to make connections between the earthly and the eternal, the word of man and the Word of God and the emphasis is on the struggle toward belief. Thus telling us that God is part of Eliot’s American dream.
...s, Colleen. The love song of T.S. Eliot: elegiac homoeroticism in the early poetry. Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot. Ed. Cassandra Laity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. p. 20
As a conclusion, since he is a 20th Century Modernist poet, Eliot believes that readers should have knowledge about ‘’ dead poets and artists’’ so they could appreciate the value of an artist’s work truly and better.He is right in what he says and also he believes one can only be original if he/she combines past and present.His poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock obviously carries these characteristics of Moderist Poetry.
T.S. Eliot is often considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th Century. Not only were his highly regarded poems such as “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” influential to the literary style of his time, but his work as a publisher highlighted the work of many talented poets. Analyzing his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with psychoanalytic criticism reveals several core issues in the speaker of the poem, and may reflect Eliot himself.
Eliot, Thomas Stearns. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." 1915. The Twentieth Century and Beyond. Ed. Joseph Black. Vol. 6A. Toronto: Broadview, 2008. 444-47. Print. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature.
The title T. S. Eliot chose for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is ironic. Mr. Prufrock does not love anyone, nor does he believe he is loved. He has disdain for the society of which he wishes he were a part, and he believes society views him no differently. The imagery of Mr. Prufrock's thoughts provide the audience a more detailed insight into his character than had Mr. Eliot simply listed Mr. Prufrock's virtues and flaws. Mr. Prufrock is seen as an exaggeration or extreme for the sake of literary commentary, but the world has many Prufrocks in many differing degrees, and T. S. Eliot has made them a little easier to understand.