Question

In what ways is “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” similar to or different from a traditional love song, and what does this reveal about modernist attitudes? Cite evidence from the poem to support your analysis in at least two hundred words.

Answer 1

The poem is a revisitation of a traditional romantic love song which is altered in order to present a critique of the sentiment of a classical liberal education. Modernist poetry, as such, is meant to express the challenges of progress, the struggle to come up with new ideas and criticism of old patterns of thought.

The refrain which goes ¨In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michaelangelo¨ frames the symbolism of the urban setting describing the emotional context where Prufrock reflects on modern existance. This is meant to emphasize the day-to-day existence that is the focus of the truly modern thinker.

The criticism of a classical form of education is stated most clearly in the following verses: ¨To say: ¨I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back down to tell you all, I shall tell you all¨ - If one, settling a pillow by her head Should say: ¨That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.¨.

The biblical theme of the resurrection is brought up to poke fun at the preoccupation in canonical forms of education with studying the ´cornerstones´ of European culture without having a context relating them to the issues and concepts which are important in the contemporary sense.

Answer 2

T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is said to be one of the first true modernist poems due to its continuously shifting, yet repetitive monologue that explores the thoughts of a mature man while he seeks for romantic love and meaning in an uncertain world.

“Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions--Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?--And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.” Throughout the poem, he jumps from subject to subject, creating the feeling that he is thinking about his potential lover often, getting distracted on other subjects, but always coming back to it.

Overall, the poem is a revisitation of a traditional romantic love song, and a theme of modernist writers, the concept of “making it new” called for poets like Eliot to abandon, if not challenge, various poetic stylings of the Romantic period.