Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Specifically, it will choose one instance of abstraction in the work, and describe what the author is trying to "get at," through that abstraction. What is he trying to suggest? What methods is he using to do so? Does it "work" for you? Why or why not?
Abstraction in Poetry
In "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock," T.S. Eliot writes in many abstractions, but there is one at the end, which is especially poignant and full of meaning. "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me. / I have seen them riding seaward on the waves / Combing the white hair of the waves blown back / When the wind blows the water white and black. / We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown...
T.S. Eliot and Amy Lowell The poetic styles of T.S. Eliot and Amy Lowell are so dissimilar, that it comes as something of a shock to realize how much the two poets had in common. Each came from a prominent Boston family, and was related to a President of Harvard University -- Eliot was a distant relation to Harvard's President Eliot, and attended Harvard as an undergraduate: Amy Lowell's brother would
TS Eliot REVISED "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot is indefeasibly a Modernist masterpiece. Yet how do we know it is modernist? Let me count the ways. Modernist poetry is often marked by complicated or difficult disjunctions in tone -- "J. Alfred Prufrock" which is capable of moodily swinging from the depressive lows of "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the
T.S. Eliot and Paul Verlaine The late nineteenth century Symbolist movement in literature was first identified as the primary origin of twentieth century Modernism by Edmund Wilson, in his 1931 work Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930. Wilson's study ranges widely enough to cover the Modernist prose of Proust and Joyce in addition to the experimental prose-poetry of Gertrude Stein, but he makes a particularly strong case
Sketch of T.S Eliot The Life of T.S Eliot Eliot was born in Missouri in 1888. He studied philosophy and logic at various universities including Harvard. After graduating he spent a year at Sorbonne in Paris reading French literature. He then returned to Harvard where he studied epistemological theory, Indian languages and metaphysics. He later transferred to Oxford where he studied Greek philosophy (Kamm 143). During these years of study he also
This is the case with Gabriel in "The Dead" as well. Throughout much of the action of the story, Gabriel appears at a loss as to who he is, which is directly related to how he is perceived. The first time in the story this is noticed is to the beginning, when he gives a coin to Lily out of an unspecified yet apparently selfless motive. Gabriel wants to share
"On receiving news of the war" by Isaac Rosenberg Rosenberg's poem conjures up a physical, metaphorical image of the specter of war. A spirit of a person torn by the red fangs of either death, war, or some diabolical, physically imagined agent hangs over the poem. This dead spirit, representing all of the fallen soldiers, is in neither heaven nor hell (suggesting a crisis of faith in this modernist poem) but
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now