The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock | T.S. Eliot | Close Reading Lecture

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The lecture provides a close reading, a contextual placement of the poem within literary tradition, a summary of the major themes, and an analysis of the poem through a line by line reading. Focusing on "voice" in poetry, the video explores the unity of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
Published in June 1915 in Poetry, was then printed again in Catholic Magazine, another poetry magazine edited by Pound, in November the same year. Eliot published it in his collected poems Sesame and Penguin in 1917.
Prufrock as Modernist Poem 0:00-6:53
Prufrock and Voice 6:53-9:20
Epigraph 9:20-9:50
Pericope 1 9:50-14:30
Pericope 2 14:30-15:25
Pericope 3 15:25-17:20
Pericope 4 17:20-22:00
Pericope 5 22:00-22:54
Pericope 6 22:54-27:35
Pericope 7 27:35-29:25
Pericope 8 29:25-30:50
Pericope 9 30:50-32:35
Pericope 10 32:35-33:53
Pericope 11 33:53-35:19
Pericope 12 35:19-40:04
Pericope 13 40:04-44:14
Pericope 14 44:14-46:28
Pericope 15 46:28-48:50
Pericope 16 48:50-49:45
Pericope 17 49:45-51:18
Pericopes 18 &19 51:18-55:03
Conclusion 55:03-56:17
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Learn how to close-read poetry through my lecture series, “Close Reading Poetry” here: • How to Read Poetry
Find me teaching at the Antrim Literature Project: www.AntrimLiteratureProject.org
Keywords:
Close Reading Modernism, T.S. Eliot, close reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Formalism, Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, line by line reading of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

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2 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 30

@greilcook Год назад

Nice job, Adam. I'm a writer who wrote and studied a lot of poetry in undergrad. Nine years ago, I sustained a traumatic brain injury and lost the ability to understand poetry. Major bummer. But when I watch your videos, I realize I may be able to relearn this skill, as I can follow your explanations. So I appreciate the close readings, especially this one, as Prufrock was always a favorite of mine in college. Thank you.

@closereadingpoetry Год назад

What a terrible thing to happen; I'm so sorry! I hope your reading of verse strengthens and that you get back your old love for poetry. And I'm so glad you found the video helpful and that it brought back some enjoyment. You're very welcome, and thanks for the kind words.

@greilcook Год назад

@@closereadingpoetry Thanks so much for your compassionate reply. I’ll be looking forward to your future episodes, Adam. I hope it’s a good summer for you.

@johnnyjordan9305 4 месяца назад

Hope to see you do more Eliot. Specifically his Four Quartets. Would love to understand it more. :)

@billcawley7350 2 месяца назад

You may be over-reading the stairs. Many 18th century UK town houses (including ours) had a drawing room on the first floor (up stairs). But thanks - this poem continues to give.

@hemantmuley8414 Месяц назад

But, according to some, the (purported) locale for T. S. Eliot's 'Prufrock' is St.Louis, Missouri (in the United States), not The United Kingdom.

@staydilatedTV 4 месяца назад

Can you do the wasteland next please

@GuidoToschi-rf6nh Месяц назад

For someone who might be interested, the translation of Dante's verses in the beginning of the poem are: "If I thought that my answer would be addressed to someone who ever could come back to the world (of the living), this flame would no longer move (i.e. I would no longer speak to you). But since never from this deep bottom (i.e. hell) was anyone ever able to turn alive again, if what I have heard is true, I will answer you without fear of being blamed". By the way, the french name "Laforgue" is pronounced "Laforg", the "-orgue" being hard as in "ORGanization".

@justinwerth 5 месяцев назад

Well done! I always enjoy listening to you read analyze. Hopefully my teaching of the poem in a few weeks will be half as good.

@robertgainer2783 Год назад

Wonderful. My admission interview for my undergraduate degree in literature at Warwick was based on a close reading of this poem, and it has been a favourite ever since. I have read it so many times and never failed to get something new from it each time. Your close reading of it brought even more revelations. Thank you! If you are a fan of Eliot then would you consider doing his Four Quartets? I have been reading them recently and think they are wonderful. I would love to see how you tackle them, as I’m sure you’ll see things that I have missed or misunderstood.

@closereadingpoetry Год назад

Ah, what a great poem to have for an admission interview. So rich! Thank you for the kind words, Robert. I love Four Quartets and may take you up on that if I can get over the sense of irreverent infringement I usually feel when analyzing Eliot... partly why it's taken me so long to get to him.

@geoffreycanie4609 10 месяцев назад

I second that video on the Four Quartets would be in order

@RobWalker1 5 месяцев назад

Excellent, thanks very much!

