Learning Paths » 5A Interacting

ERabino - Comparison between The Love Song of J.A. Prufrock by T.S. Eliot and Tweet di un discorso amoroso by Roberto Cotroneo
by ERabino - (2013-04-15)
Up to  5A - Twitter and R. BarthesUp to task document list

Comparison between The Love Song of J.A. Prufrock by T.S. Eliot and Tweet di un discorso amoroso by Roberto Cotroneo

 

The question I am going to answer after reading and analyzing The Love Song of J.A. Prufrock  and Tweet di un discorso amoroso  is: what are the analogies and differences between a dramatic monologue and an argumentative text?
The first analogy the intelligent reader can find is in the titles. The Love Song of J.A. Prufrock and Tweet di un discorso amoroso remind to the theme of love. However in both text love is not a topic but either a pretext to write about death or a "final sensation". In T.S. Eliot's song, the common idea of love immediately crushes down with the image of the evening compared to "a patient etherized upon a table" (line 3). As a result the reader's attention is taken away from the loving atmosphere right from the start. On the other hand in R. Cotroneo's argumentative text, love is just a "final sensation" given by the juxtapposition of fragmentated tweet.
Juxtapposition can also be noticed in T.S.Eliot's poem. Scenes and images are arranged in a way that  does not seem to make sense at a first look but that will lately take the reader to the end.
Moreover in both texts the reader feels involved. In  the love song the use of the dramatic monologue, where the narration is committed to an unkown speaking voice, allowds the reader to feel part of the narrator's feelings and emotions. However, wether in T.S.Eliot's poem the reader doesn't feel involved until he goes through the first stanza, in R.Cotroneo's text he feels into the text right from the start. Indeed the title is very significant. R.Cotroneo's expedient to put the word "Tweet" in the title, permits to universalize the narrator's condition. As the matter of fact, in the XXI century, most of the people knows how a social network works as well as how to post something on Facebook or Twitter.
When you post something on a social network aren't you talking to yourself? Aren't you trying to give a shape to your thoughts and feelings hoping that someone will share them with you? That is why in Tweet di un discorso amoroso the speaking voice seems to talk with himself while the lover is silently listening as well as in T.S. Eliot's song where the dramatis personae is trying to convince himself that is not too late ( "There will be time" ).
In addition both texts are dramatic in a way or another. The Love Song of J.A. Prufrock is dramatic because it opens with a blurred idea of love and it ends with the speaking voice's fear of death. He's trying to escape it but he cannot because of his inability to act. And so in a world where the real values are not important anymore, love has not the power to escape death. We are still far away from E. Hemingway's quote: "I believe that love that is true and real, creates a respite from death". In Cotroneo's text is put on evidence how people do not pay attention to what they write and what they think: everything has become so easy to replace, so easy to throw away ("oggi tutto viene sostituito, ma non da una cosa identica a quella vecchia, bensì da una cosa nuova, diversa. Tutto si cambia, nulla si aggiusta, tutto muta e nulla resta").
Last but not least, the main difference between the two texts is the language. R.Cotroneo's argumentative text is definitely more direct and easier to read: it immediately involves the reader. On the other hand, T.S.Eliot's poem is more difficult to understand and the reader is asked to find a meaning (or more than one) at the end.
We can conclude saying that a poem does not necessarily have to be totally different from an argumentative text: it just takes more time to get through it because words carry on multiples hidden meanings. In addition, we should abandon the common idea that poetry equals antiquity: a poem, especially T.S. Eliot's one, can definitely be more contemporary than some obvious and repetitive novels.