Comparing Byron's She Walks In Beauty And The Love Song Of J.

The Romantic Movement is set around the specific ideals of beauty in contrast to the sublime, the natural poet, and the power of imagination. Beauty is underscored by its smallness and ability to be viewed; the sublime on the other hand is vast and not able to be seen entirely, and instead is centered on the ability to imagine what it may look like. Following that era, the Modernist period was marked by sudden and unexpected breaks with traditional ways of viewing and interacting with the world. Individualism and experimentation became popular in modernist pieces of literature while in the past they were often discouraged. Although the romantics have a set of philosophies that they follow for their writing; Byron’s She Walks in Beauty and Eliot’s

Alfred Prufrock the speaker tells the reader things that he feels he will not be able to tell anyone else. It is hard to tell if Prufrock is in fact in love with the woman because he talks about himself a lot instead of focusing on her. The poem starts out like any other love poem; the two lovebirds are walking around during the evening which is “spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon the table” (2-3). One would think that any good love song shouldn’t be started out with this image. However, Prufrock’s poem includes several images such as this one. The speaker talks about taking his date strolling down streets that are barren and empty, ones that contain “sawdust restaurants with oyster shells” (7). Gross right? This street that he is walking down have disgusting restaurants, one-night cheap hotels, and they are nearly empty. These descriptions make it seem as if they are walking down a street where prostitutes hang out. During the entirety of this poem the speaker focuses on himself, what others will think of him, and the disturbing setting around him. Never once does he talk about his love for the woman. Despite the title, this literary work is completely the opposite. The “love song” has been modernized to include the themes of an anti-hero, and alienation. In fact, it is hard to determine who the speaker was talking to. It could have been the reader, a woman, or simply himself. The speaker’s inability to define who or what he is talking to proves that he lacks courage and ambition, but this work truly focuses on the idea of alienation. Alienation occurs in the poem when he starts by observing the skyline, line by line the speaker observes smaller things such as the streets or the sawdust on the floors. This continues in the poem both literally with the images associated in the poem and figuratively in the emotional aspects associated with