T.S Eliot’s poetry masterpiece, The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock, follows the compos mentis experience of a man named Prufrock. Eliot’s work laments the corporal and intellectual inertia that deprives Prufrock opportunities in life; through the recurrent theme of lustful love unaccomplished. The use of fragmentations and disconnected devices are applied to create a sense disruption to mental focus, and to avoid conforming to a nihilistic style.
Eliot attracted fame was initiated from his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), which is seen as a the chef d'œuvre of the Modernist movement. Although the character Prufrock gives indication that he was middle aged, Eliot actually wrote most of the poem in the 1990s when he was himself twenty-two. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table", were considered with a sense of dismay and element of offensiveness, especially at a time when Georgian Poetry (anthologies showcasing the work of a school of English poetry that established itself during the early years of the reign of King George V of England) was greeted for its derivations of the 19th century Romantic Poets - artistic, literary, and intellectual movements such as that of Caspar David Friedrich.
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Before understanding the concept of fragmentation, it is crucial to appreciate that the poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading, primarily, Dante, but also referring to various literary works by the French Symbolists arts movement. The epigraph at the very beginning of the poem is taken from Dante’s Inferno (XXVII, 61-66) and translates to:
"If I but thought that my response were made to one perhaps returning to the world, this tongue of ...
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...o another feature used by Eliot. From a contextual background of the author, Eliot continued his interest in fragmentation throughout his career. The Love Song of Alfred J. Purfrock undergoing fragmentation of mental focus and imagery, uses bits and pieces of formal structure to suggests that disconnection, although anxiety-provoking, in spite of everything, productive; had the poem been composed purely in free verse, the work would have seemed much more nihilistic and rejecting all moral principles in the idea that life is meaningless.
Based on the kinds of imagery Eliot paints with the use of fragments and disconnection, it also suggest that something new can be made from ruins: The series of hypothetical encounters at the poem’s centre are recapitulated and discontinuous but nevertheless lead to a sort of dark epiphany rather than just leading us without purpose.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. 369-372. Print.
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” tells the speaker’s story through several literary devices, allowing the reader to analyze the poem through symbolism, character qualities, and allusions that the work displays. In this way, the reader clearly sees the hopelessness and apathy that the speaker has towards his future. John Steven Childs sums it up well in saying Prufrock’s “chronic indecision blocks him from some important action” (Childs). Each literary device- symbolism, character, and allusion- supports this description. Ultimately, the premise of the poem is Prufrock second guessing himself to no end over talking to a woman, but this issue represents all forms of insecurity and inactivity.
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. 2459-2463.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 1996.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is about a timid and downcast man in search of meaning, of love, and in search of something to break from the dullness and superficiality which he feels his life to be. Eliot lets us into Prufrock's world for an evening, and traces his progression of emotion from timidity, and, ultimately, to despair of life. He searches for meaning and acceptance by the love of a woman, but falls miserably because of his lack of self-assurance. Prufrock is a man for whom, it seems, everything goes wrong, and for whom there are no happy allowances. The emptiness and shallowness of Prufrock's "universe" and of Prufrock himself are evident from the very beginning of the poem. He cannot find it in himself to tell the woman what he really feels, and when he tries to tell her, it comes out in a mess. At the end of the poem, he realizes that he has no big role in life.
T.S. Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. His poem“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, is different and unusual. He rejects the logic connection, thus, his poems lack logic interpretation. He himself justifies himself by saying: he wrote it to want it to be difficult. The dissociation of sensibility, on the contrary, arouses the emotion of readers immediately. This poem contains Prufrock’ s love affairs. But it is more than that. It is actually only the narration of Prufrock, a middle-aged man, and a romantic aesthete , who is bored with his meaningless life and driven to despair because he wished but
Eliot's poem with its abstract imagery, incoherent stanza structures, and attention to the concepts of individualism and alienation is a clear example of literary modernism. His "love song" exists as a poetic commentary on his society, critical of the frivolites of the upper-class socialites and sympathetic toward the members of society who felt the intense isolation that results from, essentially, not "fitting in", and in a society dominated by wealthy tycoons and modern industry, Eliot used his skill to challenge the ideals of the ruling class and to draw attention to the most simplistic, yet modern, concept of all: the individual.
Both Browning and Eliot seek to improve upon the nature of the dramatic monologue. Browning emphasizes structure and a separation between the poet and the character which is reiterated by Eliot’s poem. Browning’s influence on Eliot can be seen by the form and structure of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” adding working intrinsically with the theme and subject of the work. However, Eliot deviates slightly from Browning by the portrayal of his characters, and the amount of information that he is willing to share with the reader. The intended message of Browning’s poem is much more apparent than Eliot’s who creates an open ended poem that can be interpreted differently by each reader.
In T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the author is establishing the trouble the main character, Prufrock, is having coming to terms with middle age. He is deeply distressed over the fact that he is growing old, and feels that the prime of his life has passed him by. His preoccupation with time throughout the poem characterizes his fear of aging. He is a man experiencing a mid-life crisis, brought about by his perception of aging and his own feelings of inadequacy.
The poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” written by T.S. Eliot is a depiction of sadness and a disillusioned narrator. While reading this poem, one senses that the narrator is disturbed and has maybe given up hope, and that he feels he is just an actor in a tedious drama At the very beginning of the poem, Eliot uses a quote from Dante’s “Inferno”, preparing the poem’s reader to expect a vision of hell. This device seems to ask the reader to accept that what they are about to be told by the poem’s narrator was not supposed to be revealed to the living world, as Dante was exposed to horrors in the Inferno that were not supposed to be revealed to the world of the living. This comparison is frightening and intriguing, and casts a shadow on the poem and its narrator before it has even begun. J. Alfred Prufrock is anxious, self-concsious, and depressed.
In conclusion, after exploring the theme of this poem and reading it for myself, Eliot has created this persona, in industrialised England or somewhere else. A man of low self-esteem, you embark his journey as he struggles with a rational fear of being rejected by a woman. Which gives the reader sympathy to Prufrock, as he lives within his own personal
T.S Eliot, widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern poetry, has written many great poems. Among the most well known of these are “The Waste Land, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which share similar messages, but are also quite different. In both poems, Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey themes of repression, alienation, and a general breakdown in western society. Some of the best techniques to examine are ones such as theme, structure, imagery and language, which all figure prominently in his poetry. These techniques in particular are used by Eliot to both enhance and support the purpose of his poems.
T.S. Eliot was a poet, dramatist and he was also a literary critic. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The...
T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" reveals the unvoiced inner thoughts of a disillusioned, lonely, insecure, and self-loathing middle-aged man. The thoughts are presented in a free association, or stream of consciousness style, creating images from which the reader can gain insight into Mr. Prufrock's character. Mr. Prufrock is disillusioned and disassociated with society, yet he is filled with longing for love, comfort, and companionship. He is self-conscious and fearful of his image as viewed through the world's eye, a perspective from which he develops his own feelings of insignificance and disgust. T. S. Eliot uses very specific imagery to build a portrait of Mr. Prufrock, believing that mental images provide insight where words fail.