The Romantically Impaired Prufrock T.S. Eliot's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" depicts the complexity of the modern age. Eliot, himself justified the complexity by arguing that the poet, who is to serve as the interpreter and critic of a complex age, must write complex poetry. And certainly we would all agree that the 20th century was a complex age(Martin 423). J. Alfred Prufrock is no Hamlet. He is a hopeless romantic at best, T.S. Eliot's poster child for 20th century aristocratic society. Prufrock lives in a world where art and music have become the idle conversation of dilettante women who are spiritually, sexually, and intellectually dead, but for who