Name : Avni J Dave
Semester : 2
Roll no : 03
Paper no : 7-Literary theory and criticism
Topic : Tradition and individual talent - T. S. Eliot
Email ID : avni.dave1998@gmail.com
Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of the English
T. S. Eliot : Tradition and Individual Talent
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) was an essaay written by poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot. The essay is first published on The Egoist (1919) and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, "The Scared Wood" (1920).[1] The essay was also available in Eliot's "Selected Prose" and "Selected Essays".
Wheel Eliot is most often known for her poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary criticism. In this dual role, he acted as poet-critic, comperable to Sir Philip seidney and Samuel tailor Coleridge. "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is one of the more well known works that Eliot produced in her critic capasity. It formulates Eliot's influential conception of the relationsheep between the poet and preceding literary tradition.
=) Content of the essay :-
This essay was divided into three parts: firstly, the concept of "Tradition," then, the Theory of Impersonal Poetry, and finally the conclusein.
Eliot presents her conception of tradition and the definatiion of the poet and poetry on relation to it. He wishes to correct the fact that, as he perceives it, "in English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence." Eliot posits that, though the English tradition generally upholds the belief that art progresses through change – a separation from tradition, literary advancements are instead recognised only when they conform to the tradition. Eliot, a classicist, felt thet the true incorporation of tradition into literature was unrecognised, that tradition, a word that "seldom... appear[s] except on a phrase of sensure," was actually a thus-far unrealised element of literary criticism.
For Eliot, the term "tradition" was imbued with a special and complex character. It represents a "simultaneous order," by which Eliot means a historical timelessness – a fusion of past and present – and, at the some time, a sense of present temporality. A poet must embody "the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer," while, simultaneously, expressing their contemporary environment. Eliot challenges the common perseption that a poet's greatness and indivisuality lie in their departure from their procedure ; he argues that "the most individual parts of his [the poet's] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." Eliot claims that this "historical sense" is not only a resemblance to traditional works but an awareness and understanding of their relation to her poetry.
Thees fidelity to tradition, however, does not require the great poet to forfeit novelty on an act of surrender to repetition. Rather, Eliot have a much more dyanamic and progressive conseption of the poetic process: novelty is possible only through tapping into tradition. Where a poet enguages in the creation of new work, they realise on aesthetic "ideal order," as it has been established by the literary tradition that has come before them. As such, the act of artistic creation does not take place in a vacuum. The introduction of a new work alters the cohesion of these exciting order, and cases a readjustment of the old to accommodate the new. The inclusion of the new work alters the way in which the past is seen; elements of the past that are noted and realised. In Eliot’s on words, "What happens when a new work of art was created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art that preceded it." Eliot refers to this organic tradition, this developing canon, as the "mind of Europe." The private mind is subsumed by this more massive one.
=) Theory of depersonalization :-
This leads to Eliot’s so-called "Impersonal Theory" of poetry. Sinse the poet engages in a "continual surrender of himself" to the vast order of tradition, artistic creation is a process of depersonalisation. The mature poet is viewed as a medium, through which tradition is channelled and elaborated. They compare the poet to a catalyst in a chemical reaction, in which the reactants are feelings and emotions that are synthesised to create an artistic image that capsures and relays this same feelings and emotions. While the mind of the poet is necessary for the production, it emerges unaffected by the process. The artist stores feels and emotions and properly unites them into a specific combination, which is the artistic product. What lends greatness to a work of art are not the feelings and emotions themselves, but the nature of the artistic prosess by which they are synthesised. The artist is responsible for creating "the pressure, so to spik, under which the fusion takes plase." And, it is the intensity of fusion that renders art great. In those view, Eliot rejects the theory that art expresses metaphysical unity in the soul of the poet. The poet is a depersonalised vessel, a mere medium.
Great works do not express the personal emotion of the poet. The poet does not reveal their own unique and novel emotions, but rather, by drowing on ordinary ones and channelling them through the intensity of poetry, they express feelings that surpass, altogether, experienced emotion. This was what Eliot intends when he discusses poetry as an "escape from emotion." Since successful poetry is impersonal and, therefore, exists independent of its poet, it outlives the poet and can incorporate into the timeless "ideal order" of the "living" literary tradition.