@reaganwiles_art 2 дня назад

I doubt *as one would) that anyone should go deeper than I have into this poem.

@mickchatwin680 2 месяца назад

I see a closer connection between the anonymous women and the mermaids; they seem to be the same, but transfigured by Prufrock's (Eliot's) fears and indecisions. Having shied away from disturbing the universe, he retreats to a beach, a liminal space in which he can hold himself distant from the erotic threat that any women (or mermaids) represent. Even though they don't sing to him (skinny, balding, insignificant), but to each other (of Michelangelo, maybe), what they represent by their presence is dangerously seductive. Hearing the poem like this means I can't avoid hearing the 'human voices' at the close as exclusively male, as though women become a separate species. This feels congruent, to me, with the apparent intimate or confessional tone, co-opting 'you' (us), so long as the imagined audience is male. Prufrock (Eliot?) seems terrified of women. Maybe I'm reading too much in this ...

@closereadingpoetry 11 месяцев назад

Correction: The Job reference about the sky is spoken *by* Elihu *about *God (not by God): "Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?" (Job 37:18). This lends some new valence to the allusion. Job is unique from other books in the Bible because it's largely made up of dialogue, a dialogue between Job and his friends and between Job and God. In that sense it is a book full of voices. The allusion here is spoken by Elihu, the youngest friend of the group who, like most of Job's friends, refuses to comfort Job, yet his address to Job is markedly different from the older friends. Jewish and Christian scholars and commentators have been divided as to whether Elihu's words participate in the foolishness of Job's previous "comforters" or whether it serves as a wise prelude to the words of the Almighty which follow shortly after. This makes Eliot's allusion all the more suggestive and adds to the sense of ambivalence that is both present in the voice of Prufrock and felt by the readers of "Prufrock."

@reaganwiles_art 2 дня назад

I knew nothing, I dove.

@jeremiahunderwood8448 11 дней назад

I hope you do "The Wasteland."

@niallkennedy2667 Год назад

Brilliant! Ever thought of analysing W.B. Yeats?

@closereadingpoetry Год назад

Hey! I've thought about two longer lectures on Yeats, giving attention to his early Romantic verse and his later Modernist verse respectively, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to do it. Is there a particular poem you'd like analyzed?

@dikshyakoirala1454 8 месяцев назад

It would be quite nice if you could do Sailing to Byzantium or Leda and the Swan@@closereadingpoetry

@SingleMalt77005 Месяц назад

I nominate The Stolen Child.

@robertgerrity878 3 месяца назад

Just for the record. Eliot is not pictured in his Harvard class yearbook. He'd racked up just enough creds to finagle his last term abroad. I think Paris. He is pictured in the previous yearbook as a member of the lit society. No Crimson sharp elbows for him. On the far left, very juvenile but definitely Eliot as captioned ears like wings on his slick haired head, starched collar holding it up. Looking at it, i thought, some glimmers of Prufrock are rolling around between those ears when the flash went off. Sold it on eBay. Context. See ya over at PL.

@markhughes7927 2 месяца назад

56:15 ..yet to understand the significance of the poem’s title…! …the poet perhaps is adding the verb ‘to do’ to the implicated verb ‘to be’…? ..the escapism seems directed to archaic Greece and the conjunction there to be found of heroic (decisive) action with the full tone of elemental imagery..

@SingleMalt77005 Месяц назад

Is it fair to say that T.S. Eliot beat James Joyce to the whole stream of consciousness thing?

@danieljuneau3522 6 месяцев назад

I think I see that you’re doing here, reading and lecturing to us on the metaphysical poets and helping us understanding the unseen world. Since we all may have grown up only learning about the seen world. Or maybe I’m crazy, anyway, that’s what I’m seeing here with your videos. Looking forward to Milton

@reaganwiles_art 2 дня назад

Sir, if you wish to know anything serious about poetry, ask.

@donaldtrumpet146 3 месяца назад

i dont know squat about literature but you are adorable❤

@peterdoh3078 6 месяцев назад

Could it be Eliot is discussing his own sexuality. Upstairs are beds, this would be the place for love making. And the women discuss in their superficial lives. And then this is overlaid with hints of something greater, the Modern condition of a soulless spiritually drowned life. God and Homosexuality are two things that cannot be said. And another the strict social mores the suffocating strictures of that society. I was haunted in my youth (1970's) by these class distinctions. At the end he longs to break out of his prison, roll his trousers like the uninhibited, but instead he walks on the beach in flannels. And is left alone with his humanity. Wow a close reading brings out the unexpected beauty (I mean other than the music of the words), it is as if I see for the first time