Answer:
When the poem published in the volume Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917, some critics shocked by the imagery and style, with one commenting, “If the 'Love Song' is neither witty nor amusing, the other poems are interesting experiments in the bizarre and violent. The subjects of the poems, the imagery, the rhythms have the willful outlandishness of the young revolutionary idea.” Before the start of the poem, Eliot includes an epigraph from the Italian Renaissance poet Dante’s Inferno, where the poet journeys through the levels of hell. The lines are from a condemned character who is willing to show his crimes only because he thinks Dante will never leave hell and be able to tell anyone else. So before the poem itself begins, an allusion to hell and a confession that the confessor thinks will remain secret. The poem written as a dramatic monologue where Prufrock, the speaker of the poem, reveals his thoughts and feelings about asking an “overwhelming question” which is never revealed to the listener or asked, presumably to a woman. The poem reveals Prufrock’s uncertainty as his monologue shifts in both time and space. The more he contemplates asking the question, the more he delays, reconsiders, and loses sight of the question altogether. Watch the video to explore the form of the poem. At the structural level, the poem thwarts our expectations of what a love song is. It removes the predictable patterns, and it shifts its rhyme and meter to reinforce the sense of fragmentation and uncertainty.
Step-by-step explanation: