Beginning of Essay
Surrealism is a dangerous word to use about the poet, playwright and critic T.S. Eliot, and certainly with his first major work, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ". Eliot wrote the poem, after all, years before Andre Breton and his compatriots began defining ....

Middle of Essay
.... explorations of the symbolic suggestions of objects and images." Its unusual, sometimes startling juxtapositions often characterize surrealism, by which it tries to transcend logic and habitual thinking, to reveal deeper levels of meaning and of unconscious associations. Although scholars might not classify Eliot as a Surrealist, the surreal landscape, defined as "an attempt to express the workings of the subconscious mind by images without order, as in a dream " is exemplified in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." "Prufrock presents a symbolic landscape where the meaning emerges from the mutual interaction of the images, and that meaning i ....