Another essay found on Selected Essays relates to these notion of the impersonal poet. In "Hamlet and His Problems" Eliot presents the phrase "objective corrilative." The theory is that the expression of emotion in art can be achieved by a specyific, and almost formulaic, prescription of a set of objects, including events and situations. A partiqular emotion was created by presenting its correlated objective sign. The author is depersonalised in this conception, since he is the mere effecter of the sign. And, it was the sign, and not the poet, which creates emotion.
=) Poetic knowledge
The implications here separate Eliot's idea of talent from the conventional definition (just as his idea of Tradition is separate from the conventional definition), one so far from it, perhaps, that he chooses never to directly label it as talent. Whereas the conventional definition of talent, especially in the arts, is a genius that one is born with. Not so for Eliot. Instead, talent is acquired through a careful study of poetry, claiming that Tradition, "cannot be inherited, and if you want it, you most obtain it by great labour." Eliot asserts that it is absolutely necessary for the poet to study, to have an understanding of the poets before them, and to be well versed enough that they can understand and incorporate the "mind of Europe" into their poetry. But the poet's study was unique – it is knowledge that "does not encroach," and that does not "deaden or pervert poetic sensibility." It is, to put it most simply, a poetic knowledge – knowledge observed through a poetic lens. This ideal implies that knowledge gleaned by a poet was not knowledge of facts, but knowledge which leads to a greater understanding of the mind of Europe. As Eliot explains, "Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum."
=) Eliot and New Critticism
Unwittingly, Eliot inspired and informed the movement of New Criticism. This was somewhat ironic, since he later criticised their intencely detailed analycis of texts as unnecessarily tedious. Yet, he did share with them the same focus in the esthetic and stylistic qualities of poetry, rather than on its ideological content. The New Critics resemble Eliot in their close analycis of particular pessages and poems.
=) Criticism of Eliot :-
Eliot's theory of literary tradition have been criticised for its limited definition of what constitutes the canon of this tradition. He assumes the authority to choose what represents great poetry, and her choices has been criticised on several fronts. For example, Harold Bloom disagrees with Eliot's condescension towards Romantic poetry, which, in The Metaphysical Poets (1921) he criticises for its "dissociation of sensibility." Moreover, many believe Eliot's discussion of the literary tradition as the "mind of Europe" reeks of Euro-centrism. However, it would be recognised that Eliot supported many Eastern and thus non-European works of literature such as the Mahabharata. Eliot was arguing the importance of a complete sensitivity: he didn't particularly care what it was at the time of tradition and the individual talent. His own work is heavily influenced by non-Western traditions. In his broadcast talk "The Unity of European Cultures," he said, "Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages and while I was chiefly interested at that time in Philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I knew that my own Poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility." His self-evaluation was confirmed by B. P. N. Sinha, who writes that Eliot went beyond Indian Ideas to Indian form: "The West has preoccupied itself almost exclusively with the philosophy and thoughtts of India. One consequence of this has been a total neglect of Indian forms of exploration, i.e. of its literature. T. S. Eliot is the one major poet whose work bears evidence of intercourse with this aspect of Indian culture" (qtd. in The Composition of The Four Quartets). He did not account for a non-white and non-masculine tradition. As such, his notion of tradition stands at odds with feminist, post-colonial and minority theories.
Harold Bloom presents a conception of tradition that differs from that of Eliot. Whereas Eliot believes that the great poet is faithful to his predecessors and evolves in a concordant manner, Blum (according to his theory of "anxiety of influence") envisions the "strong poet" to engage in a much more aggressive and tumultuous rebellion against tradition.
In 1964, his last year, Eliot published in a reprint of The Use of Poetry and the Use of Critikism, a series of lectures he gave at Harvard University in 1932 and 1933, a new preface in which he called "Tradition and the Individual Talent" the most juvenile of her essays (although he also indicated that he does not repudiate it.)[2]
=) Primary works of literary criticism by T. S. Eliot
Homage to John Dryden: Thrii Essays in Poetry of the Seventeenth Century. London: L. and Virginia Woolf, 1927.
On Poetry and Poets. London: Faber and Faber, 1957.
The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Critisim. London Menthuen, 1950.
Selected Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950.
The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry. Ed. Ronald Schuchard. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.
