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.

Zusammenfassung
"...the most detailed examination of 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'... It offers the fullest account of the sources that Eliot used or may have used in writing his best-known poem. ... Illuminating the poem from a fresh perspective, the author has broken new ground in Eliot scholarship and appreciation. Through his thought-provoking, often entertaining book, the reader may rediscover a modern classic." (Alfred Dorn, The CLA Journal)
"Written almost in the spirit of a delightful game, this study offers an in-dept h analysis of T.S.Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'." (Antioch Review)
"Professor Robert Fleissner has written a fine, eclectic study of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot's existencial protagonist... Robert Fleissner's often insightful book on Eliot's pathetically shamming protoartist is an excellent ... gift on the occasion of the late Nobel Prizewinning poet's 100th birthday." (Pierre L. Horn, DDN)
"Fleissner has endeavored, and succeeded beyond any other Eliot researcher, in discovering the meaning intended in each word or phrase of Eliot's monologue. . .. Any student of the works of Eliot will find this a rich source of information presented in a readable, understandable, entertaining style that weaves it into a cohesive ongoing story of a poem and its author that led American poetry into its present age." (Thelma Scott Kiser, The Sunday Independent)
"For any who suppose that every morsel of 'Prufrock' has been tasted and thoroughly chewed by previous critics, Fleissner whets our appetite for the poem once more as he offers new ways for us to trace backward into the literary heritage from which the poem springs and inward into the sensibility that gave it birth." (Dorothy Judd Hall, Southern Humanities Review)
"Fleissner has thrown a hefty boomerang at us with this study of T.S. Eliot's renowned 'Prufrock'. For at once we must either ignore the whirling weapon ... or catch it smartly." (A.J. Montesi, ANQ)
"Fleissner's criticism exists on the borderline of reality: some of his ideas are inside the border, some outside; but they are thought-provoking." (Carol Siri Johnson, Thalia: Studies in Literary Humor)

Inhalt
Contents: The first full-scale scholarly volume devoted to T.S. Eliot's most anthologized poem, it stresses onomastic, genetic, typological, and aesthetic approaches (including humor).