The Representation of Everyday Life in T. S. Eliot’s
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’
Modernism is a philosophical movement that arose from wide-scale changes in Western society, such as industrialism, rapid growth of cities, and the horrors of WWI, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Modernism rejects earlier ideas, such as enlightenment thinking, in part due to the religious undertones it entails. In 1915, Modernist poet T. S. Eliot’s famous poem, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ was published. Writer Ronald Bush (1999) notes that it had an “effect that was both unique and compelling and their assurance staggered Eliot's contemporaries who were privileged to read them in manuscript”. ‘Prufrock’ has since become …show more content…
Modernist art and literature is experimental rather than traditional, and they aimed to make art that was radically different to that which was created in earlier periods (Lewis 2007). Initially, modernism disturbed readers through to their adoption of complex and difficult new forms and styles of writing, such as stream-of-consciousness writing, which was used to represent the thoughts of an individual character without the need for a narrator (Lewis …show more content…
Alfred Prufrock’, which is considered to be a masterpiece of the modernist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eliot’s brilliance can be seen in the fact that in 1948, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, ‘for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry’ (2014). Eliot’s use of internal monologue in ‘Prufrock’ reflects the techniques of novelist Henry James, and of his brother William James, who, as a Harvard professor of philosophy, published the first American textbook on psychology in 1890 (Chintz 2009). It is evident that psychology and philosophy play a major role in Eliot’s poetry, especially in regard to the emotion displayed by the characters, and the emotion that the audience feel when reading or after completing a poem. The sort of emotions found within Eliot’s poetry could be considered to be the darker ones, containing those such as fear, shame, guilt, insecurity, isolation, and horror, all of which can be felt by the narrator in his poem,
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’
Modernism is a philosophical movement that arose from wide-scale changes in Western society, such as industrialism, rapid growth of cities, and the horrors of WWI, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Modernism rejects earlier ideas, such as enlightenment thinking, in part due to the religious undertones it entails. In 1915, Modernist poet T. S. Eliot’s famous poem, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ was published. Writer Ronald Bush (1999) notes that it had an “effect that was both unique and compelling and their assurance staggered Eliot's contemporaries who were privileged to read them in manuscript”. ‘Prufrock’ has since become …show more content…
Modernist art and literature is experimental rather than traditional, and they aimed to make art that was radically different to that which was created in earlier periods (Lewis 2007). Initially, modernism disturbed readers through to their adoption of complex and difficult new forms and styles of writing, such as stream-of-consciousness writing, which was used to represent the thoughts of an individual character without the need for a narrator (Lewis …show more content…
Alfred Prufrock’, which is considered to be a masterpiece of the modernist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eliot’s brilliance can be seen in the fact that in 1948, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, ‘for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry’ (2014). Eliot’s use of internal monologue in ‘Prufrock’ reflects the techniques of novelist Henry James, and of his brother William James, who, as a Harvard professor of philosophy, published the first American textbook on psychology in 1890 (Chintz 2009). It is evident that psychology and philosophy play a major role in Eliot’s poetry, especially in regard to the emotion displayed by the characters, and the emotion that the audience feel when reading or after completing a poem. The sort of emotions found within Eliot’s poetry could be considered to be the darker ones, containing those such as fear, shame, guilt, insecurity, isolation, and horror, all of which can be felt by the narrator in his poem,