T.S. Eliot's Early LinguisticTechnique: Pronouns as the Regulator of Viewpoints in ＂The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock＂

Abstract

This study examines Eliot’s peculiar usage of personal pronouns and verb tenses in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which effectively creates the indeterminate self subjected to the inherent paradox of impersonality. Though pronouns and verbs are exploited by many modernists for the creation of diverse points of view and the sense of the timeless, it is Eliot who makes the most of both their conventional and unconventional usage. Eliot initially brings pronouns and verbs to distinguish between various points of view. But soon he rebels against it by making them heavily dependent on the adjacent contexts. Losing their defining power of words, the referents of pronouns shift from line to line, each shift being another, higher fusion of points of view. Likewise, verb tenses are unconventionally juxtaposed and made to fuse various tenses for the effect of simultaneity. So the simultaneous coexistence of various points of view and the past and present tense, voluntarily generates paradox which is an inherent quality of Eliot’s indeterminate self. And Eliot is outstanding for the extraordinary complexity of poetic subjectivity created by his peculiar usage of linguistic elements, on which various points of view play against each other.