Exploring Modernist Themes in Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'
This analysis delves into T.S. Eliot's modernization of the dramatic monologue in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' focusing on themes of interiority, isolation, and intellectual reference. Eliot's influences from French Symbolists and his use of fragmentation, juxtaposition, and the devaluation of the hero are examined, shedding light on the poem's complex structure and meaning.
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Presentation Transcript
Introduction to British Literature May 12-13, 2015
a variation on the dramatic monologue, Eliot modernizes the form by removing the implied listeners and focusing on Prufrock s interiorit y and isolation. powerful for its range of intellectual reference and also for the vividness of character achiev ed.
strongly influenced by the French Symbolists, like Mallarm , Rimbaud, and Baudelaire An individual Eliot creates with Prufrock: the moody, urban, isolated-yet-sensitive thinker, an unacknowledged poet, a sort of artist for t he common man.
its use of fragmentation and juxtaposition. The f ragmentation (and reassembly) being mental focu s. fragmentation, although anxiety-provoking, is ne vertheless productive the poem would have seemed much more nihilisti c suggesting that something new can be made fr om the ruins. The series of hypothetical encounters at the poe m s center are iterated and discontinuous but ne vertheless lead to a sort of epiphany (albeit a dar k one) rather than just leading nowhere.
While Prufrock ends with a devaluation of its hero, it exalts its creator. The last line of the poem suggests otherwise that when the world intrudes, when hu man voices wake us, the dream is shatte red: we drown. With this single line, Eliot dis mantles the romantic notion that poetic geni us is all that is needed to triumph over t he destructive, impersonal forces of the mo dern world.
