Ascending the Prufrockian Stair: Studies in a Dissociated Sensibility

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 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.