McNamara, Robert. " 'Prufrock' and the Problem of Literary Narcissism." Contemporary Literature. 27:3 (1986): 356-357.
McNamara’s
analysis of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” uses his thoughts on
subjectivity and individualistic ‘abstract potentiality’ as a filter to
look at Eliot’s poem. Subjectivity and abstract potentiality both refer
to the individual’s ability to create fiction that they apply to an
objective reality. In Prufrock’s case, this reality refers to the social
reality that he is afraid to face. Prufrock, instead of interacting
with other human beings – other subjective individuals – in order to
become numb to this fear of misunderstanding and overcome it, instead
chooses to protect himself from it. McNamara interprets Prufrock’s
Hamlet-like paralysis and his own self-conscious prolonging and
preservation of that paralysis as an act of self-love. He believes that
Prufrock fears society because he cherishes his own subjectivity. He
sees everything form a distorted, fictionalized point of view.McNamara
does not believe that Prufrock is unreasonably sociopathic. He sees
Prufrock as a logical individual who chooses to remain protected by his
own unaltered perspective on the world. Though this puts him out of
touch with reality, Prufrock consciously makes this decision. The
process of this decision is apparent in the changing of the feminine
image within this poem. McNamara believes that Prufrock comes to see the
women that he interacts with as threatening individuals because they
can hurt him with their misunderstandings and statements like “that is
not what I meant, at all”. By the end of the poem, there are no more
women – only mermaids who sing amongst themselves without attention to
him. The “dare” that Prufrock refers to so often in the poem is not out
of fear for disturbing the objective universe at all, but a fear of
disturbing his own subjective universe. This narcissism leads him to
imagine everything – such as the mermaids – and do nothing, so that he
never truly interacts and thus is never truly in danger of being judged.
by Danny Zhang
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Neigh, Janet. “Reading from the Drop: Poetics of Identification and Yeats’s ‘Leda and the Swan’ in Journal of Modern Literature 29.4 (2006) 145-160
Janet
Neigh’s essay, “Reading from the Drop: Poetics of Identification and
Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan”” uses feminist and post-colonial reading
strategies to analyze W.B. Yeats’ poem “Leda and the Swan.” Neigh
specifically examines identity and identification in the poem. First,
Neigh examines how the final couplet as a question asks the reader to
interpret the sonnet through means of identification. She points out
that often times we are encouraged to identify with both the victim and
the rapist and sort of experience how both their identities begin to
blur into one because of this act. An example of this is the presence of
sexual desire and consent in the “loosening thighs,” “breast upon
breast” and “burning” that allows the reader to see from the rapist’s
perspective as well as the victim’s. The depiction of the swan is
becomes less and less masculine as the rape gets further and further
along. This gender hybridity illustrates how during the rape not only do
their identities begin to blur but their genders become harder to
identify as simply male and female. After the rape, Leda is described as
“being so caught up.” Neigh uses this to illustrate how entangled
Leda’s identity is with Zeus’s identity even when there is some
resistance. We see this finally when the swan drops Leda. The sonnet
indicates that Leda does take something from Zeus even as she drops and
even at her most dominated. This is an example of just how entangled
their identities became even beyond simply oppressor and victim. When
looked at in a post-colonial sense, it implies that Ireland’s identity
cannot so easily be defined apart from its English colonizer.
by Warren Fong___________________________________________________________________
In his book, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language, and the Twentieth Century,
Michael North argues that in order to fully understand the movements of
the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism, one must refer to the elements of
each movement simultaneously because dialect, specifically black
dialect, is the common bond between the two movements. North
utilizes various events in literary history, such as the creation of
the Oxford English Dictionary and early events in the life of T.S.
Eliot, to support his claims. North shows that the OED, in
its attempts to standardize the language, actually aided the birth and
rise to fame of the black dialect because many used the dialect in
protest to the standardization of the English language. North
also states that Modernist writer T.S. Eliot, in his early life
utilized black dialect in literature he wrote, setting the stage for how
one can relate Modernism to the Harlem Renaissance. North
asserts that Modernist poets saw black diction as a tool to show the
rebellion against traditional English, while the Harlem Renaissance
served as an opportunity to break away from stereotypes which stated
that black diction was despicable in literature. Although
the two movements seem to be going in opposite directions, North writes
that black diction is the driving force behind both; therefore both
movements must be taken into consideration together.
by: Joshua Trejo
