Work 6/4/2021

Today we are beginning our study of 'The Love song of J Alfred Prufrock' in a similar way to the way we
have approached 'Preludes' and 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night'. We are going to be considering our first
impressions and trying to make some connections with the two poems we have already studied. We will
be framing our ongoing discussion around the following two quotes from the Introduction to Cambridge
reading that you can find in the 'files' section of this page.

 "[the poem is a] conscious exploration of the self as a 'deliberate fabrication'"

 "the dramatic monologue is no longer a vehicle for the exposure of an interesting personality, but
an invitation to the reader to experience the dismantling of personality. The monologue invites
the reader not simply to observe, but to participate actively in the poet's creation, from the inside
as it were, by re-enacting subjectively the world of the persona."

Textual Integrity:

Reading of Love Song and J. Alfred Prufrock

Prufrock: Initial Responses

- Repetitive:
o Women: rhyming couplet
o Repeated refrains that change.
o How should I presume?
o “That is not what I meant at all.”
o Rhetorical questions: going down a spiral.
o Sometimes he tries to answer them, but it seems anticlimactic.

Twilight setting  transitional movement of time/but Prufrock never moves himself (sense of
individual is stagnated)

- connects to night time in Rhapsody.

- The narrator never changes
- Preludes

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

Sense of world weariness with modern life.

Movement from the external to internal.

Prelude: In the real world, the outside landscape

Rhapsody: The cusp of the real and the internal mindscape. memories are bleeding out into the street

Prufrock: We have moved into Prufrock’s internal world. He is stuck within his mind.

Common motifs:

 “Butt ends of my days and ways”  linked to Preludes

 Extended metaphor of the cat – Rhapsody but Prufrock’s cat is more gentle, affectionate –
pervasive.
 Image of the woman, not obviously referring to prostitutes.  Links to Rhapsody and Preludes.
Tending towards negative

Similar sense of numbness to the end of Rhapsody:

- “His soul stretched tight” – Preludes

- “When the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table
- (streetscape
o Dodgy side of town -> one side of town, “one night cheap hotel”
o Sawdust restaurants with oyster shells: similar to Rhapsody
- Disembodies body Parts: Preludes throughout Prufock.
- Ocean imagery at the end is reminiscent of Rhapsody

Intertextual reference:

- Michelangelo
- Lazarus (Bible) 
- Hamlet: who is in a moral quandary, but doesn’t want to kill  keeps delaying. Going down a
similar existential crisis.
- Dante’s Inferno