This article examines the multi-layered speakers in T. S. Eliot’s early poetry which includes Prufrock and Other Observations(1917) and Poems 1920. Eliot’s philosophy contributes to a breakdown of the traditional metaphysics of the unified “self.” He denounces the unified “I” as an ideal and practical construction. Instead, “a point of view” experiences fragmentary world which, for him or her, is identical with whole universe. The immediate experience is prior to an ideal construction or consciousness. However, this immediate experience becomes the object of consciousness, which means the subject of this experience becomes the object of consciousness. This article demonstrates how Eliot envisions the multi-layered speakers in his poetry. Eliot multiplies the strata of the subject which transforms from the “enunciator I” to the “enunciated I.” Eliot asserts that the only reality is “immediate experience” prior to consciousness. However, immediate experience is incompatible with consciousness and paradoxically cannot be experienced at all. Therefore, experience enters the stage of consciousness. Consciousness is developed within the articulation of language. This brings the multiplicity of “I”s in which the immediate experience of the “I” becomes the object to another “I” which is conscious of the experience. Thus, Eliot’s speakers subvert the homogeneous and static “I” Eliot presents the multi-dimensional speakers.
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