The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Related Works on SparkNotes

Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”

The most important allusions in “Prufrock” relate to Marvell’s poem, which Eliot himself admired enormously. “To His Coy Mistress” is about mortality and humans’ distressing lack of time. The poem features an anonymous lover who attempts to convince his mistress to seize the day and have sex with him before they’re both dead and rotting. Eliot takes these themes and flips them on their head. Prufrock is convinced that “indeed there will be time” (line 23). However, the poem as a whole suggests that no amount of time will ensure him the kind of satisfaction and closure that the speaker of Marvell’s poem envisions for himself.

Dante Alighieri, Inferno

Considering that “Prufrock” begins with a cold open of six lines from Dante’s Inferno, and in the original Italian no less, it’s worth examining how these two literary works are in conversation. Just as Dante’s poem is about the poet’s passage into the pits of hell, so too is Eliot’s poem about a different kind of hell—that is, the hell of modern existence. Furthermore, the quoted passage from Dante that opens “Prufrock” comes from canto 27, lines 61–66, where a character named Guido da Montefelto confesses his sins. The speaker of Eliot’s poem—Prufrock himself—will do the same thing, showcasing the various frustrations, shames, and disappointments that have shaped his character.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The speaker of Eliot’s poem at once closely resembles Hamlet and yet rejects the comparison. Though both men share a propensity for indecision and obsessive-compulsive thinking, Hamlet has a starring role in his play. Prufrock, by contrast, has already “seen the moment of [his] greatness flicker” (line 84), and hence is doomed to remain a minor character.

Robert Browning’s Poetry

Eliot largely dismissed Robert Browning’s poetry. Indeed, his dismissal contributed to the Victorian poet’s declining reputation in the early decades of the twentieth century. Even so, “Prufrock” is generally considered to be a dramatic monologue, and as such owes a great deal to Browning, who perfected the dramatic monologue form in poems like “My Last Duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover.”

Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil

The figure of J. Alfred Prufrock bears an interesting resemblance to the flâneur, a certain form of urban wanderer that the French poet Baudelaire wrote about in his essay of 1863, “The Painter of Modern Life.” Several flâneur figures populate the poems in The Flowers of Evil, which makes this collection an important companion to Eliot’s poem.

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