摘 要

T.S.艾略特是英国著名诗人、剧作家和文学批评家、现代派诗歌领袖，代表作有《荒原》、《四个四重奏》等。《J.阿尔弗雷德·普鲁弗洛克的情歌》是他早期的诗作。诗作中，他选取了众多意象，引用了大量典故来表现工业文明下现代人的生存状态。本文将诗中的典型意象分为非人意象与人的意象来进行分析。非人意象包括街道、黄雾、水池、时间、桃子和幻灯；人的意象包括女人、施洗者约翰、傻瓜、拉萨路和美人鱼。其中，街道、黄雾、水池、时间、女人、施洗者约翰、傻瓜是诗作的主人公普鲁弗洛克的世界中真实存在的却令他想要逃避的意象；桃子、幻灯、拉萨路、美人鱼是普鲁弗洛克渴望追求却求而不得的意象。

艾略特将他的主题思想通过普鲁弗洛克的情歌表达了出来。通过一系列看似没有逻辑的意象，艾略特将以普鲁弗洛克为代表的现代人的情感精神危机表现得淋漓尽致。诗作中，无意义的时间，没有方向，没有信仰，希望幻灭使人们的精神非常痛苦，构成了一个死气沉沉的精神荒原。诗人通过丰富多彩的写作手法表达了对西方现代社会的批判以及对人类精神世界的关注。

关键词：艾略特；意象；幻灭；无意义

Abstract

1. S. Eliot is a famous English poet, playwright, literary critic and modernist poetry leader. His masterpieces include The Waste Land, Four Quartets, etc. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is his early poem. In this poem, he chooses many images and quotes a large number of allusions to represent modern people's living conditions under industrial civilization. This paper divides the typical images in the poem into non-human images and human images for analysis. Non-human images include streets, yellow fog, poll, time, peach and magic lantern; human images include the women, John the Baptist, the Fool, Lazarus and mermaid. In these images, streets, yellow fog, poll, time, the women, John the Baptist and the Fool are the present images that the poem’ s main character Prufrock wants to escape from; peach, magic lantern, Lazarus and mermaid are the absent images that Prufrock wants to pursue but fails to make it.

Eliot expresses his theme through Prufrock’ s love song. Through a series of seeming illogical images, TS Eliot demonstrates the spiritual crisis of modern people represented by Prufrock incisively and vividly. In this poem, meaningless time, disorientation, faithlessness, disillusionment make people's spirit very painful and constitute a dead spiritual wasteland. Eliot uses various writing techniques to criticize modern western society and shows great concern about human beings’ spiritual world.

Key Words: T.S.Eliot; image; disillusionment; meaninglessness

Contents

目录

1 Introduction 1

1.1 T.S.Eliot and “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock” 1

1.2Literature Review 2

1.3Structure of the Paper 4

2 Images in Non-human Beings’ Sense 5

2.1 Images in Readers’ Presence 5

2.1.1 Streets: Unpleasant Environment 5

2.1.2 Yellow Fog and Pools: Stifling Despair 6

2.1.3 Time: Ineffectual Life 6

2.2 Images in Their Absence 7

2.2.1 Peach: Bold Attempt 7

2.2.2 Magic lantern: Strong Faith 8

3 Images in Human Beings’ Sense 9

3.1 Images in Readers’ Presence 9

3.1.1 The women: A Superficial Class 9

3.1.2 John the Baptist: Destructive Destiny 10

3.1.3 The Fool: A Dilemma 11

3.2 Images in Their Absence 11

3.2.1 Lazarus: Spiritual Rebirth 11

3.2.2 Mermaid: Ideal Mate 12

4 Conclusion 14

4.1 Summary 14

4.2 Further Study 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 17

Analyzing the Images in “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock”

1 Introduction

1.1 T.S.Eliot and “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock”

Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965) (commonly known as T.S.Eliot), British poet, playwright and literary critic , modernist leader, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. His Representative works include The Waste Land, Four Quartets, etc.

