REMEMBER: vocabulary 12 due Monday. Have a safe and lovely weekend!We are reading T. S. Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. (note the above image is in reference to this line from the poem: Though I have seen my head...brought in upon a platter: and comes from Matthew 14:3-11, Mark 6:17-29 in the Bible.
Now that I have your attention: Please read the introductory material on the T. S. Eliot below.• Born: 26 September 1888
• Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri
• Died: 4 January 1965
• Best Known As: Author of The Waste Land
Name at birth: Thomas Stearns Eliot
Eliot's "The Waste Land" is the most famous English poem of the 20th century, a landmark meditation on human unease with the modern world. Born in America, Eliot moved to England in 1914, working as a bank clerk while writing his first collection of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917, featuring "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"). He followed that success with The Waste Land (1922), Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943), among other collections and essays. A highly regarded critic, Eliot was the founder (1922) and longtime editor of the literary magazine Criterion. His plays include Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). Eliot became a British subject and member of the Church of England in 1927. His whimsical volume of children's verse, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), was adapted into the long-running hit musical Cats.
He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948... Eliot was close friends with poet Ezra Pound... Eliot was married twice, to Vivienne Haigh-Wood (1915) and to his former secretary Valerie Fletcher (1957)... He studied at prestigious universities in three countries: Harvard in the U.S., the Sorbonne in France, and Oxford in England... Eliot is unrelated to the author George Eliot... "The Waste Land" begins with the famous line "April is the cruellest month"... His poem "The Hollow Men" ends with the lines "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."
MAJOR ASSIGNMENT: last significant writing. DUE MONDAY APRIL 12
English 11 Honors essay
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
For many readers in the 1920s, Prufrock seemed to epitomize the frustration and impotence of the modern individual. He appeared to represent thwarted desires and modern disillusionment. In a well-written essay of approximately 750 words (that’s three pages) discuss the poetic and literary devices Eliot uses in The Love Song that define Prufrock as the modern man. Use specific textual evidence from the poem to support your thesis.
MLA heading
Size 12 font
Times New Roman
Pagination / header
Include word count.
Due Monday April 12.
Literary elements to consider: characterization, plot, tone, theme, point-of-view
Figurative language devices- metaphors, similes, onomatopoeia, sound sense (alliteration, consonance, assonance), synecdoche, personification, litotes, hyperbole, apostrophe, and allusion.
I handed out a packet on this material previously. Please use it for a reference.
The following is the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917.
1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . . 110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. 125
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 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
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