Which event from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock best shows this theme apex?

The latest Love Song from J. Alfred Prufrock Study: “The Like Tune away from J. Alfred Prufrock” is actually a beneficial poem compiled by T.S. Eliot in 1910 and you may are had written from inside the 1915. It is said to be one of many quintessential works out of modernism, a good literary way on change of your twentieth 100 years you to showcased the layouts away from isolation, alienation, and you may diminishing energy of traditional power sources. So it poem was a remarkable monologue. Within poem, the audio speaker narrates his interior life’s nervousness and you can preoccupations.

Report about The fresh new Like Tune out of J. Alfred Prufrock Studies

T.S. Eliot’s The fresh Like Track regarding J. Alfred Prufrock is amongst the city mans first outrageous poems and it is the latest poet’s first known poem. Eliot showcases the fresh new despair and passivity from a center-aged kid, Alfred J. Prufrock.

He could be crazy. But not, their love song is not sung. The man meditates way too much, and his awesome cowardice try his Achilles’ back. He or she is troubled of the problem of whether he would be to reveal his choose to the girl, and he was unaccomplished. The newest poem is perhaps not of your own twentieth 100 years, it is part of all age groups. They subjects the fresh psychological anger and depression, the hollowness of people living in any period of all time.

Eliot’s Like Tune cannot play to supplement love. The fresh new label of your own poem raises the readers’ assumption one when you look at the which poem, mcdougal is talking about just how a partner lays bare his cardiovascular system within ft from their dear.

Although not, nothing from the types happens in brand new poem. The title in the poem are ironic. The reason behind contacting it poem a romance Track is based on the fresh new irony that the tune may not be sung. Prufrock cannot dare so you can voice how the guy feels.

That it poem is a check benaughty-recensies of your own disrupted awareness from a regular progressive kid that is effective, overeducated, nervous, and you may mentally artificial. This new presenter of the poem, Prufrock, address an enthusiast which have exactly who he would wish to consummate its relationships in some way.

But the guy cannot “dare” so you can method this lady. The guy initiate hearing new reviews you to someone else generate to your their flaws. The guy will get aware of his increasing decades with his unkempt clothes. He scarcely thinks about himself and cannot appreciate also a peach. The guy doesn’t always have the fresh spirit to-do some thing in life but thinking and you may convinced.

After the latest poem, the guy hears brand new mermaids vocal for every most other, and then he undoubtedly understands they will not sing to him.

New Love Song From J. Alfred Prufrock Studies Layouts

The latest protagonist inside the “The latest Like Tune out-of J. Alfred Prufrock” was paralyzed by the indecision. The newest poem’s energy is actually constantly aggravated by digressions – this new speaker’s view about from for the relatively not related instructions – by the latest speaker’s feeling of his own inadequacy.

From the depicting the latest speaker’s extreme have trouble with indecision, the new poem means that way too much preoccupation having carrying out the right procedure – if or not when stating yourself, building relationship with others, or perhaps deciding tips build the hair on your head otherwise what to consume – can in fact stop a guy regarding previously going ahead to the business or, in reality, performing most of some thing.

Right away, brand new poem sets up a comparison ranging from step and you will inaction. The first line states, “let us go,” implying the poem will move on in the long run and you may area – this basically means, that it will wade somewhere.

However, one to energy is quickly stalled. These streets “realize eg a monotonous conflict of insidious purpose,” recommending that certain routes they give you upwards getting both painful and you will harmful – that there’s zero clear good path to take. And even though the fresh new speaker claims that the roadways “lead you to a formidable matter,” the new audio speaker will not actually perspective one to concern.

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", commonly known as "Prufrock", is the first professionally published poem by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965). Eliot began writing "Prufrock" in February 1910, and it was first published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse[2] at the instigation of Ezra Pound (1885–1972). It was later printed as part of a twelve-poem pamphlet (or chapbook) titled Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917.[1] At the time of its publication, Prufrock was considered outlandish,[3] but is now seen as heralding a paradigmatic cultural shift from late 19th-century Romantic verse and Georgian lyrics to Modernism.

