Preview

In the Context of Your Critical Study, How Does What You Have Listened to Either Support or Challenge Your Interpretation of the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Eliot’s Poetry as a Whole?

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1188 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
In the Context of Your Critical Study, How Does What You Have Listened to Either Support or Challenge Your Interpretation of the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Eliot’s Poetry as a Whole?
English Assessment Task 1 – Listening Task Response:

In the context of your critical study, how does what you have listened to either support or challenge your interpretation of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Eliot’s poetry as a whole?

There are several aspects of the university lecture on T. S Eliot’s poetry that support my personal interpretation of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Rhapsody on a Windy Night and Eliot’s poetry in general. My interpretation of Prufrock, Rhapsody and Eliot’s poetry is that this medium of expression is a way for Eliot to communicate his own personal feelings regarding his personal life and social context. This explains why his poetry often holds common themes of depression, alienation, ambiguity, criticism of society, hesitancy, submission and vulnerability. As to his context, Eliot’s social context was heavily intertwined with the ongoing industrial revolution and the progression of the modernist period. There are heavy themes of disillusionment in society within Eliot’s poetry, which suggest that these social movements have greatly affected Eliot’s perspective of social status. The suffragette movement had also begun the women’s rights movement during this time, which also seems to have affected Eliot’s perspective of the value and place women and love, especially in terms of his own personal experience.
The university lecture discussed the relationship between Eliot and his character Prufrock, as well as the nature of Prufrock’s character in his ambiguity and paradoxical sense of identity and place in society. The lecture also looked at Eliot’s life and ideas, including his idea of age, the observations of the character Prufrock and the procrastination of life that Eliot expresses through his work.

Eliot’s opinions and responses to his social context of the ongoing industrial revolution and the progression of the modernist period are greatly reflected in Prufrock. He uses the repetition and visual imagery

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    2. We can assume that the speaker of the poem is Prufrock, a character Eliot creates through the use of dramatic monologue—a technique in which a speaker addresses a silent listener, often revealing qualities he or she might wish to keep hidden. What kind of person is Prufrock? What does he unknowingly reveal?…

    • 4195 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Prufrock is often not sure if he should ask questions or not. One example of this is when…

    • 257 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem by T.S. Eliot “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a dramatic monologue written in 1915. Close to the end of the poem Mr. Prufrock stated “It is impossible to say just what I mean” (104). This statement will be analyzed to discover the hidden connotation of this phrase and convey the speaker’s ultimate goal. The questions that will be answered are: What does Prufrock mean when stating “It is impossible to say just what I mean” (104)? Is this statement stated due to a lack of vocabulary, words cannot convey his actual emotions, or is he just unable to express his own emotions to the listener? Are there other underlying circumstances to cause Prufrock not to speak his mind? By the end these questions will be understood along with the true…

    • 790 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Roman Empire was one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. The power and size they managed to obtain has been a constant subject of interest for historians and all those who are interested in history. Julius Caesar’s ascension to power marked the time from where the Romans steadily expanded their territory and by the time the Roman Republic dissolved and the Roman Empire emerged, the Empire had become so big that the Romans had then to face the problem of maintaining their empire. The Roman Empire maintained its power by romanizing everyone and everything they conquered, through good governance, client kings and their skilled military.…

    • 1526 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In his interview, “Robert Ebert: The Essential Man [Excerpts]”(2010), Chris Jones informs that Robert Ebert’s sickness did not make him fear death, but rather appreciate life. Jones develops this information with the flashback of Ebert’s usual life as a movie critique, his life while fighting cancer, and then his values near death. Chris Jones's purpose is to inform in order for us to understand how Ebert’s hardships during his cancer allowed him to value life. Jones uses an empathetic tone with his caring audience who has lost loved ones.…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    TS Eliot’s 20th Century poem ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ is widely seen as a modernist work that Eliot employs to make the reader of the poem actually create their own opinion of what is actually meant by the poem. The modernist movement happened mainly in the late 19th to early 20th Century and started with the French poet, Jules Laforgue. It is easy to draw similarities between Eliot’s Lovesong and all of Laforgue’s works as they both employ symbolist and modernist aspects in the way they describe everything through metaphor. Throughout the poem, Eliot uses many metaphors to describe what Prufrock is seeing, ‘through [those] certain half-deserted streets.’ What Prufrock is seeing is often shown through his fragile mindset. The use of metaphor is an interesting one as, despite promoting a great sense of uncertainty with the actual events that Prufrock is experiencing, it gives the reader a very clear idea of Prufrock’s character. It is undeniable that Prufrock is presented as ‘awkward and emasculated’ as his social and sexual insecurities are portrayed by Eliot throughout.…

