Summary The poets T.S. Eliot and Amy Lowell share many biographical similarities, despite their very different literary pedigrees. Both had ties to Boston and to Harvard; both were highly influenced by the Imagist poet Ezra Pound. Pound was an editor of Eliot's "Waste Land" and Eliot dedicated his seminal modernist poem to Pound. However, in contrast to the amicable relationship of Eliot and Pound, Lowell was Pound's literary adversary. Pound accused her of diluting the term 'Imagist' which caused Lowell to avoid associating with the modernists Pound supported such as James Joyce and Eliot (Beach 77). Despite the fact they were not friends in life, in their poetry the modernists Lowell and Eliot often expressed a similar view of human and divine love. Although Pound considered Lowell conservative and of an earlier generation, Lowell used vers libre, or unrhymed poetry with varying line lengths in a radical fashion to great effect in many of her works. Her 1919 poem "Madonna of the Evening Flowers fuses religious and natural symbolism, suggesting a communion of sentiment between the feelings the speaker has for the divine and the human. The poem ends with an image of praying and suggests the speaker's love has a holy quality. Lowell's poetry has a sincerity that contrasts with the tone of Eliot's more satirical "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." "Prufrock" is an intentionally ironic poem, contrasting the high romantic aspirations of the speaker with his humble, real
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot is a poem unlike any I have ever read before. The poem starts off with the speaker taking what seems to be a potential lover along for a walk. The speaker first describes their surroundings and says that “the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table” and that “the streets follow like a tedious argument”. The sky is described as someone who has been anesthetized, someone who can’t feel anything. The streets are like an argument, something that can tear two people apart. The similes used make the setting seem dark and dreary. The speaker then brings up that he has a question he wishes to
When looking at the poem ‘Prufrock’ we must first notice that the full title is ‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock.’ This title seems almost ironic as, after reading the poem, we realise that the poem
By looking through a critical lens at T Stearns Eliot’s poetry in light of his 20th century, modernist context, much is revealed about his personal and the rapidly evolving societal beliefs of that era. Through his repeating motif of time and fragmentation throughout his poems, Eliot reveals the prevalent feelings of isolation while in society along with the need to hide one’s feelings and emotions in this degrading society. His exploration of the use of ambiguity and stream of consciousness by Eliot, which is a characteristic of modernist artists, allows his work to resound over decades while being interpreted and differently understood by every audience that encounters them.
When reading the title of T.S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” it is believed we are in store for a poem of romance and hope. A song that will inspire embrace and warmth of the heart, regretfully this is could not be further from the truth. This poem takes us into the depths of J. Alfred Prufrock, someone who holds faltering doubt and as a result may never come to understand real love. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” takes us through Prufrock’s mindset and his self-doubting and self-defeating thoughts. With desolate imagery, a tone that is known through the ages and delicate diction we see a man who is insecure, tentative and completely fearful.
American born poet, T.S. Eliot reflects modernistic ideas of isolation, individual perception and human consciousness in his many poems. His poems express the disillusionment of the post–World War I generation with both literary and social values and traditions. In one of Eliot’s most famous poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which was published in 1915, a speaker who is very unhappy with his life takes readers on a journey through the hell he is living in. In this journey, Prufrock criticizes the well-dressed, upstanding citizens who love their material pleasures more than they love other people, while explaining he feels ostracized from the society of women. Eliot’s use of isolation, human consciousness and individual perception is quite evident in his dramatic monologue within the story of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock wants to be seen as a normal citizen who can find friends or a lover, but his anxiety-driven isolation forces him to live a life that relates more to Hell than paradise. In over examining every fine detail of his life, Prufrock perceives himself as useless and even a waste of life. By using many poetic devices including repetition, personification, and imagery Eliot drives readers to feel the painful reality of Prufrock’s life. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S Eliot uses modernistic ideas and poetic devices to portray how Prufrock’s life relates to Hell while simultaneously criticizing social aspects of the younger post–World War I generation.
In T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, the speaker, Prufrock feels alienated
T.S Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is an examination of human insecurity and folly, embodied in the title's J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot's story of a man's "overwhelming question", his inability to ask it, and consequently, his mental rejection plays off the poem's many ambiguities, both structural and literal. Eliot uses these uncertainties to develop both the plot of the poem and the character of J. Alfred Prufrock.
“A Love Song for Bobby Long” written by Grayson Capps and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” written by TS Eliot remind the world of men who struggle with the demons of life. The little voices in your head saying “I don’t think you can do that.” These voices cause you to doubt yourself and your talents. They take the life out of you, and cause you to wonder if you even have a purpose here on earth. Now let’s take a deeper look into these poems and closely analyze their similarities and differences.
Amy Lowell’s poem is about a woman in the 18th century, whom is bound by her own society as most women were at the time. One of the examples that showed her shackled and imprisoned was made apparent on how she dressed in the quote “Held rigid to the pattern, by the stiffness of my gown,” the gown stiffness here represent a symbol of her society and how she was held by it every single day in her life. Her society at that time wanted women to act passively by not expressing their feelings and emotions fully. Therefore, She tried to break the “pattern” in her life, by marrying her to be husband, whom she was in love with, but she was not able to express her emotions fully. Because her lover died in a war, to an extent when she heard the news about his death, she was not able to express her grief as society did not welcome this kind of behavior, making her stuck in this pattern, this Application of T.S. Eliot Theory on Amy Lowell’s “Patterns” will try to find whether Amy passes the Eliotian test of writing a successful modern poem or not.
1. How does the epigraph from Dante’s Inferno help Eliot comment on the modern world in“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”? What does it tell us about the setting of this poem? How is Montefeltro’s miscalculation related to the poem?
Throughout his college years, Eliot was active in the writing of literature, even having some of his early poetry published in the Harvard Advocate. In England, Eliot met and befriended fellow expatriate Ezra Pound, who was very
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a uniquely styled piece of literature. In this poem Eliot employs a literary method of writing called "stream of consciousness." This is a difficult method to grasp outside of the literary genre to attempt to understand it within the context of the higher language of poetry can further confuse readers.
Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on February 9, 1874. She was the daughter of Augustus Lowell and Katherine Bigelow Lawrence. Both her mother and father were from New England aristocrats. Aristocrats are wealthy and prominent members of society. Her father, Augustus, was a businessman, civic leader, and horticulturalist. Lowell’s mother, Katherine, was an accomplished musician and linguist. Lowell was, although, considered as “almost disreputable,” poets ran in the Lowell family. James Russell Lowell, a first cousin, and later Robert Lowell was one of the many poets her family had to offer.
T.S. Eliot was an outstanding author and an exemplary representation of the ideas of modernism. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," despite being one of T.S Eliot's earliest publications, still manages to remain one of the most famous. He uses this poem to not only draw out the psychological aspect of members of modern society, but also to draw out the aspect of the time that he lived in. The speaker of this poem is a modern man who feels alone, isolated, and incapable of making decisive actions for himself. Prufrock desires to speak to a woman about his love for her, but he continuously hesitates while attempting to do so. This poem demonstrates a theme of fragmentation, which is a theme that we can see throughout the entire
This time Eliot does not quote another piece of text, however, he does consciously foregrounds that he uses the opening to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (Bennett and Royle 5). This profusion of intertextuality, even before “The Waste Land” is well and truly on