When was prufrock written

Eliot presents the speaker as a voice from the dead, describing to the reader the reality of his life, by connecting this work to other great works of the past that present a similar speaker. In the closing stanzas the speaker describes hearing mermaids sing as he walks along the beach Eliot , In this painting, Lewis presents the non-officer, British soldiers as small, nondescript figures working the broken land, looking more like tools than men.

Viewing the painting, we look over the torn field from the same perspective as the officers standing above it. Describe your research process for this project, both exploratory and focused researching specific background or theory sources to enrich your analysis of the poem. Please also describe the challenges or problems you faced while conducting research and how you solved them. In this section, you should also demonstrate relevant knowledge of the B.

The first step I took in my research process was simply to look at the annotations and close reading of the poem I had done and decide which terms and references used by Eliot in this poem I needed more information on. My next step was to research more about Modernism to figure out what different approaches to or lenses through which I could view the poem that would be appropriate to this artistic movement.

Originally, thinking I was going to explore the poem through a historical perspective, I searched the Mugar website for resources on the culture of the post-Romantic and post-Victorian period Eliot would have been writing in.

Eliot and Modernism , when he had written this poem he was studying philosophy at Oxford with the intent of teaching philosophy himself Svarny 44, The books I picked up from my trips to the stacks at Mugar proved to be my main sources outside of the Exhibit sources used for this project. I gathered other sources as needed for smaller details such as information on the Sirens of Greek mythology online from Mugar-linked resources. For my visual sources I decided to use a portrait of Eliot that was somewhat avant-garde to give my readers background on what Eliot looked like as well as preview some of the aspects of his art I would be discussing, specifically its connection to the Surrealism.

After deciding to find a painting by Lewis and being dissatisfied with the ones provided by Svarny I decided to work with his painting A Battery Shelled Lewis. I found these visual sources via a series of simple web searches but made sure to chose an image source taken from the website of the museum where the painting hangs.

The biggest problem I faced in my research process was that of honing in all of the information I had collected into a main theme to explore. I found that the most helpful step to deciding exactly the direction I wanted to take my paper in and seeing what parts of my research would support this was writing the guiding questions and learning objectives.

In doing so I had to give my paper a definite focus and this allowed me to, from that point forward, easily decide whether my sources had anything to do with this goal or were concerned with a different aspect of his work. I found that the simplest solution to this problem was to look at the table of contents and see if they were referencing specific poem titles, then to simply avoid these chapters or that book altogether.

Identify the background or theory source you are most proud of finding, and explain its importance to the idea you are trying to teach about the poem. Eliot: From Skepticism to a Surrealist Poetic, — This is partly why the poem signaled the arrival of such a strikingly new voice in Anglophone poetry.

But the original print run of copies of Prufrock and Other Observations would take five years to sell out. Forster, each of whom would help to champion Eliot as the most exciting new voice in English verse.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 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, 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; 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; 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 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, 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— 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?

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! Is it perfume from a dress 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 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!

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? And should I then presume? And how should I begin? 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?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question,.

And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, 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? 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, 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 shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? The second defining characteristic of this poem is its use of fragmentation and juxtaposition.

Eliot sustained his interest in fragmentation and its applications throughout his career, and his use of the technique changes in important ways across his body of work: Here, the subjects undergoing fragmentation and reassembly are mental focus and certain sets of imagery; in The Waste Land, it is modern culture that splinters; in the Four Quartets we find the fragments of attempted philosophical systems.

Eliot also introduces an image that will recur in his later poetry, that of the scavenger. At the very least, this notion subverts romantic ideals about art; at best, it suggests that fragments may become reintegrated, that art may be in some way therapeutic for a broken modern world. In The Waste Land, crabs become rats, and the optimism disappears, but here Eliot seems to assert only the limitless potential of scavenging.