Choosing one of T.S Eliot’s poems set for study, consider to what extent your personal response to your chosen poem has been shaped by the enduring power of its intellectual and artistic qualities.
(Quote)
“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;”
Good morning /Afternoon Ms and fellow classmates. A reader’s personal response to a text is shaped by the enduring power of its intellectual and artistic qualities. Their response is influenced by that responder’s social, cultural and historical context which is why texts including ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ can be interpreted in various ways by various people.
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‘, was composed by poet T.S Eliot. Born in St Louis Missouri USA, he attended Harvard University in 1906 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ was the earliest of T.S Eliot’s major works and was completed between 1910 and 1911. It is an examination of the tortured mind of the prototypical modern man – eloquent, neurotic and emotionally stilted.
The ideas and themes explored and their relevance to us today: In ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ there are various themes, symbols and ideas explored. The damaged mind of humanity and the changing nature of gender roles are two of the main themes explored in the poem. Like many modernist writers, Eliot wanted to capture the transformed world which he perceived as fractured and denigrated and also wanted his poetry to express the fragile psychological state of humanity in the twentieth century. In the poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ Prufrock, the poems persona, is constantly questioning the romantic ideal of society; wondering whether he should make a radical change, or if he has the fortitude to continue