Prufrock Among the Bohemians: The Dissemination of "Prufrock" through the Twentieth Century

This thesis examines the dissemination of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" through the twentieth century. While scholars seem interested in "Prufrock" as an influential poem, it seems there is limited scholarship on how its influence was propagated. This thesis posits that Bohemianism was the cultural milieu by which "Prufrock" gained popularity and was subsequently appropriated. This thesis looks to Virginia Woolf's The Waves (1931), Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch (1963; English translation 1966), and Jack Kerouac's Big Sur (1962) as hypertexts of "Prufrock" and as examples of how Bohemianism acted as a factor in its appropriation. This thesis finds that Bohemianism, as a culture of collaboration built on its own myth, is a powerful source of intertextuality that likely could have subsumed "Prufrock" as part of that myth.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Department dc:contributor.department

English

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Jorgensen, Alyssa Catherine

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Reed, Ashley

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Wiscomb, Avery
• Knapp, Shoshana Milgram

• Prufrock
• Bohemianism
• modernism
• appropriation
• intertextuality
• metaphysics

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:37571

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115100