T.S.Eliot's poems "love song of j alfred prufrock is considered the first modernist poem writing in english.
-discuss some of the modernist features that appear in that poem
-explain how and what they do to create a very different and new form of poetic expressions
T.S.Eliot's "The Love Song of Alfred J.Prufrock" (1915) is certainly a 'Modernist' poem. Some of the important features of modernist writing are as follows:
1. The poem is a detailed record of the random thoughts -subjective consciouness-represented just as they are going on in the mind of Prufrock.
2. Modernist writers were influenced by Freud's psychoanalytical method by which a person was able to speak freely to release all his repressed emotions just like Prufrock in the poem: "To spit out all the butt ends of my days and /ways?"
3. The poets used avant garde methods like the 'Stream of Consciousness' technique to faithfully portray the complex ways in which the mind works-psychologically by association rather than logically.
4. This resulted in their characters having multiple personalities like Prufrock who is both the speaker and the listener in the poem.
5. The modernist writers were influenced by contemporary artistic movements like 'Collage.' The poem is a mosaic of quotations from Dante, Shakespeare and the Holy Bible.
6. Eliot, like other modernist writers, deals with chronological (past,present and future), historical and most importantly subjective time.
7. Pessimism and loneliness: The entire poem is a desperate attempt by Prufock to relate to another human being.
8. The poem is dedicated to his friend who died in the 1st World War
http://www.enotes.com/love-song/q-and-a/quot-love-song-j-alfred-prufrock-was-written-25233
