Modernism and Depersonalization in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Modernism was a reaction against the utilitarian and moral values held in the nineteenth century that sough common good in the society. With art being utilitarian, there was no sense of individuality for writers and their works, so modern writers began to focus on individual experience to show the inner life of artists and people and reflect an accurate picture of the society in which they were living. T. S. Eliot introduced the concept of depersonalization in his essay “Tradition and Individual Talent,” setting the poet and their poems as two separate things with the poet remaining completely impersonal throughout the poem. This depersonalization theory shows itself in contrast to the modernism rejection of the nineteenth century moralism and utilitarian view towards art. As modernism seeks individuality and individual experience, the concept of depersonalization rejects the expression of the author’s personality. This research sets to analyze Eliot’s poem “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to see how the poet managed to keep the modernist value showing individual experience and yet remain faithful to the concept of depersonalization. The research concludes that by creating allusive and ironical imageries in the poem, Eliot managed to share experiences that were quite palpable to modern people and sever his own personality from the poems.