"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Paper Summary:

The paper labels T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" as a powerful evocation of the almost pathological fragmentation of one man's sense of self and place. The paper goes through the poem and shows how Eliot marks Prufrock as a man tormented by what he perceives as his place, or more accurately, his displacement in the world. The paper illustrates how Prufrock is unable to bring a sense of completion or wholeness to his psychological being, living forever in a world that is fragmented and fractured both in terms of his psychology and his language. Eliot's techniques that convey how Prufrock is unable to see himself as an identifiable part of a complex universe are also identified. The paper includes an annotated bibliography.

From the Paper:

"Often considered one of the most powerful statements of the psychology and cultural politics of the Modernist movement, T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a powerful evocation of the almost pathological fragmentation of one man's sense of self and place. Trapped in a kind of modernist angst about a world that is shifting its values and definitions around him and in ways he cannot possibly understand, Prufrock is a modernist Everyman spinning into a poem and an exploration of "deep unconsciousness" (Gray, 56) only to find, as Yeats had argued so eloquently, that the center cannot possibly hold. As McNamara summarizes, it is a modernist stance that renders this poem a profound commentary on the human condition."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bush, Ronald. T.S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style. New York: Oxford UP, 1984.A fascinating study that adds little to an understanding of the psychology of Prufrock, but does add much to a sense of reading the poem through its silences and its ellipses.
• Childs, Donald J. "Knowledge and Experience in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." ELH 55.3 (1988): 685-699.A very detailed reading of the poem that connects Prufrock's psychological condition to the philosophy of identity and personality of F.H. Bradley, which Eliot knew in great detail.
• Christ, Carol T. Victorian and Modern Poetics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984.A key text for understanding the political and psychological contours of modern thought and modernist poetics.
• Craig, Cairns. Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry. London: Croom Helm, 1982.A contextual discussion of modernism, a modernist psychology, and the perceived and real role of poetry in this world.
• Drew, Elizabeth. T.S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry. New York: C. Scribner's, 1949.A structural analysis of the poetry that underscores both Eliot's poetics and its relation to the modernist poetic of stability and truth. Works well to contextualize Prufrock's isolation and fragmentation as both person and symbol.

More papers on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

• Comparison Essay # 8122 : "T.S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
• Analytical Essay # 89653 : "T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
• Analytical Essay # 54214 : "Setting in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
• Poem Review # 128917 : "Teaching "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: