The Love Songs of J. Alfred Prufrock Themes
Tracing ‘The Uncanny in Eliot’s ‘The Love Song Of J.Alfred Prufrock’
Freud’s theory of ‘The Uncanny’ reveals much about his understanding of human beings who take form of either repressed beliefs or desires brought up from the unconscious into the conscious mind. Thus is very much related to the poem written by T.S.Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock’, which highlights a vision on society that represents the familiar and the unfamiliar.
Freud defines the uncanny as, “that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar” (124). It represents the determining feature of what each human being is not aware of. It also can be seen that Freud’s experience of the uncanny is linked to unconscious desires and beliefs that are repressed or surmounted. Through their repetitive nature, and through the use of the work of uncanny texts, find their way back into consciousness and produce ‘that discomfort’, that aspect of the frightening we call the uncanny. One form the uncanny can take is the return of the repressed, and whenever something is kept under control, then its reappearance is a source of fear that should have remained hidden but now comes into the open and confronts the conscious mind, creating the uneasy feeling of ‘uncanny’. The key ideas that Freud is trying to convey throughout his essay is the hidden message and the negative aesthetics. He illustrates many of his quotations with the German language “Hemlich” (the homely) and “Unhemliche” (the unhomely) which incorporate tension and implies a ‘mirror effect’ which is ideas of the double or ‘doppelganger’. Freud also tends to coincide with what excites fear. The subject of the uncanny is related to what is frightening to what arouses dead and horror, but since the word is not used in a clear definable way, it can coincide with what excites fear. In the quote “The ‘uncanny’ is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to
Freud’s theory of ‘The Uncanny’ reveals much about his understanding of human beings who take form of either repressed beliefs or desires brought up from the unconscious into the conscious mind. Thus is very much related to the poem written by T.S.Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock’, which highlights a vision on society that represents the familiar and the unfamiliar.
Freud defines the uncanny as, “that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar” (124). It represents the determining feature of what each human being is not aware of. It also can be seen that Freud’s experience of the uncanny is linked to unconscious desires and beliefs that are repressed or surmounted. Through their repetitive nature, and through the use of the work of uncanny texts, find their way back into consciousness and produce ‘that discomfort’, that aspect of the frightening we call the uncanny. One form the uncanny can take is the return of the repressed, and whenever something is kept under control, then its reappearance is a source of fear that should have remained hidden but now comes into the open and confronts the conscious mind, creating the uneasy feeling of ‘uncanny’. The key ideas that Freud is trying to convey throughout his essay is the hidden message and the negative aesthetics. He illustrates many of his quotations with the German language “Hemlich” (the homely) and “Unhemliche” (the unhomely) which incorporate tension and implies a ‘mirror effect’ which is ideas of the double or ‘doppelganger’. Freud also tends to coincide with what excites fear. The subject of the uncanny is related to what is frightening to what arouses dead and horror, but since the word is not used in a clear definable way, it can coincide with what excites fear. In the quote “The ‘uncanny’ is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to