“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Portrait of a Lady,” two major works of T. S. Eliot’s early poems, have been regarded as a kind of ramatic monologues. Many critics indicated that Eliot’s use of dramatic monologue was different from Victorian poets’, so they called Eliot’s dramatic monologues “interior monologues” or “psychologues.” However, some critics like Won-Chung Kim insisted that Eliot’s and Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues shared some characteristics by comparing their masterpieces, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “My Last Duchess.” In this paper, my premise is that Eliot’s dramatic monologues are different from Victorian poets’ like Browning’s because I think that Eliot changed the technique of dramatic monologue to reflect the spirit of his age, that is, the beginning of the 20th century. In the early 20th century, many writers including Eliot thought that the self is illogical and split, and claimed that they should focus on the human consciousness and try to find the method to express it. In his early poems, Eliot expressed the speakers’ consciousness that was divided. Some critics has also indicated that the speakers of Eliot’ early poems have self-conscious character caused by the split self. To create this character of the speakers, I think, Eliot adapted the technique of dramatic monologue. While the traditional dramatic monologues focus on showing the speakers’ values, Eliot’s show the conflict of the speakers’ doubling self that produces the effect of irony. The speakers’ doubling self consists of the superficial and the fundamental self. One represents the self that tries to conform to the life style of the bourgeois world and is very concerned about people’s judgment. The other represents the self that longs for something higher, more emotional and spiritual. When this doubling self collides with each other and causes conflict, the speaker observes himself in a dramatic way, that is, as a object. Then, the speaker returns to his daily life again.

• 배순정(연세대학교) | Soon-Jung, Bae