همایش رویکردهای میان رشته ای به آموزش زبان، ادبیات و مطالعات ترجمه

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صفحه اصلی / پنجمین همایش رویکردهای میان رشته ای به آموزش زبان، ادبیات و مطالعات ترجمه

Katabasis and Stasis in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot

نویسندگان :

Fatima Sadat Yahyapoor¹

1- دانشگاه ارومیه

کلمات کلیدی :

T. S. Eliot،Prufrock،Hell،Stasis،City،Dante،Odyssey

چکیده :

T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a seminal piece of Modernist movement in early twentieth century. The poet has created an everlasting and multifaceted picture of a modern man in an unknown modern city landscape and his anxieties. Many scholars and critics have engaged in an ongoing debate over its figures of speech and themes from different perspectives for instance metaphoric, psychoanalysis, postmodern and other approaches. Although some scholars have discussed the portrayal of the city in the poem, they have not addressed the image of hell and katabasis, a descent into the underworld, in the poem. Eliot’s protagonist, J. Alfred, and his unknown companion repeat the two images of hell and katabasis through a descent into a modern hell of stasis and torpidity following on two major traditions in western literature: one dating back to ancient Greece represented in Odysseus’ dialogue with Achilles in Hades and the other to Christian literary tradition particularly Dante’s Divine Comedy. I aim to flesh out how the static state of hell and its dead in Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s Divine Comedy inform the way modern city as hell is depicted in T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred poem. Through close reading, the findings suggest that T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” portrays its protagonist and his companion descending into a static modern city to signify a modern static hell characterized by stasis, paralysis, and sterility. These elements are represented in the recurrence of certain words, images, and sentences. Furthermore, the choice of specific words, metaphors, allusions, and situations emphasize the stagnant condition J. Alfred is experiencing in a modern city. For J. Alfred his life is death since he is passive, which is a direct result of living in modern era in a modern city among dull modern people.