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.