Abstract Closely linked to the arguments in this essay are those that regard Eliot's loyalty and identity as an American poet and, perhaps, as an American patriot. However, the following discourse tests the validity of Nina Baym's critical account of American literary criticism, "Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors," by examining the way in which three different critics have treated T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". As it follows, Baym's essay seeks answers to the question of how and why women authors have been excluded from the American literary canon.
From the Paper "In 1914, when T.S. Eliot published "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Chicago based Poetry, the face of American poetry changed forever. There is little doubt that Ezra Pound saw it coming: "An American called Eliot this P.M.," London-based Ezra Pound wrote to Poetry magazine's editor in 1914. "I think he has some sense tho' he has not yet sent me any verse." A week later, according to Joseph Parisi and Stephen Young's Dear Editor: A History of Poetry in Letters (Norton), Pound wrote again about the 26-year old T.S. Eliot: "I was jolly well right . . . He has sent in the best poem I have yet had or seen from an American." The world was changing. War will do that to a society. So, not only did modern poetry get a face-lift, but also post-modern American literary criticism was born. Eliot had a major influence on these developing sensibilities as well as the poets who came after him. However, to call Eliot an American poet is controversial because he did in fact become a British citizen in 1927."
