Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Eliot, Imagism, and Prufrock “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Eliot’s Influence • It is almost impossible to overestimate T.S. Eliot’s effect on our understanding of how we read and write poetry • Eliot is being deliberately experimental • NOTE: many of you probably find the poetic style in “Prufrock” odd and difficult to grasp, especially in comparison to poems you have read earlier. Modern Art Three Tenets of Imagism 1. 2. 3. The poet must get rid of the omnipresent voice of the poet, the Wordsworthian “I.” Whatever poetry is, it must rid itself of wallowing in subjective emotionalism. Whatever the poet has to communicate, he or she must do so in terms of objective images: clear, objective, precise, concentrated, and fresh symbols that capture, in the way they are presented, the emotional qualities under exploration Imagist poetry demands a break with the old conventions of writing verse, especially with the standard rhythm and rhyme. Imagism promoted what came to be known as “free verse” Images that Illuminate Prufrock Q: What is the logical connection between the fog, the women who come and go talking of Michelangelo, a crustacean, coffee, Lazarus, Hamlet, John the Baptist, and the Sirens? A: They are all expressions of and therefore images illuminating Prufrock himself – glimpses into his emotional state Eliot’s Irony What gives Eliot’s style an urbanity and resonance is his constant use of a certain form of irony, a style known as Romantic irony, or what might be called, the irony of instant deflation. Eliot will use Romantic irony within a single line, where the growing energy of what looks like the start of a confident or at least important statement will be denied by the end of the line: “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.” Canto XXVII Evil Counselors Why choose these lines as an epigraph?