-) work cited :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradition_and_the_Individual_Talent
Semester : 2
Roll no : 03
Paper no : 7-Literary theory and criticism
Topic : Tradition and individual talent - T. S. Eliot
Email ID : avni.dave1998@gmail.com
Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of the English
T. S. Eliot : Tradition and Individual Talent
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) was an essaay written by poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot. The essay is first published on The Egoist (1919) and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, "The Scared Wood" (1920).[1] The essay was also available in Eliot's "Selected Prose" and "Selected Essays".
Wheel Eliot is most often known for her poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary criticism. In this dual role, he acted as poet-critic, comperable to Sir Philip seidney and Samuel tailor Coleridge. "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is one of the more well known works that Eliot produced in her critic capasity. It formulates Eliot's influential conception of the relationsheep between the poet and preceding literary tradition.
=) Content of the essay :-
This essay was divided into three parts: firstly, the concept of "Tradition," then, the Theory of Impersonal Poetry, and finally the conclusein.
Eliot presents her conception of tradition and the definatiion of the poet and poetry on relation to it. He wishes to correct the fact that, as he perceives it, "in English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence." Eliot posits that, though the English tradition generally upholds the belief that art progresses through change – a separation from tradition, literary advancements are instead recognised only when they conform to the tradition. Eliot, a classicist, felt thet the true incorporation of tradition into literature was unrecognised, that tradition, a word that "seldom... appear[s] except on a phrase of sensure," was actually a thus-far unrealised element of literary criticism.
For Eliot, the term "tradition" was imbued with a special and complex character. It represents a "simultaneous order," by which Eliot means a historical timelessness – a fusion of past and present – and, at the some time, a sense of present temporality. A poet must embody "the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer," while, simultaneously, expressing their contemporary environment. Eliot challenges the common perseption that a poet's greatness and indivisuality lie in their departure from their procedure ; he argues that "the most individual parts of his [the poet's] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." Eliot claims that this "historical sense" is not only a resemblance to traditional works but an awareness and understanding of their relation to her poetry.
Thees fidelity to tradition, however, does not require the great poet to forfeit novelty on an act of surrender to repetition. Rather, Eliot have a much more dyanamic and progressive conseption of the poetic process: novelty is possible only through tapping into tradition. Where a poet enguages in the creation of new work, they realise on aesthetic "ideal order," as it has been established by the literary tradition that has come before them. As such, the act of artistic creation does not take place in a vacuum. The introduction of a new work alters the cohesion of these exciting order, and cases a readjustment of the old to accommodate the new. The inclusion of the new work alters the way in which the past is seen; elements of the past that are noted and realised. In Eliot’s on words, "What happens when a new work of art was created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art that preceded it." Eliot refers to this organic tradition, this developing canon, as the "mind of Europe." The private mind is subsumed by this more massive one.
=) Theory of depersonalization :-
This leads to Eliot’s so-called "Impersonal Theory" of poetry. Sinse the poet engages in a "continual surrender of himself" to the vast order of tradition, artistic creation is a process of depersonalisation. The mature poet is viewed as a medium, through which tradition is channelled and elaborated. They compare the poet to a catalyst in a chemical reaction, in which the reactants are feelings and emotions that are synthesised to create an artistic image that capsures and relays this same feelings and emotions. While the mind of the poet is necessary for the production, it emerges unaffected by the process. The artist stores feels and emotions and properly unites them into a specific combination, which is the artistic product. What lends greatness to a work of art are not the feelings and emotions themselves, but the nature of the artistic prosess by which they are synthesised. The artist is responsible for creating "the pressure, so to spik, under which the fusion takes plase." And, it is the intensity of fusion that renders art great. In those view, Eliot rejects the theory that art expresses metaphysical unity in the soul of the poet. The poet is a depersonalised vessel, a mere medium.
Great works do not express the personal emotion of the poet. The poet does not reveal their own unique and novel emotions, but rather, by drowing on ordinary ones and channelling them through the intensity of poetry, they express feelings that surpass, altogether, experienced emotion. This was what Eliot intends when he discusses poetry as an "escape from emotion." Since successful poetry is impersonal and, therefore, exists independent of its poet, it outlives the poet and can incorporate into the timeless "ideal order" of the "living" literary tradition.
