Eliot Flashcards
Where did Eliot attend university?
Harvard
From what work is the epigraph to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” taken?
Dante’s Inferno
What question is repeated over and over again in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”?
“Do I dare?”
Most famously, “Do I Dare / Disturb the Universe?”
What form does “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” take?
Dramatic monologue
Is “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” free verse?
No, although it may appear at times to be, it is actually a carefully structured amalgamation of poetic forms.
Ex: The poems ends with three-line stanzas reminiscent of the concluding lines of Petrarchan sonnets, but whereas the Romantics used older forms to celebrate beauty and imagination, Eliot comments on the decay and desolation of modern society.
What, on the most basic level, is going on in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”?
Prufrock has feelings for a woman, and is considering telling her, but he worries about rejection, and so never gets around to it.
Of what movement is “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” an early example?
Modernism; it was written before WWI, but explores many concerns of the changing world and the modern mind.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: What are two examples of Symbolist imagery in this poem?
- Yellow smoke
- Hair-covered arms of the women
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Who does the speaker claim not to be?
Prince Hamlet - he is more like a minor character, who perhaps offers a word of advice now and then but is not very important - and is maybe even a little ridiculous.
From where is the epigraph for “The Hollow Men” taken?
Heart of Darkness
“Mistah Kurtz - he dead.”
(There is a second epigraph referencing Guy Fawkes.)
When was “The Hollow Men” published?
1925
What are the most famous lines of “The Hollow Men”?
“This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but with a whimper”
The Hollow Men: What is a striking formal feature?
Repetition
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: What is the structure of this poem?
The poem may seem like it doesn’t have structure, but in reality it just borrows from a lot of different ones. It also uses a number of allusions, bits from other works of art, etc. Taken together, these formal features suggest the fragmentation and disorientation that Eliot and others thought were indicative of the modern age.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Discuss this poem and Romanticism.
Eliot was pretty dead-set against the Romantics. In this poem, he takes what is a typical romantic topic – yearning after an unattainable woman – and intellectualizes it. Prufrock’s main obstacles are not virtue or another lover, but his own neuroticism, suggesting that this kind of fragmented world is what replaced Romanticism.
TLDR; “Intellectualizing Romanticism”
