T.S. Eliot- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock- Context

Right, so I have a Lit essay tomorrow that I'm meant to study for, but I really can't be stuffed writing practise paragraphs or essays or anything so I figure writing a blog post about Eliot instead might suffice- at the very least, it's better than just sitting there with a blank page and procrastinating.

The essay tomorrow's on Eliot's poetry, more specifically the two poems we've studied in class: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Preludes," but chances are, I'm probably going to write more on Prufrock because a) it's longer and therefore has more material to work with and b) we've discussed it more in class. We've also been told that the 3-4 questions can be on lit techniques and devices, context, genre and generic conventions, language, discourse and ideology or reading strategies. I'm going to write some notes on some of these things, as normally the bit I find hardest is planning my essay. Once that's done, the writing normally takes care of itself.

Most of the stuff here is probably from class discussions, including from other people's notes (they were put on the J drive to be shared between us...). Yeah, it's plagiarism, I know, but a) I gave them my notes on Marxism and b) I'm not passing any of this stuff off as my own, I'm just putting it all here as a means to organise my thoughts. But if you really feel that strongly, I can get rid of some of the stuff here.

Context: Information

The socio-historical context: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was written in the early-ish 1900s (according to Wikipedia, Eliot started writing it in 1910, but it was published in 1915). This is a time of rapid change and turmoil- I mean, WWI happened at this time! Suddenly the whole world was plunged into a war, the likes of which had never been seen before, since the advent of new, powerful weapons as well as the usage of old, outdated tactics (i.e. charging in a straight line, which would have been useful for knights on horseback but not for modern soldiers in the face of machine guns) meant that loads of people were dying in the trenches pretty quickly. Also, as well as modern weaponry, other new inventions were changing the world: communications were improving via phones and TV, and transport was also improving.

Other trends present at this time were urbanisation and secularisation, though both of these kind of continue from previous times. During the Industrial Revolution of around 1760-1820, as well as afterwards, heaps of people began moving to the cities to find work, leading to crowded and busy cities which were sometimes dirty and polluted as greener technology had not yet been invented. The busy life in these crowded cities led to people becoming more disconnected from nature, and maybe even from each other too, despite the many advances in communication technology. The increase in secularisation at this time is simply yet another stage of a gradual increase of secularisation since the Renaissance period, but this time it was largely fuelled by all of the death and devastation caused by the World War which led people to challenge their faith.

T.S. Eliot: Okay, I must admit that I know hardly anything about this guy apart from the fact that he didn't discriminate; he hated pretty much everybody. But I do have a handout here about Eliot. Let's see what it says.

It says here that T.S. Eliot was born in St Louis (a city in Missouri, USA) in 1888, but his parents originally came from New England, which, believe it or not, is also a city in the USA (sort of shows just how overly patriotic those Brits were when they colonised half the world). It sort of ties in to how my Lit teacher was saying that Eliot is American but he likes pretending that he's British.

Anyway, Eliot grew up, discovered that he liked poetry, attended Harvard and studied some high-brow works by people like Omar Khayyam, Charles Baudelaire and Jules Laforgue. He also spent some time wandering around "the poorer and seedier parts of Boston" (yes, that's what the handout says). Apparently Charles Baudelaire is sometimes considered the father of Modernism, and from him, Eliot learned that he could write poetry on rather un-poetic material like industrial cities. From Jules Laforgue, a follower of Baudelaire, he learned about the French symbolist movement in poetry, as well as other random stuff like interior monologues which can be dialogues between rival aspects of the self, ironic voice, ironic mockery of society and self, irregularly placed rhymes, abrupt changes of setting, and more.

Your own context: ...

Context: How Prufrock is shaped by context

Socio-historical context: Industrialisation and its effects are seen in the way that the city has been portrayed as dilapidated, dirty and polluted as well as being pretty damn unwelcoming through word meanings and imagery. The streets are "muttering retreats," the word "muttering" suggesting discomfort because it's as if though there is some secret that you're not being let in on, and nobody likes not being let in on a secret. I guess you can also say that the muttering and the idea that there's something that you're not being let in on also hints at the idea of disconnection between humans. Further adding to this is the "insidious intent," that word "insidious" hinting that there really is something suspicious and unpleasant going on. The nights are also "restless" and uncomfortable, and the portrayal of the city with its "one-night cheap hotels" and "sawdust restaurants" (restaurants where the ground is covered with sawdust and all your rubbish is just dumped on the floor to be swept up with the sawdust at the end of the day) makes the city seem dirty and uncared for. And, of course, there's the imagery "yellow fog" and "yellow smoke," which hints at pollution and disease. Yellow is normally a happy colour, but when related to fog and smoke, it sounds almost diseased. Likewise, the smoke "rubs its back" and "rubs its muzzle" (kinaesthetic imagery! Yay, big words) like a cat or some other domestic creature, but unlike cats and dogs, when these descriptions are used to describe smoke, it makes the smoke seem almost too close for comfort. Oh, and this is kind of going back to what I said before about disconnection but there's also some other line about "lonely men in shirt sleeves," and that very word "lonely" creates a sense of disconnection, because isn't loneliness pretty much a lack of connection with other humans?

