SOURCE: “Knowledge and Experience in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’,” in ELH, Vol. 55, Fall, 1988, pp. 685-99.

In the following essay, Childs discusses the influence of the philosophy of F. H. Bradley on Eliot and “Prufrock.”

But what a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely a reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning—or without forgetting, merely changing.

—T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

Although scholars and critics became aware of F. H. Bradley's influence upon T. S. Eliot at a relatively late point in the latter's career, the relationship between the two writers has now been extensively documented. The studies of Kristian Smidt and Hugh Kenner led to a number of books and...