The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of Dante Alighieri[4] and makes several references to the Bible and other literary works—including William Shakespeare's plays Henry IV Part II, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet, the poetry of seventeenth-century metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell, and the nineteenth-century French Symbolists. Eliot narrates the experience of Prufrock using the stream of consciousness technique developed by his fellow Modernist writers. The poem, described as a "drama of literary anguish", is a dramatic interior monologue of an urban man, stricken with feelings of isolation and an incapability for decisive action that is said "to epitomize frustration and impotence of the modern individual" and "represent thwarted desires and modern disillusionment".[5]

Prufrock laments his physical and intellectual inertia, the lost opportunities in his life and lack of spiritual progress, and is haunted by reminders of unattained carnal love. With visceral feelings of weariness, regret, embarrassment, longing, emasculation, sexual frustration, a sense of decay, and an awareness of mortality, "Prufrock" has become one of the most recognized voices in modern literature.[6]

Composition and publication history[edit]

Writing and first publication[edit]

Eliot wrote "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" between February 1910 and July or August 1911. Shortly after arriving in England to attend Merton College, Oxford, Eliot was introduced to American expatriate poet Ezra Pound, who instantly deemed Eliot "worth watching" and aided the start of Eliot's career. Pound served as the overseas editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse and recommended to the magazine's founder, Harriet Monroe, that Poetry publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", extolling that Eliot and his work embodied a new and unique phenomenon among contemporary writers. Pound claimed that Eliot "has actually trained himself AND modernized himself ON HIS OWN. The rest of the promising young have done one or the other, but never both."[7] The poem was first published by the magazine in its June 1915 issue.[2][8]

In November 1915 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"—along with Eliot's poems "Portrait of a Lady", "The Boston Evening Transcript", "Hysteria", and "Miss Helen Slingsby"—was included in Catholic Anthology 1914–1915 edited by Ezra Pound and printed by Elkin Mathews in London.[9]: 297 In June 1917 The Egoist, a small publishing firm run by Dora Marsden, published a pamphlet entitled Prufrock and Other Observations (London), containing 12 poems by Eliot. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was the first in the volume.[1] Eliot was appointed assistant editor of the Egoist in June 1917.[9]: 290 

Prufrock's Pervigilium[edit]

According to Eliot biographer Lyndall Gordon, when Eliot was writing the first drafts of "Prufrock" in his notebook in 1910–1911, he intentionally kept four pages blank in the middle section of the poem.[10] According to the notebooks, now in the collection of the New York Public Library, Eliot finished the poem, which was originally published sometime in July and August 1911, when he was 22 years old.[11] In 1912, Eliot revised the poem and included a 38-line section now called "Prufrock's Pervigilium" which was inserted on those blank pages, and intended as a middle section for the poem.[10] However, Eliot removed this section soon after seeking the advice of his fellow Harvard acquaintance and poet Conrad Aiken.[12] This section would not be included in the original publication of Eliot's poem but was included when published posthumously in the 1996 collection of Eliot's early, unpublished drafts in Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917.[11] This Pervigilium section describes the "vigil" of Prufrock through an evening and night[11]: 41, 43–44, 176–90 described by one reviewer as an "erotic foray into the narrow streets of a social and emotional underworld" that portray "in clammy detail Prufrock's tramping 'through certain half-deserted streets' and the context of his 'muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels.'"[13]

Critical reception[edit]

Critical publications initially dismissed the poem. An unsigned review in The Times Literary Supplement from 1917 found: "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone – even to himself. They certainly have no relation to 'poetry,' [...]."[14][15] Another unsigned review from the same year imagined Eliot saying "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'"[3]

The Harvard Vocarium at Harvard College recorded Eliot's reading of Prufrock and other poems in 1947, as part of its ongoing series of poetry readings by its authors.[16]

Description[edit]

In his early drafts, Eliot gave the poem the subtitle "Prufrock among the Women."[11]: 41 This subtitle was apparently discarded before publication. Eliot called the poem a "love song" in reference to Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Love Song of Har Dyal", first published in Kipling's collection Plain Tales from the Hills (1888).[17] In 1959, Eliot addressed a meeting of the Kipling Society and discussed the influence of Kipling upon his own poetry:

Traces of Kipling appear in my own mature verse where no diligent scholarly sleuth has yet observed them, but which I am myself prepared to disclose. I once wrote a poem called "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": I am convinced that it would never have been called "Love Song" but for a title of Kipling's that stuck obstinately in my head: "The Love Song of Har Dyal".[17]

However, the origin of the name Prufrock is not certain, and Eliot never remarked on its origin other than to claim he was unsure of how he came upon the name. Many scholars and indeed Eliot himself have pointed towards the autobiographical elements in the character of Prufrock, and Eliot at the time of writing the poem was in the habit of rendering his name as "T. Stearns Eliot", very similar in form to that of J. Alfred Prufrock.[18] It is suggested that the name "Prufrock" came from Eliot's youth in St. Louis, Missouri, where the Prufrock-Litton Company, a large furniture store, occupied one city block downtown at 420–422 North Fourth Street.[19][20][21] In a 1950 letter, Eliot said: "I did not have, at the time of writing the poem, and have not yet recovered, any recollection of having acquired this name in any way, but I think that it must be assumed that I did, and that the memory has been obliterated."[22]

Epigraph[edit]

The draft version of the poem's epigraph comes from Dante's Purgatorio (XXVI, 147–148):[11]: 39, 41 

'sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor'.
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.

