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Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University Unit 30: Eliot-Tradition And Individual Talent...

Unit 30: Eliot-Tradition And Individual Talent: Notes
Critical Appreciation cum Analysis

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
30.1 The Concept of Tradition and Individual Talent
30.2 Text—Tradition and Individual Talent
30.3 Analysis
30.4 Summary
30.5 Key-Words
30.6 Review Questions
30.7 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit, Students will to be able to:
• Generate awareness amongst the learners about T. S. Eliot’s position as a Critic.
• Enable the learners to understand in detail the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
as one of his most famous critical outputs.

Introduction

T. S. Eliot as a Critic’ Besides being a poet, playwright and publisher, T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) was
one of the most seminal critics of his time. Carlo Linati, his Italian critic, found his poetry to be
‘irrational, incomprehensible… a magnificent puzzle’, and in his poetic endeavors ‘a deliberate
critical purpose’. Also in his literary criticism Eliot’s personality has found its full expression.
Thus Eliot’s literary criticism can be seen as expression of his poetic credo. As one of the seminal
critics of the twentieth century; Eliot shows a disinterested endeavour of critical faculty and
intelligence in analyzing a work of art. For the sake a systematic discussion, his critical works may
be grouped under the following headings:
1. theoretical criticism dealing with the principles of literature,
2. descriptive and practical criticism dealing with the works of individual writers and evaluation
of their achievements, and
3. theological essays.
‘Tradition and Individual Talent’ has been one of his extraordinarily influential critical works. It
was first published in 1922 in Sacred Woods, and was subsequently included in the ‘Selected
Essays’ (1917-1932). In this essay, Eliot has primarily dealt with his concepts of
1. Historical Sense, and Tradition
2. Interdependence of the past and the present
3. Impersonality in art in general and poetry in particular
30.1 The Concept of Tradition and Individual Talent

According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Tradition means a belief, principle
or way of acting which people in a particular society or group have continued to follow for a long

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