Nancy Gish ([log in to unmask]) wrote the following on Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 11:06:57PM -0500:
> I am now wondering about the function of the epigraph. I have long assumed I had figured out a reason for it 
> in the need to somehow articulate the meaning of being in Hell (note also the two Lazarus stories, making 
> three characters who died and could have revealed the afterworld but could not or did not). Eliot's epigraphs 
> do not simply chunk another story down in a poem whole: they may evoke mood or topic or emotion rather than 
> story. But I am wondering now if the issue of treachery or fraud is relevant also. I had not before focussed 
> on the fact that Guido is in that circle or that he wants both to conceal and reveal his own sin--and 
> cleverness.
> 
> Does the choice of the circle of fraud reveal or evoke something about Prufrock?

I think the epigraph can work on a number of levels. There's a parallel, isn't there, between da Montefeltro 
both wishing to tell his story and to *not* tell his story and Prufrock's own ambivalence.  The poem also echos 
the Canto in its "known them all already, known them all," which draws a parallel/reflection between those days 
spent over coffee spoons and fantasising over women's arms, and da Montefeltro's "machinations and the covert 
ways."

Prufrock is almost an inversion of da Montefeltro, in fact: where da Montefeltro was a man of action who 
has ostensibly retired from worldly affairs, Prufrock is removed from the world and can only pretend/imagine 
action; where da Montefeltro feels he can be treacherous because he has been pre-forgiven, Prufrock cannot act 
because he has (in his mind) been pre-judged ("that is not what I meant at all.").  The epigraph works for both 
cases, though, since in each there is a sense of shame -- and maybe of arrogance, too: as much as Prufrock is 
rather a pitiable figure, there's also quite a bit of condescention in there, all that Michelangelo and cups and 
marmelade and tea...

Cheers,
George