This presentation will regard the poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock (from here referred to as Prufrock. The poem has 20 stanzas, and an epigraph. The rhyme scheme of this poem is irregular but not random. While sections of the poem may resemble free verse, in reality, “Prufrock” is a carefully structured amalgamation of poetic forms. The bits and pieces of rhyme become much more apparent when the poem is read aloud. Occasionally we’ll get a couple of lines of blank verse, which have no rhyme but a regular meter, usually iambic pentameter, where an unstressed syllable is followed by an accent. Eliot uses a lot of rhyming couplets. Eliot is making fun of Prufrock by using this old-fashioned form. The rhyming couplets are sometimes called "heroic" couplets, but our title character is anything but heroic. The rhymes also have a singsong quality that makes them seem childish. One of the most prominent formal characteristics of this work is the use of refrains. Prufrock’s continual return to the “women [who] come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” and his recurrent questionings (“how should I presume?”) and pessimistic appraisals (“That is not it, at all.”) help describe the consciousness of a neurotic individual. Prufrock 's obsessiveness is a sign of compulsiveness and isolation.
The epigraph of the poem is taken from The Inferno, itself a part of The Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy is a seminal piece of poetic prose authored by Dante Alighieri. The Inferno is only one of