The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

“Prufrock” begins with an allusion to Dante’s Inferno and further alludes to a multitude of other texts—from the Bible to Shakespeare—over the course of the poem. Eliot famously wrote on the role of allusion in “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” saying, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists” (Eliot, T. S., and Frank Kermode. Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988, 38). Eliot saw himself as a poet in constant conversation with writers and texts that preceded him and in “Prufrock,” he draws on these texts to establish Prufrock’s character. The allusions to John the Baptist and Lazarus in the final third of the poem recast the fear and anxiety he feels: He relates to the violence and suffering of these two figures but cannot claim their greatness as prophet or resurrected man. The allusion to Hamlet at the end of the poem furthers this self-effacing despair, as he is nothing more than the Fool in Hamlet’s court.

Eliot’s allusions additionally speak to the new literary context in which he writes. He constructs a nearly ridiculous image of John the Baptist to draw attention to the notion that the old way of understanding the world cannot necessarily apply any more, as humans have greater access to technologies, greater experiences of violence, and further feelings of alienation from their fellow humans. Eliot does not simply want to refer to other works of literature, religion, and history; he wants to recast his reader’s understanding of them, forcing to reconsider how they apply to the present era.