Please only write for topic #4:
T. S. Eliot’s great lyric The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
represents the work of a major modern poet. Eliot’s
poem includes symbols, images, and wit.
– 14 point font and double spaced
– no sources, only quote poem
– 3-4 pages, you will need to consider the following:
· How does
Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock (1910-1911) become a prime example of modern poetry? What does the
title mean? The lyric begins with: “Let us go then,
you and I.” What sort of journey does the speaker undergo? When does the
speaker undertake the quest? Why does Eliot compare the “evening” to a “patient
etherised” (lines 2-3)? What does the image suggest about consciousness?
· What is
imagism? How is this evident in Eliot’s poem? CHOOSE TWO IMAGES: 1) What does
the image of women who “come and go talking of Michelangelo” mean? OR 2) What
does the juxtaposition of the images of “descend[ing] the stair” and a “bald
spot” suggest? OR 3) What does the image of “coffee spoons” mean? OR 4) What do
the “ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” mean? OR 5)
What does the image of the “eternal Footman” holding the coat of the speaker
suggest? What is significant about the POETIC SUBJECT, THEMES, and POETIC TONE
in these images?
· To what
extent do you consider Eliot’s The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to be an elegy? How do you INTERPRET the last
line regarding the “human voices” who “wake us” and “we drown”? How do these
images represent modern poetry?
