"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Unrequited Love

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how T.s. Eliot's poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", is a tale of the unrequited love of a middle age intellectual. In particular, it looks at how J. Alfred Prufrock is an anxious intellectual who cannot involve himself with the social urban environment of cities and how the fictional character, in some ways, embodies Eliot's own insecurities about life and intellect.

From the Paper:

"Eliot represents his own insecurities through the character of J. Alfred Prufrock. He is an intellectual, and does not understand the city-dwellers which surround him. Eliot's mother and five sisters sheltered him as a young boy, (Garraty, 1999). This could very well lead to problems with understanding and properly interacting with women outside the family. These problems later come up in the fictional characters of his writing. Later in his career, after writing the poem, Eliot himself suffered through a failed marriage, (Garraty, 1999). These later failures attest to a life of intellectual insecurities. Eliot was often "regarded ass too academic" and "frequently criticized," (Garraty, 1999). He is sometimes blamed for the end of the romantic and neoclassical era of popular poetry with the introduction of the modern style of poetry. The similarities of the intellectual J. Alfred Prufrock include a sense of intellectual solitude. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Ayers, David. Modernism: A Short Introduction. Blackwell Publishing. 2004.
• Brians, Paul., Gallwey, Mary, Hughes, Douglas, and Hussain, Azfar (eds.). Reading About the World, Volume 2. Harcourt Brace Custom Books. 1998. 2008. Washington University. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/eliot.html
• Eliot, T.S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Abrams, M. H., Greenblatt, Stephen, (eds.).
• Garraty, John A., Carnes, Mark (eds.) Eliot's Life and Career." American National Biography. New York. Oxford University Press. 1999. 24 Apr. 2008 American Council of Learned Sciences. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/life.htm
• Galenson, David W., "Literary Life Cycles: The Careers of Modern American Poets" (July 2003). 24 Apr. 2008. NBER Working Paper No. W9856. http://ssrn.com/abstract=425592

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