3 of 4

Write now Article Tools

Analysis of Montage in 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock' (1917) T. S. Eliot.

Montage during the Modernist period is a practice which refers to non-linear subject matter, often contradictory, which constitutes the structure or format that conveys meaning or message within a Modernist text. In 'Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot', Andrew Swarbrick describes Eliot's use of this technique in 'The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock' as 'a fragmentary collage of false starts, hesitations and digressions.'1 By this Swarbrick means that Prufrock narrates his love song to an unknown other, who is never revealed, in a disjointed kaleidoscopic fashion. He does this by dislocating his ideas both from each other and from the overall sequence of the poem, whilst none the less constructing an apparent textual order from the disorderly events taking place.

Examples of this montage can be found throughout the poem, beginning in the first verse when Prufrock invites his unknown other to join him, 'When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table,' (2-3)2 on a journey through half-deserted streets, 'Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent' (8-9). Prufrock, nonplussed by the apparent contradiction in his mixed metaphor, happily pits an absence of consciousness on the one hand against an aggravated state of consciousness on the other, and proceeds only to ask a question, a question which he either cannot or does not ask, because 'In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo' (13-14). This eclectic choice of widely divergent subject matter progresses throughout Prufrock's non-linear love song as he cobbles together a host of these disconnected thoughts and images in consistently disjointed sequence. He is quite happy to digress sporadically, but he is also aware of his own conscious digression, asking himself: 'Is it perfume from a dress / That makes me so digress?' (65-66) Only to shift emphasis again, six lines later, when he expresses the wish: 'I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas' (73-74).

Prufrock's fragmented discourse thus mirrors his mental state. He is presenting his love song as a montage in order to capture his own stream of consciousness. In 'Selected Poems', Swarbrick suggests that 'The 'meaning' of the poem, then, emerges from its form, [where] the digressions, intrusions and hesitations themselves express Prufrock's incapacity.'3

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Analysis of The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot?
We want to hear your view. Write now!