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The changing conditions of the early 20th century had a clear and profound impact on T.S Eliot as his works convey a definitive Modernist ideas and literary techniques. With the breakout of World War I, evoked a sense that the great human civilisation was destroying itself. This belief was further compounded with the Second Industrial Revolution, which introduced innovative science, and revealed newly discovered advancements in the economical, political, cultural and most importantly the religious field. With the understanding of these advancements the “modern man” held the knowledge of our undeniable insignificance in the universe and ultimately questioned his existence due to the disintegration of what was previously strong religious values and belief in God. Modernist literature is a rejection of Romanticist ideals and is a criticism of modernisation itself. Eliot is able to explore the issues, which are hugely relevant to the modern experience. Specifically these include the isolation or alienation of an individual and the decay of social morality. These concerns are accentuated in Preludes (1917) and Rhapsody on a Windy Night (1917)…

    • 747 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In ‘The Waste Land’ Eliot creates a ‘dead land’ recovering from the effects of world war one; ‘a heap of broken images’ in ‘stony rubbish’- the barren landscape reflecting the war-torn, disintegrating society in which it was written. It mirrors the meaninglessness of human interaction and lack of inspiration emphasised through repetition in ‘Prufrock’: ‘In the room the women come and…

    • 2434 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Another important element in this poem is In the very beginning of the poem, Eliot use a part of Dante's Inferno. Prufrock says these lines because he…

    • 139 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Eliot, T.S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Norton Introduction to Literature: Shorter Tenth Edition. Eds. Allison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2010. 1015-1019. Print.…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the author is establishing the trouble the narrator is having dealing with middle age. Prufrock(the narrator) believes that age is a burden and is deeply troubled by it.. His love of some women cannot be because he feels the prime of his life is over. His preoccupation with the passing of time characterizes the fear of aging he has. The poem deals with the aging and fears associated with it of the narrator. The themes of insecurity and time are concentrated on. This insecurity is definitely a hindrance for him. It holds him back from doing the things he wishes to do. This is the sort of characteristic that makes Alfred into a tragic, doomed character. He will not find happiness until he finds self-assurance within himself. The repetition of words like vision and revision, show his feelings of inadequacy in communicating with the people around him.…

    • 971 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Did Hamlet Love Ophelia

    • 1312 Words
    • 6 Pages

    3. McCormick, Frank J. "Eliot 's THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK And Shakespeare 's HAMLET." Explicator 63.1 (2004): 43-47. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Mar. 2012…

    • 1312 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Peer evaluated by group 2: Kayley Julien, Zoë Martinez-Hawa, Mario La Rose, and group 6: Luke Bertrand, Evan Jette, Graeme Murray, Kavin Nesaratnam.…

    • 367 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot develops the character, J. Alfred Prufrock using allusions to other works of literature such as, Dante’s Inferno, Marvel’s “His Coy Mistress,”. In this way, Eliot sets forth a psychological comparison to assist the reader in understanding of Prufrock’s psyche and existentialist attitude toward life.…

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    How Is Joan Of Arc Brave

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Joan of Arc was born in France in 1412. Joan never learned to write or read in all of her life. She grew up in a scary, violent place, where lots of fighting happened, and during her early years, her village got burned down. Seven years after Henry V died, 17 year old Joan went off to the French court, claiming that she heard angelic voices in her head, telling her to get the English out of France. She was accepted by the dauphin, after a lot of skeptism and tests for her loyalty.…

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays