In this perceptive study Stanley Sultan informs a unique type of historical criticism with a richly intimate knowledge of three key works--'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ' The Waste Land and Ulysses--and confronts questions of literary theory implicit in the modernist period. In doing so he examines the antecedents of Modernism focusing on three major influences--Flaubert Baudelaire and Dostoyevsky.