Fragmentation is another common theme of this time period because everything, including people's ideas, are all challenged to the limits with all the crazy stuff that's happening, like the World War, and, sure enough, there's a hell of a lot of fragmentation in this poem. First of all, there's all the crazy conflicting imagery, like "when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table." (Apparently there's a fancy word for abrupt transitions in style- "bathos." Unfortunately, I don't really know how to use it in a sentence.) I mean, look at that line (or rather, two lines). Just look at it. "When the evening is spread out upon the sky" sounds all Romantic-esque with its emphasis on nature and evening (which is when 90% of romantic scenes take place, I swear), but then it abruptly turns to that poor patient. The word "patient" suggests sickness and pain- a big difference from the romance of the evening and the sky. There's also sudden transitions in settings- one line Prufrock is "at dusk through narrow streets" and three lines later he is talking about how he "should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Even the word "ragged" sounds fragmented and disjointed in itself since it does mean "uneven" or "jagged." The structure of the poem is also pretty fragmented with its breaks (I'm not sure how to describe them- the dots or whatever that divides up sections of the poem).

Hm what else? I came up with some other idea when I was in the shower, but I've forgotten it now. Damn. Guess I'll have to revisit this part.

(10 minutes later...) I've remembered now. One thing that I didn't put in the information section above is that there were still pretty big divisions between the upper- and lower-classes, even during the World War. I remember reading some Horrible Histories book that said something about how the upper classes were complaining that they had to downgrade to having parlourmaids, while soldiers were being killed by the thousands in the trenches! Such class divisions are also pretty apparent in the poem- while the city, home of the working classes, is depicted as being dirty, unpleasant and possibly unsafe, the upper class life is much different. They have "tea and cakes and ices" while the lower classes have to make do with their "sawdust restaurants," and they have "sunsets and dooryards and sprinkled streets" while the lower classes have "streets that follow like a tedious argument." The juxtaposition between the two classes is also amplified by the constant switching between lower-class scenery and upper-class scenery.

T.S. Eliot's context: Okay, first of all, everything that my handout said that Eliot learned from reading Jules Laforgue can be found in this poem. "Interior monologues which are really ironic dialogues between rival aspects of the self" are found EVERYWHERE. In fact, you could almost argue that the entire poem is an "interior monologue which [is] really [an] ironic dialogue between rival aspects of the self." We can see this in all of his incessant questioning: "Do I dare?" "Do I dare disturb the universe?" "How should I presume?" "Should I then presume?" Most of these questions are probably directed towards himself, because normally "Do I dare?" is a question that you ask yourself, not other people. Also, the use of that stanza of Dante's Inferno at the beginning of the poem, which basically means "I can tell you my story only because I know you'll never return" suggests that this poem and its questions are not to be heard by anyone, and if they are to be heard, then only to a select audience chosen with care. There's also the bit about "time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions" which also creates an air of uncertainty. The very word "indecision" speaks for itself- there's not enough certainty to make a decision, and any decisions then have to face "revisions." Further examples of Prufrock's divided self appear in lines 39-45, where Prufrock initially makes a decision to "turn back and descend the stair" but then worries that other people will comment on "how his hair is growing thin," and then describes his attire as "rich and modest" before worrying that other people will comment on "how his arms and legs are thin." Here Prufrock is divided by his own judgement: one aspect of himself believing that he is prepared and ready to go, and the other rival aspect of himself only able to see his faults.