Another essay found on Selected Essays relates to these notion of the impersonal poet. In "Hamlet and His Problems" Eliot presents the phrase "objective corrilative." The theory is that the expression of emotion in art can be achieved by a specyific, and almost formulaic, prescription of a set of objects, including events and situations. A partiqular emotion was created by presenting its correlated objective sign. The author is depersonalised in this conception, since he is the mere effecter of the sign. And, it was the sign, and not the poet, which creates emotion.
=) Poetic knowledge
The implications here separate Eliot's idea of talent from the conventional definition (just as his idea of Tradition is separate from the conventional definition), one so far from it, perhaps, that he chooses never to directly label it as talent. Whereas the conventional definition of talent, especially in the arts, is a genius that one is born with. Not so for Eliot. Instead, talent is acquired through a careful study of poetry, claiming that Tradition, "cannot be inherited, and if you want it, you most obtain it by great labour." Eliot asserts that it is absolutely necessary for the poet to study, to have an understanding of the poets before them, and to be well versed enough that they can understand and incorporate the "mind of Europe" into their poetry. But the poet's study was unique – it is knowledge that "does not encroach," and that does not "deaden or pervert poetic sensibility." It is, to put it most simply, a poetic knowledge – knowledge observed through a poetic lens. This ideal implies that knowledge gleaned by a poet was not knowledge of facts, but knowledge which leads to a greater understanding of the mind of Europe. As Eliot explains, "Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum."
=) Eliot and New Critticism
Unwittingly, Eliot inspired and informed the movement of New Criticism. This was somewhat ironic, since he later criticised their intencely detailed analycis of texts as unnecessarily tedious. Yet, he did share with them the same focus in the esthetic and stylistic qualities of poetry, rather than on its ideological content. The New Critics resemble Eliot in their close analycis of particular pessages and poems.
=) Criticism of Eliot :-
Eliot's theory of literary tradition have been criticised for its limited definition of what constitutes the canon of this tradition. He assumes the authority to choose what represents great poetry, and her choices has been criticised on several fronts. For example, Harold Bloom disagrees with Eliot's condescension towards Romantic poetry, which, in The Metaphysical Poets (1921) he criticises for its "dissociation of sensibility." Moreover, many believe Eliot's discussion of the literary tradition as the "mind of Europe" reeks of Euro-centrism. However, it would be recognised that Eliot supported many Eastern and thus non-European works of literature such as the Mahabharata. Eliot was arguing the importance of a complete sensitivity: he didn't particularly care what it was at the time of tradition and the individual talent. His own work is heavily influenced by non-Western traditions. In his broadcast talk "The Unity of European Cultures," he said, "Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages and while I was chiefly interested at that time in Philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I knew that my own Poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility." His self-evaluation was confirmed by B. P. N. Sinha, who writes that Eliot went beyond Indian Ideas to Indian form: "The West has preoccupied itself almost exclusively with the philosophy and thoughtts of India. One consequence of this has been a total neglect of Indian forms of exploration, i.e. of its literature. T. S. Eliot is the one major poet whose work bears evidence of intercourse with this aspect of Indian culture" (qtd. in The Composition of The Four Quartets). He did not account for a non-white and non-masculine tradition. As such, his notion of tradition stands at odds with feminist, post-colonial and minority theories.
Harold Bloom presents a conception of tradition that differs from that of Eliot. Whereas Eliot believes that the great poet is faithful to his predecessors and evolves in a concordant manner, Blum (according to his theory of "anxiety of influence") envisions the "strong poet" to engage in a much more aggressive and tumultuous rebellion against tradition.
In 1964, his last year, Eliot published in a reprint of The Use of Poetry and the Use of Critikism, a series of lectures he gave at Harvard University in 1932 and 1933, a new preface in which he called "Tradition and the Individual Talent" the most juvenile of her essays (although he also indicated that he does not repudiate it.)[2]
=) Primary works of literary criticism by T. S. Eliot
Homage to John Dryden: Thrii Essays in Poetry of the Seventeenth Century. London: L. and Virginia Woolf, 1927.
On Poetry and Poets. London: Faber and Faber, 1957.
The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Critisim. London Menthuen, 1950.
Selected Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950.
The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry. Ed. Ronald Schuchard. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.
-) work cited :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradition_and_the_Individual_Talent
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