Why T.S.Eliot appeal
to Hamlet in «The
Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock»?
Cristina Girardi VB.
«The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock».
Written by: T. S. Eliot.
Genre: Poem.
Publication: June 1915.
Plot: The song deals with J. Alfred Prufrock’s inability
to declair his love to a woman.
• Epigraph: The epigraph refears to a meeting
between Dante and Guido da
Montefeltro. (Dante,Hell Canto XXVII, 6166).
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Hamlet.
• He’s the protagonist of the homonymous tragedy
written by William Shakespeare.
• He wants to revenge his father’s death killed by
Claudius, who was Hamlet’s uncle and the new king
of Denmark.
• Throughout the play he struggle with his sanity and
with Claudius’ fault.
• At the end of the tragedy dying Hamlet kills
Claudius and names Prince Fortinbras of Norway
as the probable heir to the throne.
• The protagonist make a choise for his kingdom.
J. Alfred Prufrock.
• He’s a middle-aged man who isn’t able to confess
his love to a woman who live in his same palace.
• He’s unable to love because he suffers from men’s
crysis of firsts years of XX century. In that period men
weren’t able to accept changements.
• T. S. Eliot use the tecnique of «stream of
consciousness» to present protagonist’s felling, and
«free verses» to shade what the reader has to
interpret litterally or symbolically.
Hamlet and J. Alfred
Prufrock.
• In line 110 of «The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock» T.
S. Eliot introduce the figure of Hamlet.
• Prufrock compares himself to Hamlet to dismisses his
importance.
• The main contrast between the two characters is
the inability of make a choise of J. A. Prufrock
(middel-aged man) and the very important choise
of Hamlet (a young man).
• J. A. Prufrock in the entire poem doesn’t make any
decision even if he analyzes more times his
problems without making any choise.