Three Arguments About The Love Song Of J.Alfred Prufrock

T. S. Eliot is acknowledged as a famous twentieth century master of modernism. He is a poet as well as a playwright and literary critic. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is Eliot's most striking early achievement. It has been studied much by the previous researchers, and they generally perceive Prufrock as a cowardly middle-aged man, wanting to propose love in a social occasion but lack the power to speak up. Actually this poem has very distinctive stylistic characteristics, including the use of second person, metaphors and metonymies, and repetition and refrains.This thesis will give a stylistic interpretation of this poem from three aspects. First, from the perspective of person and point of view, the signifier of "you" in this poem and in Browning's dramatic monologue is not the same person, the "you" in this poem cannot be defined as only one person. In the second part, we will analyze metaphors and metonymies, some background of the poem such as the age and social and economic status of the protagonist is explained to the readers by metonymy. The analysis indicates that metaphor and metonymy can mutually complement each other. When cognition cannot express feeling or conception sufficiently, another method could be used to complement it. In the third part, we will put our focus on repetitions and refrains, which are of great importance for the readers to experience the protagonist's thoughts and feelings and to understand the whole theme of the poem.Through the three aspects of stylistic analysis above, we can come to the conclusion that The Love Song is not a real love song, while on the other hand, the protagonist wants to discuss an "over-whelming question"------the question about life and death------with the women...