1. T.S. Eliot Anglophile Moved to England at age 25, citizen at 39
Expression of his own anxiety—virgin at age 26
Graduated from Harvard
Post-graduate work at the Sorbonne in Paris
Before WWI, he lived in London
Gave up his U.S. citizenship and became a subject of the king of England
Was a publisher and critic
Most crucial influence: the Symbolists
Believed poetry was an art of suggestion rather than statement

2. When people said his poetry was too complex and difficult to understand, he responded that poetry must be complex to express the complexities of modern life.
Wanted to bring the rhythms of native speech into the mainstream of world literature
Wrote The Waste Land considered the most significant poem of the 20th century; it describes a civilization that is spiritually empty and paralyzed by indecision
Considered a pioneer of modern poetry
Awarded the Nobel Prize in literature
Frequently came to the U.S. to lecture and read his poems, sometimes to audiences that filled football stadiums
The irony – he was a man once regarded as the most difficult to understand poet of his era, yet achieved the drawing power of a rock star

4. Stream of consciousness: method of narrative representation of "random" thoughts which follow in a freely-flowing style.
Dramatic monologue: audience is implied; there is no dialogue; and the poet speaks through an assumed voice—a character, a fictional identity, or a persona. Because a dramatic monologue is by definition one person’s speech, it is offered without overt analysis or commentary, placing emphasis on subjective qualities that are left to the audience to interpret.

5. What is the definition of a long song?
Write down as many love songs as you can think of.
Commonalities?
Unrequited love?
1:20

6. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
What do you think it will be about? What kind of man do you expect Prufrock to be?
Love song—is he addressing someone he loves?

7. Prude…Frock
Prude: :  a person who is excessively or priggishly attentive to propriety or decorum; especially :  a woman who shows or affects extreme modesty
Frock: a woman's or girl's dress. : a long outer garment worn by some Christian monks and friars. 

8. Dante’s The Divine Comedy:
“If I believed that my response was heard By anyone returning to the world, this flame would stand and never stir again, But since no man has ever come alive out of this gulf of Hell, if I hear true, I’ll answer, with no fear of infamy.”
What tone does the epigraph set?

9. Guido da Montefeltro 8th circle
Committed atrocities in war (intentionally gave false counsel)
Asked for forgiveness BEFORE he committed them
Tried to outsmart God
What does this suggest?

10. New York Times Article
Eliot told Kristian Smidt that the “you” is “merely some friend or companion, presumably of the male sex, whom the speaker is at that moment addressing, and that it has no emotional content whatever.” But in an interview in 1962 he said that Prufrock was a man of about forty and in part himself and that he was using the theory of the split personality.

11. Anxious to take action vs. struggling to hold him back
Is this an accurate feeling considering the circumstances?

12. Sawdust Restaurants
How would you characterize the place the speaker wants to explore?

13. Streets that follow like a tedious argument/Of insidious intent
Insidious:  causing harm in a way that is gradual or not easily noticed.
Tedious argument= labyrinth
Tangle of paths as confusing as a long argument
Designed to lead wanderers to dangerous places
What would his own “insidious intent” be?
Guido’s insidious intent in trying to fool God

14. Michelangelo
Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art
Modernism: permanent influences and elements that “come and go”
David
Perfect man?
Prufrock “sculpting” man he wants to be?

15. Homage
Eliot creatively translates/borrows from an author whom he much admired and whose style inspired much of Prufrock, Jules LaForgue.
LaForgue’s lines read:
Dans la piece les femmes vont et viennent En parlant des maîtres de Sienne.
i.e. “in the room the women come and go / talking of the Siennese Masters.”

17. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It is the basis for the musical Cats

18. Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”
The shepherd says, “Had we but world enough and time/This coyness, lady, were no crime”
Goes on to say that then he and the girl he wants could talk endlessly about whether to make love, but life is fleeting: “The grave’s a fine and private place / But none I think do there embrace.”

19. Works and Days, Hesiod Greek poet
Importance of working for a living and not living a pointless life

20. Toast and Tea
The toast and tea are metonyms for everyday social convention. They contrast with the deep anxiety Prufrock feels inside.
Eliot uses tea to represent something similar in Portrait of a Lady:
“I smile, of course, And go on drinking tea”

21. “Do I dare?”
What does this question suggest about his character?

22. Allusion: Rent
How do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, In midnights, in cups of coffee…

23. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Orsino’s soliloquy:
If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. — That strain again; it had a dying fall: O, it came oer my ear, like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing, and giving odour! Enough! No more. ‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
Dying fall in music=notes that fade
Alternate interpretation-”The little death”

25. Hamlet’s quip to Polonius:  “Yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.”  
Crabs scuttle horizontally and never forward, much as the speaker moves horizontally in thought but never forward in his actions.
Desire of being heard and outspoken- a sound in an otherwise silent sea, the unpleasant grinding of claws on the floor. A loud, discordant sound in the pseudo-intellectual conversation of the women that “Come and go talking of Michaelangelo”.

26. Temptation of Christ in Desert and Christ’s Passion
 He both fasted and prayed for the remission of humanity’s sins.

27. John the Baptist
Herod beheaded him upon Salome’s request. (Mark 6:14-29)

28. Ironic Allusion to Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”
Would it have been worth it to make a move and risk ruining our comfortable, superficial chit-chat?
A carpe-diem-esque line:
“Let us roll all our strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one ball; And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life…”

29. Lazarus and Dives Luke 16:19–31
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

30. Epigraph
Unlike Dives, Dante does make it back from Hell to warn people
Prufrock=Dives who never escapes his terrible situation

31. Aporia to talk about not being able to talk about something
“It is impossible to say just what I mean!”
Eliot could be revealing his own personal struggle to express himself through Prufrock.

33. Hamlet “To be, or not to be, that is the question—”
Another “overwhelming question”
Indecision

34. Polonius Polonius makes every effort to agree with Hamlet:
HAMLET Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? LORD POLONIUS By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed. HAMLET Methinks it is like a weasel. LORD POLONIUS It is backed like a weasel. HAMLET Or like a whale? LORD POLONIUS Very like a whale.
“Never a borrower or a lender be”—high sentence, cautious, long winded, obvious (“O, I am slain!”)

35. Insignificant character in the end
Prufrock thinks his destiny is similar. He may play a minor role in a larger story, or swell the numbers of a royal court, but he’s basically not a very big deal. He’s like an extra in a film or a hanger-on in an entourage.

36. Chaucer
“Full of high sentence” (“speaking all classy-like”) is an allusion to the General Prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in which the narrator describes the Clerk of Oxford as “Ful of hy sentence.”
In Chaucer the description is a compliment, but Prufrock turns it around to sound pompous and silly.

37. Acceptance?

38. John Donne’s “Song” “Teach me to heare Mermaides singing.”
“Nowhere lives a woman true and fair”
The song has pessimistic view of women. Prufrock doesn’t think there is a woman out there for him.

39. What might the mermaids represent?
What is the meaning of the final line? How is it a good example of stream of consciousness? What thoughts can you get from “drown”?
What is ironic about the title, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”?

40. Modernism
Epitomize the frustration and impotence of the modern individual
Represent thwarted desires
Modern disillusionment
Anti-hero
Pathetic
Not grand enough even to be mocked

41. Beyond Don’t be like Prufrock!
Introduce yourself to someone of the opposite sex and strike up a conversation
1-2 page response to experience
Describe conversation
How did you feel beforehand?
During? Afterwards?
Finally, compare yourself to Prufrock