Ascending the Prufrockian Stair

If nearly every important innovation in the English verse of the last thirty years is implicit in Prufrock, as has recently been said, an in-depth study of this monologue is now warranted. The present collection comprises various key approaches: onomastic, typological, genetic, and aesthetic. The common theme tying them together is the speaker's split self, his dissociated sensibility. Special attention is paid to possible biographical connections and the poem's light-hearted humor. The richness of the sources (among them Shakespeare, Dickens, Pater, Conrad, and Conan Doyle) is stressed.