12.6.12

T.S. Eliot: THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

An Analysis

by: S. Sulochana Rengachari



Price: Rs. 40.00
pp: 72
ISBN 978-81-7977-464-9




The Nobel Laureate Thomas Stearns Eliot has been called the literary dictator of the twentieth century. His poetry is essentially modern, blending emotion and thought to establish unification of sensibility. The theme, the failure of communication, started even in his early poems. Students have generally found it a little difficult to understand Eliot’s poetry and hence this little book of analysis. The intricate echo of multiple sources is outstanding in the later poems but the concept can be identified even in this comparatively early poem. Besides touching on Eliot’s life and works, the variegated influences on the artist, both British and European have also been expounded. He grasped numerous ideas from great writers like Dante, T.E. Hulme, Irving Babbitt, George Santayana, Remy de Gourmont, Imagists and Symbolists.

Eliot, like Henry James presents a world of genteel society portrayed from inside. He also views it with significant discernment. He treats the rift between man and woman which indicates the greater theme of the individual’s isolation. The theme is all-encompassing in the poem commencing with the “patient etherized upon a table” and concluding with the mermaids who will not “sing to me.” The book answers several queries like Prufrock’s dilemma, comic elements, Prufrock’s delusion, themes, modernity, irony and sarcasm, Prufrock’s problems and so on.


List of Contents:
The Age of T.S. Eliot
Life and Works
The Literary Works of Eliot
Title and Sources
Introduction to the Poem
Detailed Summary
Critical Analysis of the Poem
Notes, Meanings and Explanations
Character of Prufrock
Prufrock as a Typical Modern
Prufrock’s Problems
Objective Correlative in the Poem
Significance of the Epigraph
Dramatic and Interior Monologue
Major Themes
Eliot’s Theory of Poetry
Irony and Sarcasm
Imagery and Symbols in the Poem
Eliot’s Style in ‘Prufrock’
   Questions
   Select Bibliography

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