Critical
Analysis
of
“The
Love
Song
of
J.
Alfred
Prufrock”
The
title
of
the
poem
is
Eliot's
first
hint
that
this
is
not
a
traditional
love
poem
at
all.
"J.
Alfred
Prufrock"
is
a
farcical
name,
and
Eliot
wanted
the
subliminal
connotation
of
a
"prude"
in
a
"frock."
(The
original
title
was
"Prufrock
Among
the
Women.")
This
emasculation
contributes
to
a
number
of
themes
Eliot
will
explore
revolving
around
paralysis
and
heroism,
but
the
name
also
has
personal
meaning
for
Eliot.
He
wrote
the
poem
in
1909
while
a
graduate
student
at
Harvard
(though
he
revised
it
over
the
next
few
years,
eventually
publishing
it
in
1915
and
in
book
form
in
1917),
and
at
the
time
he
signed
his
name
as
"T.
Stearns
Eliot."
While
it
would
appear,
then,
that
T.
Stearns
Eliot
was
using
J.
Alfred
Prufrock
as
an
alter
ego
to
explore
his
own
emotions,
this
is
not
the
case.
Superficial
differences
aside
-‐
Eliot
was
a
young
man
in
1909,
while
Prufrock
is
balding
and
probably
middle-‐aged
-‐
Eliot
disdained
poetry
that
focused
on
the
poet
himself.
He
wrote
in
his
essay
"Tradition
and
the
Individual
Talent"
that
the
"progress
of
an
artist
is
a
continual
self-‐sacrifice,
a...