American Literature / Unit 14 AML 1310 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Prufrock's Voice and the Dramatic Monologue
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The idea
The poem is a dramatic monologue whose speaker addresses an unnamed you and reveals more than he means to: the paralysis, the self-mockery, the sense of having measured out his life with coffee spoons. Eliot took Browning's form and removed its confidence.
In practice
A monologue by a man who cannot act.
Where people slip
The form is Browning's; the nerve is not.
Your place on the trail
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