By looking up books and collected literature at home and abroad on line, author finds that comparing with The Waste Land and The Four Quarters, few scholars have studied certain piece from Eliot’ s early poems collection in detail. Some scholars discussed concept, metaphor and symbol as a whole.

In an article from CSCanada Journal, the study aims at showing the ethical approaches in T.S. Eliot’ s poetry. Author argues that Eliot’ s poetry is loaded with ethical approaches that characterized the era in which he lived. Also, the significance of this study arises from the fact that ethics have become buried in modern life. Author, among others, feel we need it urgently these days to survive in a nice manner.In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, readers are shocked to notice male man has become or is viewed as being less productive and lacking decision-making, exactly another copy of Hamlet. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock reflects the feelings of emasculation, not feminism, experienced by many men as they returned home from World War I to find women empowered by their new role as wage earners. Prufrock, unables to make a decision, watches women wander in and out of a room, “talking of Michelangelo” , and elsewhere admires their downy, bare arms.

QUAN Chun-yan, from Pu’ er University points that The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is T.S. Eliot’ s masterpiece, which marked the beginning of Eliot’ s career as an influential poet. Prufrock is the image of an ineffectual, sorrowful and depressed western man in twentieth century. Eliot used a lot of images to reveal the city as a wasteland, the tedious life of the western modern people, and the bewildered and split personality of western people. Eliot succeeds in reflecting inner world and spiritual state of modern people with the long, fragmented images,which influence future writers.

The collection Prufrock and Other Observations, published in 1917 funded by Ezra Pound couple, is one of the important collections. The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock was published in 1915 in World War Ⅰ. Worldwide war influenced all walks of life in different countries, of course including literature circle in the U.K. and the U.S. Because of the war, Eliot went to Oxford from America ahead of schedule. The war stimulated the thinking of Eliot, he considered the meaning of the war, the spiritual life of people in the period and pointed the crisis. The rules after the war turned values to a new one. War changes people’s view of life. How to adapt the sharp changes was a big challenge. From the author’s point of view, spiritual crisis exists anytime, peace, war, poor or rich. They differs in different forms. While the society is increasingly developing, spiritual life will increasingly rise up potentially. In current information explosion age, human face the unprecedented fast development. Smart phones, virtual life on the Internet, intense interpersonal relationship, all of these sharp changes make people lose their head. Crisis exists behind the glory. Author hopes to compare the spiritual crisis in the two ages with the help of Eliot’ s sharp observation, then summarize the features of modern people’s spiritual crisis, finally find the feasible method trying solving the problems.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

Eliot is deeply influenced by the French symbolism. The war background and Eliot’ s personal experience also play a vital role to The Love Song. In this poem, Eliot quotes a lot of works in a wide range from Dante to Marvell. They show the rich knowledge and high literature quality of the poet. These quotations apparently stop lower readers, but this is not the only reason. Author needs to study all the quotations and find the true meanings. It’s worth mentioning that there are two important concepts repeated in the work------yellow fog and time. What do they mean? And three obvious groups of people appear, the middle aged man, the women and the woman talking about Michelangelo. What do they represent? We need to analyse the words and characters to understand the potential meaning. Through looking up the quotations and analyzing the images in the poem, we can get a general understanding about the spiritual crisis that Eliot wanted to tell us. Comparing it with modern people’ s spiritual dilemma, we can find the common things and the differences. The disappearing part might have been solved and there will be a solution. The new ones need new methods.

[1]Mohammed Ahmed Aqel Al-Widyan and Manar Hussein Ali Abu Darwish. Eliot’s Approach to Ethical Poetry as a Case Study The Love Song by J. Alfred Prufrock. Canadian Social Science, 2016, Vol.12 (11), 67-78