On The Narrative Features Of “The Love Song Of J.Alfred Prufrock”

“The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock”(abbreviated as “Prufrock” in the following)is a modernistic long poem written by T.S.Eliot not long after World War I broke out.As one of the most important works among Eliot's earlier writings,“Prufrock” was published in 1915.Within the 131-line poem(the preface excluded)Eliot presents us the internal monologue of J.Alfred Prufrock and what he saw and thought on his way to propose marriage to a lady.In this poem,Eliot tells the story in the form of the first person and lets us know when and where the story happened,who had been involved in it and also the plots of the story.Thus “Prufrock” can be seen as a long poem of narrativity.Mainly based on Gérard Genette's theory of Narratology,the thesis analyzes and explores the narrative features in “Prufrock” and attempts to study Eliot's extraordinary narrative strategies and their splendid narrative effects in this poem.The thesis investigates the poem's narrative features from three aspects.The first is the narrative technique of anachrony,which can be divided into analepsis and prolepsis,and it will be emphatically discussed to reveal the narrative time with an unchronological order in this poem.The narrative time flows because of the flowing of the narrator's consciousness and influenced by it,the narrative results in much fragmentation in this poem.Next,the narrative duration will be discussed together with the plot arrangement in“Prufrock”.It is found that to match the narrative pace with the plot arrangement,the proper use of pause,summary and scene by Eliot is critical.The narrative duration and the plot arrangement are inherently related and highly unified in “Prufrock”.Lastly,from the perspective of narrative point of view,the internal focalization in “Prufrock” is interpreted together with its narrative effects.The narrative under this technique is found as narrator-centered and with much objectivity.