Essay by Professor & Former Student Published in Literary Journal

November 24, 2003

November 24, 2003, Greencastle, Ind. - An essay co-authored by Thomas M. Green, a 2002 graduate of DePauw University, and Anne E. Fernald, assistant professor of English, is published in the current issue of the quarterly journal The Explicator. The journal publishes concise notes on passages of prose and poetry. Each issue contains between 25 and 30 notes on works of literature, ranging from ancient Greek and Roman times to our own, from throughout the world.

While a student at DePauw in Dr. Fernald's British Writers 2 class, Green (who is now in law school) noticed a connection between Dickens' Hard Times and Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The professor says, "I gave him the option to write up his observation in lieu of the paper assignment and to try to publish it as an article. After class ended, we worked together to turn the paper into something more formal and scholarly. This article is the fruit of our labor."

Fernald adds, "Our contribution notes that Eliot borrows from Dickens' description of Stephen Blackpool, the alienated working-class hero of Hard Times, in his description of Prufrock, the alienated, lower-middle class antihero of his poem. In particular, Tom noticed a striking link between the opening sentence of the 'Stephen Blackpool' chapter and lines 70-74 of the poem: Eliot borrowed a four-part image sequence from Dickens."

Access The Explicator's Web site by clicking here. Professor Fernald contributed the featured article in the Summer 2003 edition of the journal Modern Fiction Studies. Read more by clicking here.

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