Alfred Prufrock Eliot Was a

Alfred Prufrock Eliot was a poet and critic and a knowledgeable scholar of literature and many other fields, and he shaped much of his poetry by including allusions to other literary works as well as references to even more esoteric knowledge from history, theology, and occult studies. Such references create meaningful associations between Eliot's work and the source of the reference, expanding on the direct meaning of the words in a variety of ways. This can be seen with reference to the poem "The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock." One of the important literary allusions in the work is to Dante, and there are a number of Dantean parallels that can be noted. The introductory epigraph is from Dante's Inferno, and the opening lines of the poem echo the beginning of the Divine Comedy where Dante follows Virgil into Hades: Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table (1-3).

The situation in Prufrock parallels the first two cantos of the Inferno: Prufrock, like Dante, is beginning a journey in forbidding terrain whose meaning and significance he cannot fully grasp.. Just as Dante's "straight way was lost," Prufrock will lead us through half-deserted, tedious, insidious streets that may constitute his Dark Wood. (Headings 21) Eliot's fascination with Dante can be found in a number of his poems, including references in the Ash-Wednesday poems.

Eliot has stated that the Divine Comedy is in some ways a "moral education" and that the purpose of Dante is to educate our senses: "Throughout his poetic career, Eliot set those same tasks for himself, and he used in his works 'the logic of sensibility' that he took largely from Dante." (Headings 33) This "logic of sensibility" is apparent in the structure of Prufrock as well as in other Eliot works.

The social structure addressed in the poem is indicated by the reference to Prince Hamlet, when Prufraock says "I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be" (115), a statemnte D.E.S. Maxwell calls "Prufrock's denial of tragedy" (53).

The speaker is one of the followers, on a different social level than the Prince, but at the same time on a still different level from the proletariat seen as he walks down the street: Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? (70-72). The world of the street is the world of the lower-classes, the workers, and it is a world marked by yellow smoke.

This contrasts with the interior world of the bourgeoisie, where women rush around and talk about art while eating marmalade and drinking tea. This is a world from which the aging speaker is more and more alienated -- he reacts to the women as if they are swirling around and ignoring him, and he remembers this as something that has occurred all his life.

Prince Hamlet is supported by loyal followers such as Prufrock, himself happy "to start a scene or two" (116) and to remain "Deferential, glad to be of use" (118). Women are presented in a series of stereotypes of the social set -- they sip tea, talk about art, eat marmalade, and live among porcelain as they pretend that they are more influential than they are.

For Prufrock, the singing of the mermaids is a key image identifying the attracting of women as a vital element of youth so that the loss of this ability is a sign of age and decline. Several references are made to the women as they move through the room: In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo (35-36). The women serve as consumers of art rather than artists themselves, and the reference to Michelangelo is a reference to the great Italian master of art.

They are here associated with "toast and tea" and with the measuring of life by coffee spoons. The protagonist sees women as distractions: Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? (65-66). The image that prevails throughout is a male image, a society where males make the decisions and produce the art.

The reference to "talking of Michelangelo" also evokes the idea of a certain degree of pretension as these women speak of something they do not really understand and do so in order to show that they are of a higher social class. Women are decorative in themselves but seem at most to be distractions to the more important thoughts of the male. Prufrock is so distracted at the tea; he remembers many other teas and the women he met there, described in terms.