The Importance Of Modernism And English Literature

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.

Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.

T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” illustrates the fear of the fragmentation of society today. In the poem, Eliot creates the persona of Prufrock. Prufrock is speaking to an unknown listener. The persona of Prufrock is Eliot’s interpretation of Western society and its impotency. His views on society is seen as a modernistic point of view, which idolizes the ideas to regress back to a classicist era. Eliot illustrates his contempt for the modern society by illustrating fragmentation with synecdoche, characterization of Prufrock, and allusions to literary traditions throughout the narrative. In his poem, Eliot clings to the idea of a classical society in which he is witnessing fall apart.

T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is an ironic depiction of a man’s inability to take decisive action in a modern society that is void of meaningful human connection. The poem reinforces its central idea through the techniques of fragmentation, and through the use of Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world. Using a series of natural images, Eliot uses fragmentation to show Prufrock’s inability to act, as well as his fear of society. Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world is also evident throughout. At no point in the poem did Prufrock confess his love, even though it is called “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, but through this poem, T.S. Eliot voices his social commentary about the world that

T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” illustrates the poet’s fear of the fragmentation of modern society. In the poem, Eliot creates the persona of his speaker, J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock is speaking to an unknown listener. The persona of Prufrock is Eliot’s interpretation of Western society and its impotency at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. His views are modernistic, which idolize the classical forms while incorporating new ideas about psychology and the subconscious. Eliot illustrates his contempt for the faithlessness of modern society by illustrating its fragmentation with synecdoche, characterization of Prufrock, and allusions to literary traditions throughout the narrative. In his poem, Eliot illustrates his view of a great tradition that he is witnessing as it falls apart.

The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock is a long and challenging poem that seems rather disjointed and confusing upon first reading. It seems as though us readers will never understand the deeper meaning of the poem without getting inside Eliot's head and seeing his thought process for ourselves. However, through digging deeper and examining the piece closer we can find that this is meant to be an ironic and tragic tale of a man who feels isolated and incapable of decisive action. It is ironically called a "love song" because Prufrock longs to profess love and affection to a woman, but is too afraid to do it.

Allusions are used in literature to express the idea of one work by incorporating another piece of work into it. In T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Prufrock explains his life encounters, and his interpretations of his thoughts such as the thought of death and life experiences. The use of allusions are incorporated to explain Prufrock’s characteristics and explanations in relation to situations that he encounters. Allusions not only serve the purpose of explaining, but it also allows readers to interpret the work in a different form. With this, readers get access to a better look of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Paper Assignment – Close Reading In T.S. Eliot’s 1915 modernist poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, the overall mood and tone in the poem reflect the speaker’s opinions of the time it was written in. An interesting way to look at this poem is to assume that the author used the character of Alfred Prufrock to explore his own attempt of trying to make sense of the rapidly changing, confusing, and gloomy world in which he lived. So, we can safely assume that trying to make sense of the outside world is a recurring motif in this poem. This can be seen by looking at both the poem as a whole, as well as the quote chosen for analysis.

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.

During the time period of modernism, society saw a massive shift, especially from the everyday life of people in the cities. With improvements being made in transportation and technology this shifted the way of life to a much faster pace, shrinking the distances between people around the world thus creating a more rapid pace of life. The emphasis on radical innovations left many people will feelings of despair, a sense of meaninglessness, and hopelessness. With the ever growing developments to society, a lack of traditional and cultural norms and beliefs in closely held faiths were strained. These concepts were much illustrated in the literature of the time. Literary figures such as T.S Eliot flawlessly depicted the perception of the troubles of the “modern man” in his poem The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, while also integrating the new way of looking and appreciating life will all the good and bad components, ideas brought forth by the forerunners of modernism.

T.S. Eliot was one among few poets and authors that dominated the years between the First and Second World Wars. Eliot showed his use of modernism techniques through “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, creating a powerful reputation around the world, particularly as a member of The Lost Generation in the 1920s. Eliot moved to and settled in London where he worked with famous poets including Ezra Pound, and published his first collection of poems (McMichael 1358). “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a famous work that was almost a mockery of the romance-driven main character of the story, as it represented the indecisiveness of a personality and the superiority of an anti-romanticism ideal.

T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” draws attention to the idea that time is of the essence. On the surface, Prufrock is portrayed as a man who is incapable of making decisions and lacks self-confidence. This is evident through his passive nature, where he continuously delays having to talk to women because he believes there is enough time. Written in the era of modernism, the reader is capable of unraveling that the poem’s true purpose was not only to show Prufrock’s inability to make decisions when it comes to love, but to show the desolation that one faces in times of a modernistic transition. Eliot depicts Prufrock’s transition phase through a gloomy and solemn tone, incorporating imagery, metaphor and synecdoche to

Thomas Stearns Eliot and Ernest Hemingway both captured the essence of the modern man during a time in history that the world was changing with the characters they created and the symbols used. “Modernism” was the name given to different styles of literature and art after World War I. This war was so horrific that many of the writers used their own experiences when creating their stories and poems. T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway both created characters that embody the “modern man” in two different, but similar ways. J. Alfred Prufrock from T.S. Elliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Nick from Hemmingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River”. Both Prufrock and Nick share the characteristics of loneliness, anxiety, and finding their place, that represent the modern man during this era. Even though not all modern men are lonely, the characteristics, commonalities, and differences that both of these characters share are represented in these pieces of work.

T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is inhabited by both a richly developed world and character and one is able to categorize the spaces in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to correspond to Prufrock’s mind. Eliot uses the architecture of the three locations described in the text to explore parts of Prufrock's mind in the Freudian categories of id, ego, and super-ego; the city that is described becomes the Ego, the room where he encounters women his Id and the imagined ocean spaces his Super Ego.

To get to the bottom of everything, the background knowledge must be built up before anything. The Modernist Period came to English Literature around the beginning of the twentieth century and marked its way with groundbreaking ways of viewing tradition and worldly views. A series of events would have been happening around this time to shape such views; one such event would be named the War to End All Wars. World War I had just broke out and continued to ravage Europe from the years 1914 through to 1918 and the horrors that happened during this war had shocked the people of that time greatly, which left such an impact on their lives. This in turn made the citizens question their humanity and what the world was becoming of, thus turning all the past beliefs and assurance in things like religion, politics, or society now no longer relevant since “ two world wars in the span of a generation [had] effectively shell-shocked all of Western civilization” (Rahn 1). Religion in the past provided the citizens coherency, guidance, and even insight into the human condition, but as times were changing it seemed as though religion was becoming to be replaced by art, literature, etc. Not all modernists rejected religion though, some stayed neutral and rather just questioned the beliefs and aspects of the past enlightenment thinkers. With the new and becoming age of the industrialized world, politics came to be ignored as well by the anti-conformists of the period, proving to be too