Thursday 9 December 2010
Criticism on 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'
Here is a link to a series of short critical extracts on 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. See what some of the brightest critics have had to say about the poem. Remember, quoting or referencing critics in your work and in your exam essays is a good thing to do! Reading critics is also an excellent way of learning how to write criticism.
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ReplyDeleteI like the idea of this blog, and the way you connect it to class. it is very helpful to work over what we have done in the class, and to discover/argue new points. about the critics, Roger Mitchell's is really clear, straight to the point. his definition of modern poets is a quite good one.
ReplyDeleteJ. Hillis Miller is in some sense right that prufrocks consciousness is inpenetrable at least by the ladies in the room but we as readers are already oozing into it he is telling us himself and we are witnessing his secrets miller is also pushing too much about the time think because we rae talking about a consciousness and it s okey if prufrock is applying different tenses one after another i think we need to focus more on the psychology and reactions of prufrock than just the tenses because tenses are only one means to convey a thought his words open up a bigger word to discover
ReplyDeleteSpur s ideas on the linguistic structure has been more useful to me and i m thinking that we need to argue more on this issue we have just said that tenses in this poem are in pieces and we directly connected it to the petrarchian poetry devices like describing only bits and pieces not the whole thing or person its confusing we need to think about this
ReplyDeletegosh there are so many layers to this poem dunnow where to start we have already talked about sexuality in thi spoem because we have a lady that prufrock wants an encounter with but does the fragments of lady dresses and jevellery suggest to what you said about the lady we are looking for Patrick is it really a random lady from the crowd
ReplyDeleteThanks Ilke - I'm glad it's proving helpful. I agree that Roger Mitchell - the last extract - is perhaps the clearest.
ReplyDeleteYes, there is a lot in 'Prufrock' - and a lot of issues we could discuss further. Some of these issues will be relevant to our discussion of The Waste Land too, and I'll try to come back to them in class.
Please note that you can and should use the views of critics to support your arguments in essays, assignments and exams. If it's an exam, it's enough to give the critic's name - if it's an assignment, you should give your source. Sorry if this is teaching grandmothers to suck eggs (to use an idiom!)...
Patrick