The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Historical and Literary Context

The Tradition of the Dramatic Monologue

Many critics cite “Prufrock” as belonging to the tradition of the dramatic monologue. Dramatic monologues are similar to the soliloquies that appear in plays, and according to the preeminent literary critic M. H. Abrams, three things characterize the form. First, dramatic monologues are spoken at a particular time and place by a specific individual who is not the poet. Second, they are specifically directed at a listener whose presence isn’t explicitly referenced but rather implied by the speaker’s words. Third, their primary focus is to reveal the speaker’s character. Although elements of the dramatic monologue have existed in literature at least since the time of the Greek poets, it wasn’t until the Victorian period that these elements coalesced into the form we know today. The Victorian most closely associated with the dramatic monologue is Robert Browning (1812–1889), who perfected the form across two volumes of verse: Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatis Personae (1864). In landmark poems such as “My Last Duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover,” Browning explored the aberrant psychologies of a range of speakers, many of whom are unreliable and otherwise detestable. Though Eliot was personally dismissive of Browning’s work, “Prufrock” owes much to this Victorian predecessor.

The French Symbolist Movement

The French movement known as “Symbolism” developed around a group of poets from the late nineteenth century, including Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stephane Mallarmé. Contrary to their predecessors, these poets rejected the aesthetics of naturalism and realism. Instead of trying to represent reality in a direct way, the Symbolists wanted to illuminate profounder truths by way of the imagination. Through dreams, visions, and other modes of associative image-making, these poets sought, in Rimbaud’s words, to effect the “systematic derangement of the senses.” As Jean Moréas explained in his “Symbolist Manifesto,” first published in 1886, such a derangement of the senses paradoxically helps reveal the deeper meanings that lie behind the surface of things. In Symbolist literature, “representations of nature, human activities, and everyday phenomena” are in fact “veiled reflections of the senses pointing to archetypal meanings through their esoteric connections.” Eliot was an avid student of the French Symbolists, and “Prufrock” bears the marks of his study. Through the “systematic derangement” of images, perceptions, and associations, Eliot produced a poem that reflects the intellectual and spiritual destabilization of his contemporary moment.

Previous section About T. S. Eliot Next section Related Works on SparkNotes