'be mindful in due time of my pain'.
Then dived he back into that fire which refines them.[23]

He finally decided not to use this, but eventually used the quotation in the closing lines of his 1922 poem The Waste Land. The quotation that Eliot did choose comes from Dante also. Inferno (XXVII, 61–66) reads:

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

If I but thought that my response were made
to one perhaps returning to the world,
this tongue of flame would cease to flicker.
But since, up from these depths, no one has yet
returned alive, if what I hear is true,
I answer without fear of being shamed.[24]

In context, the epigraph refers to a meeting between Dante Alighieri and Guido da Montefeltro, who was condemned to the eighth circle of Hell for providing counsel to Pope Boniface VIII, who wished to use Guido's advice for a nefarious undertaking. This encounter follows Dante's meeting with Ulysses, who himself is also condemned to the circle of the Fraudulent. According to Ron Banerjee, the epigraph serves to cast ironic light on Prufrock's intent. Like Guido, Prufrock had never intended his story to be told, and so by quoting Guido, Eliot reveals his view of Prufrock's love song.[25]

Frederick Locke contends that Prufrock himself is suffering from a split personality of sorts, and that he embodies both Guido and Dante in the Inferno analogy. One is the storyteller; the other the listener who later reveals the story to the world. He posits, alternatively, that the role of Guido in the analogy is indeed filled by Prufrock, but that the role of Dante is filled by the reader ("Let us go then, you and I"). In that, the reader is granted the power to do as he pleases with Prufrock's love song.[26]

Themes and interpretation[edit]

Because the poem is concerned primarily with the irregular musings of the narrator, it can be difficult to interpret. Laurence Perrine wrote, "[the poem] presents the apparently random thoughts going through a person's head within a certain time interval, in which the transitional links are psychological rather than logical".[27] This stylistic choice makes it difficult to determine exactly what is literal and what is symbolic. On the surface, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" relays the thoughts of a sexually frustrated middle-aged man who wants to say something but is afraid to do so, and ultimately does not.[27][28] The dispute, however, lies in to whom Prufrock is speaking, whether he is actually going anywhere, what he wants to say, and to what the various images refer.

The intended audience is not evident. Some believe that Prufrock is talking to another person[29] or directly to the reader,[30] while others believe Prufrock's monologue is internal. Perrine writes "The 'you and I' of the first line are divided parts of Prufrock's own nature",[27] while professor emerita of English Mutlu Konuk Blasing suggests that the "you and I" refers to the relationship between the dilemmas of the character and the author.[31] Similarly, critics dispute whether Prufrock is going somewhere during the course of the poem. In the first half of the poem, Prufrock uses various outdoor images (the sky, streets, cheap restaurants and hotels, fog), and talks about how there will be time for various things before "the taking of a toast and tea", and "time to turn back and descend the stair." This has led many to believe that Prufrock is on his way to an afternoon tea, where he is preparing to ask this "overwhelming question".[27] Others, however, believe that Prufrock is not physically going anywhere, but rather, is playing through it in his mind.[30][31]

Perhaps the most significant dispute lies over the "overwhelming question" that Prufrock is trying to ask. Many believe that Prufrock is trying to tell a woman of his romantic interest in her,[27] pointing to the various images of women's arms and clothing and the final few lines in which Prufrock laments that the mermaids will not sing to him. Others, however, believe that Prufrock is trying to express some deeper philosophical insight or disillusionment with society, but fears rejection, pointing to statements that express a disillusionment with society, such as "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" (line 51). Many believe that the poem is a criticism of Edwardian society and Prufrock's dilemma represents the inability to live a meaningful existence in the modern world.[32] McCoy and Harlan wrote "For many readers in the 1920s, Prufrock seemed to epitomize the frustration and impotence of the modern individual. He seemed to represent thwarted desires and modern disillusionment."[30]

In general, Eliot uses imagery which is indicative of Prufrock's character,[27] representing aging and decay. For example, "When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table" (lines 2–3), the "sawdust restaurants" and "cheap hotels", the yellow fog, and the afternoon "Asleep...tired... or it malingers" (line 77), are reminiscent of languor and decay, while Prufrock's various concerns about his hair and teeth, as well as the mermaids "Combing the white hair of the waves blown back / When the wind blows the water white and black," show his concern over aging.

Use of allusion[edit]

Like many of Eliot's poems, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" makes numerous allusions to other works, which are often symbolic themselves.

Which of the following themes Does The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?

Which is an example of an allusion from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock apex?

What is the theme of the poem J Alfred Prufrock?

What is Prufrock's main dilemma in the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?