Eliot studied philosophy and comparative literature at Harvard University. He was exposed to Sanskrit and Oriental cultures. He was very interested in the Hegelian philosophers and deeply influenced by French symbolism. In 1914 Eliot met American poet Pound. After the outbreak of World War I, he came to England and settled in London. He has worked as a teacher and bank employee respectively. The Waste Land published in 1922 earned him an international reputation. It was regarded by the critics as one of the most influential poems of the 20th century and was considered a milestone in modern English poetry. In 1927, Eliot joined British nationality. Four Quartets published in 1943 resulted in the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature. In his later years he devoted himself to poetic drama. Eliot died in London in 1965.

In 1915 he published “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock” (commonly known as “The Love Song”), a poem that reveals the spiritual crisis of modern intellectuals. His first book of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, appeared in 1917. The poem was begun in 1910, finished in 1911, and published in Poetry in 1915. It has been called the first masterpiece of modernism in English. In spite of the title, the poem is not a love song, but a subtle poem of disillusionment in one’ s ineffectual life and meaningless existence. It is a satire on the decadence and futility of life in the West. This poem not only presents some of Eliot’ s central ideas but also gives the startling glimpse of the unprecedented methods the poet begins to use: dramatic monologue, half quotations, paraphrases, non-explicit references to earlier literature, stream of consciousness, and the association of ideas. There is no sequence of events, nor passage of time. J.Alfred Prufrock is a fictitious name of the central character whose confession of his life, love, thoughts and emotions make up the poem. This character is a cultured cosmopolitan dilettante, longing for, but also afraid of the real commitment to either sexual or intellectual life. He knows and despises his own ineffectuality, hesitates on the verge of attempting to break through the inhibitions in which he has been trained, and finally resigns himself to continuing his superficial life.

1.2Literature Review

Generally speaking, foreigner scholars started to study Eliot much earlier than domestic scholars and the foreign researches’ level is higher than those of domestic scholars. Some foreign scholars use the theory of conceptualization of metaphor to analyze the imagery created by accounting metaphors of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”(Brown, 2018: 153). Christina Wu endeavors to bring together insights from both neuroscience and literature to shed light on how and why readers take pleasure in interpreting T.S. Eliot' s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. It is proposed that the pleasure of reading this poem is ultimately associated with the ways in which the reader's expectations are confirmed or challenged(Wu, 2016: 351). Haiqin Xue explains “an overwhelming question” in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. “The Love Song” delineates the deep theme of modern character separation in western countries. Xue analyzes the use of images, allusions and philosophical basis for the poem and gets the conclusion that this question which Prufrock never speaks out is his psychological conflict. Prufrock is pondering whether he should reveal his true self before the public(Xue, 2009: 79). Eliot influenced many domestic poets such as Xu Zhimo, Bian Zhilin the first time his poetry was translated in Chinese in the 1920s. With Eliot as the subject, in Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI), the first paper was written by Zhang Xiliang in 1961, named “T.S.Eliot and the Ideas of Tradition”. It is actually the translation of an article that published on The Times.

Firstly, some researchers fix their eyes on the characteristics of Prufrock in “The Love Song”. Dai analyses the intense features of modernity in this poem such as the split world, the meaningless life, the inability to love and the sense of reality. She also discussed the connection between Prufrock and Eliot (戴嘉萱,2014: 186-187). Hou discusses the inner monologue and hesitation of Prufrock, which reveals that he was ripped apart by the struggle within him between his sense and his sensibility. According the analysis of the whole song, readers can find that the speaker is a vacillating person, and his character leads to his tragedy. His hesitation brings him the deepest misery and suffering(侯银华,2011: 189-190). Zhao said “The Love Song” is just Prufrock’s soliloquy revealing his divided self between passion and timidity. Her paper is the Freudian analysis of the poem to demonstrate the true nature of the protagonist, making modern western people’ s alienation, anxiety and despair and the decay of culture in the modern western world perceivable(赵金凤,2008: 188) .