I don't really have too much to say on the next three dot points here- "air of worldly fatigue," "wry, ironic voice" and "ironic mockery of society and self." Now, the reason I don't have much to say is because there is nothing to say, because I know that there's lots to say, but because I don't know how to say it. I sort of get the "worldly fatigue" and "wry, ironic voice" in this poem, but not quite enough to provide solid examples. I guess the "wry, ironic voice" and "ironic mockery" might be in all that conflicting imagery with the evening being a "patient etherised on a table," as well as in some of the other random lines like "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" (I dunno, that just felt "wry and ironic" to me), but I'm not sure how to explain how any of that stuff contributes to a "wry, ironic voice." In fact, I'm not sure if I really know the word "ironic" all too well. I mean, I know what the word means, but I don't know what it means... okay, maybe I should stop, I'm probably just confusing you. As for the "worldly fatigue," I guess that comes in when Prufrock asks if stuff "would be worth it" and talking about himself growing old. Maybe. I'm not sure.

The next two dot points here are "vers libre: reflecting the free flow of human consciousness as it attempts to come to terms with a complex reality" and "occasional, irregularly placed rhymes." Well, I can give examples for "occasional, irregularly placed rhymes." The first two lines rhyme, then the third line has no rhyme, then the next two lines rhyme, then "hotels" and "shells" sort of rhymes, then the next two lines rhyme, then there's a line which doesn't rhyme with any other line, then another two rhyming lines. Then there's that two line couplet thingy that rhymes. Likewise, there's some rhyming lines in the next stanza, but there's also some lines which inexplicably do not rhyme, like "licked its tongue into the corners of the evening," "and seeing that it was a soft October night," and so on. As for the vers libre thing, well, I'm not too sure on what the exact literary definition of "vers libre" is but I can see that this poem does appear to be a bit more "free" (I'm pretty sure that's what "libre" means) from most of the traditional rules of poetry and it is a reflection of the human consciousness. It leaps from topic to topic, a bit like how we can move from one train of thought to another (or maybe that's just me). It compares stuff to other random stuff ("patient etherised upon a table" anyone? Oh, wait, I've used that example about 3 times already), which I do too, and although I could be unique in that, I doubt it. It also has irregular line lengths, no fixed meter, irregular rhymes and random breaks (those dividing thingos- as I've said before I don't know what to call them...), because the human consciousness doesn't have a fixed meter, regular rhyme patterns and regular line lengths, not as far as I know anyway.

Next dot point- "abrupt changes of setting, timeframe and voice." Hm. I wonder where we can find those things in Prufrock? Here's a hint: everywhere. Abrupt changes of setting? "Streets that follow like a tedious argument" vs. "In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo." "Gone at dusk through narrow streets" vs. "Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Abrupt changes of timeframe? Not so obvious, but there is that bit that Prufrock randomly starts saying "I grow old... I grow old," and I doubt that he was old before because in the next line he says "I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled," the word "shall" indicating that he hasn't grown old yet. Abrupt changes in voice? Should I pull out my favourite quote again? Nah, you're probably all sick of it by now.

Now for the dot point that sprouts several dot points: "Laforgian symbolism." First up is "A kind of poetry which would be psychology in the form of a dream... with flowers and scents and wind... complex symphonies with certain phrases (motifs) returning from time to time." Now, that language is too flowery and poetic for my puny brain, but I do understand the bit about certain phrases returning from time to time. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" has some of these, such as "In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo," "Do I dare? and "And would it have been worth it, after all." Now, we could dissect these further by talking about the effect that this repetition has on our readings of the poem and whatnot, but I can't be bothered doing that now. The next dot-point-within-a-dot-point is "Images which are absolutely precise in physical terms but endlessly suggestive in their meanings," which I think is just like that patient... You probably know that quote by now, even if you've never read the poem before. There's also the "pinned and wriggling on the wall" thing, which is pretty precise, but it can also mean other stuff like being trapped. Trapped by what? That's up to you to decide. "Building up of patterns of meaning through juxtaposition and accumulation of images," the third dot point, is seen through the juxtaposition between the upper- and lower- classes' descriptions, as I've said before. Finally, there's "contrast of sublime and banal images." I originally thought that "banal" meant something along the lines of "gruesome" or "unpleasant," like that quote that I've repeated oh-so-many times, but no, apparently it means "so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring." I can't really say that much of the imagery in this poem is "lacking in originality," but I guess there is the "magic lantern [throwing] the nerves in patterns on a screen" followed by the more mundane "settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl."

That's all the dot points for that one covered now. Phew!

Now, I was going to cover multiple things in this post, but this post has been going on for quite a while now so I'm going to talk about this poem in multiple blog posts. Stay tuned...