This superb anthology by T. S. Eliot features The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock, as well as a selection of other works from the poet's early
career. The titular poem is steeped heavily in the Renaissance era
literature with which T. S. Eliot was highly appreciative. The monologue
is strongly inspired by readings of Dante Alighieri and William
Shakespeare, poets whom deeply impacted Eliot during his youth and which
he read meticulously. A work whose emotions include longing and regret,
we hear Prufrock lament the missed opportunities and morose reflections
of mortality which occupy his melancholic mind. For its eclectic embrace
of past works in a monologue bursting with emotive depth, Prufrock was
lauded as a triumphant work of the Modernist era. T. S. Eliot gained
ample fame as a young literary, and would go on to author several other
landmark poems throughout his life.
