1. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“ (1915)
T.S. Eliot

2. ironic monologue modern, urban man feels isolated
incapable of decisive action
ironic title - not a conventional love song he would like to speak of love
but he does not dare

3. Inferno by Dante evening of Good Friday in the year 1300
Dante Alighieri lost in forest
Virgil, the great Roman poet, guides Dante through Hell and eventually Heaven, where Dante's beloved Beatrice awaits
Nine levels of Hell

4. suggests Prufrock is one of the damned
and that he speaks only because he is sure no one will listen
the reader is overhearing his thoughts
"you and I" of the opening line includes the reader, suggesting that only by accompanying Purfrock can one understand his problems

5. PRUFROCK AS MODERN MAN represents thwarted desires and disillusionment
epitomizes frustration and impotence
represents thwarted desires and disillusionment
captures the sense of the unheroic nature of life
a pathetic figure, not tragic

6. J. Alfred Prufrock lives in solitary gloom
imagines his attempt to converse with the woman he loves
fails to make her understand him
has attended parties many times and knows how it will be
hesitates out of fear of rejection

7. plans his approach and puts off the action (“There will be time“)
"Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?" to sing a “love song"
rehearses a speech but gives up almost as soon as he has started
rationalizes that his speaking would not have achieved any real response.
sees himself as the old fool

8. from Kathleen McCoy's and Judith Harlan's ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM 1785 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992: )

9. Representative Man of early Modernism?
shy, cultivated, oversensitive
sexually retarded (impotent?)
ruminative, isolated, self-aware
from A Profile of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Ed. Jack Myers and David Wojahan. Copyright © 1991 by Southern Illinois UP

10. trapped inside own self-awareness
look out on the world from deep inside private cave of feeling and see the world/themselves with unflattering exactness
cannot or will not do anything about dilemma so fall back on self-serving explanation
They quake before the World.

11. Allusions
organic, demanding a fusion and concentration of intellect, feeling, and experience
integrates ideas from life and literature
private, inside “jokes” that only some “get”