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Notes reduce it to a mechanical exercise, counting the “number of times giraffes are mentioned in the
English novel.” He is against interpreters who can find things in the poem which are not there. He
uses the metaphor of medical dissection to emphasize his point : “Comparison and analysis need
only the cadavers on the table; but interpretation is always producing parts of the body from its
pockets, and fixing them in place.” The text is compared to the dead body on the operation table;
when an interpreter puts ideas of his own making into the reading of the poem, he is compared to
a doctor bringing in parts from outside when conducting a post mortem. Eliot feels that anything
which produces “a fact even of the lowest order about a work of art” is better. With a trace of wit,
he states, “We assume, of course, that we are masters and not servants of facts, and that we know
that the discovery of Shakespeare’s laundry bills would not be of much use to us.” But he adds
that we should reserve judgement on the futility of research, it is possible that some genius may
appear in the future who would make good use of even trivial facts. He feels that “facts cannot
corrupt taste”, but impressionistic criticism, expressing opinion or fancy (he suggests Coleridge’s
comments on Hamlet as an example) can be harmful. He ends the essay by warning us against an
ever present danger of criticism : “the multiplication of critical books and essays may create .. a
vicious taste for reading about works of art instead of reading the works themselves, it may
supply opinion instead of educating taste.”
Eliot anchors criticism squarely in the text and is wary of opinionated views. In this respect Eliot
echoes some contemporary theorists who believe that a text is animated by the reader and the
critic only facilitates the exercise.

29.3 The Achievement of T.S. Eliot as a Critic

Eliot’s influence as a poet and critic has done a lot to establish a climate favorable to objective
criticism, eschewing the nebulous impressionism of the preceding age. His best critical writing
analyzes and clarifies the theoretical and technical problems which had a bearing on his writing
of poetry. He made an important contribution to ideas concerning the integrity of poetry, the
process of poetic composition, the importance of tradition to the maturing of the individual talent,
the relation of the past and the present, and the fusion of feeling and thought. Eliot as a critic can
be considered a successor of Matthew Arnold, because he assumed the role of a guardian of
culture; like Arnold, he laid stress on impartiality, and proper evaluation of a poet. And like
Arnold, he became a legislator of literary culture, as his later writings testify.
The earlier Eliot staunchly defended the autonomy of art, arguing against linking up art and
religion or art and morality. But later he started believing in the importance of the poet’s beliefs.
R, n, Wellek points out that Eliot “advocated a double standard of criticism : artistic on the one
hand and moral-philosophical-theological on the other.” Eliot declared (in Essays Ancient and
Modern, 1936) “In an age like our own ... it is the more necessary ... to scrutinize works of
imagination, with explicit ethical and theological standards. The ‘greatness’ of literature cannot be
determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or
not can be determined only by literary standards.”
Many fellow critics have expressed their dissatisfaction with Eliot’s criticism, in spite of its great
influence. Yvor Winters categorically states, “Eliot is a theorist who has repeatedly contradicted
himself on every important issue that he has touched... many of them [the contradictions] occur
within the same book or even within the same essay.” F.R. Leavis grants Eliot’s eminence as a
poet, but feels that his criticism falls short of the “consciousness that one thinks of as necessary to
the great creative writer.” According to Leavis, “some of the ideas, attitudes, and valuations put
into currency by Eliot were arbitrary.” He says that “Tradition and the Individual Talent” is

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