This document summarizes T.S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and Individual Talent". It discusses: 1) The essay has three parts - the concept of tradition, the theory of depersonalization, and a concluding summation. 2) Depersonalization means things that are not personal or impersonal. Eliot argues that criticism should be directed at the poetry, not the poet, through a process of depersonalization where the poet surrenders their personality. 3) Eliot uses the analogy of a chemical reaction involving platinum to define the creative process, where the poet's mind acts as a catalyst, combining impressions without being changed itself in the final work.

1. Topic: Chemical Reaction Depersonalization in
“The Tradition and individual talent “
Name: Jinal B. Parmar
Roll No.: 13
Paper No.: 7 Literary Theory and
Criticism
M.A. Sem.: 2
Year: 2013-2014
Submitted to: Department of English
Smt. S. B. Gardi
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar
University

2. T. S. Eliot Introduction
• Essayist , Playwright, literary and social
critic
• One of the twentieth century’s major
poet
• His greatest works:
• “The Waste Land”
• “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
• “Poems of ‘Four Quartets’
• He has wrote one essay “Tradition and
Individual Talent”

3. Tradition and Individual talent
• Published in 1919
• First published in ‘The
Egoist’
• The essay is also available
in Eliot’s
“Selected Prose” and
“Selected
Essays”
• Eliot presents his
conception of tradition
and the definition of the
poet and poetry

4. Tradition
and
individual
talent
The Concept
of ‘Tradition’
Theory of
Depersonalization
The
Conclusion or
Summing up
Three parts of this essay- Tradition and individual talent

5. Theory of Depersonalization
What is Depersonalization ?
• Depersonalization means which in not personal and
impersonal things
• Here in this essay Eliot gives important to poetry
rather than the poet which is Depersonalization

6. “Honest criticism and Sensitive appreciation is
directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry”
Eliot , start the second part of his essay with:
The poet adopts the process of depersonalization:
“ A continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment
to something which is more valuable. The progress of an
artist is a continual self sacrifice, a continual extinction of
personality”

7. Eliot explain the Chemical Process to define Art and Humanities
Creative process :
SO3 H2O H2SO4
Catalyst
Platinum
SO3 - Sulfuric trioxide
H2O - Water
H2SO4 – Sulfuric acid

8. • “The analogy was that of the catalyst when
the two gases Oxygen and Sulphur dioxide , are
mixed in the presence of a filament of
platinum, they form sulfuric acid.
• This combination takes place only if the
platinum is present: nevertheless the newly
formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and
the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has
remained inert, neutral , and unchanged.
• The poet ‘s mind just like as Platinum
• The poem is like Sulphuric acid
• The mind of the poet is just like Platinum

9. Emotion and Feelings
• The final effect produced by a work of art may
be formed out of several emotion into one, it
may be formed out of a singal emotions or put
of the feelings invoked in the poet by various
words and images
Emotion
• The poet’s mind is a receptacle for seizing
and strong up numberless
feeling, phrases, images which remain there
untill all the particles, which can unite to
form a new compound, are present
together
Feeling
Elements of the poet’s experience:

10. The Emotion of Art
• The poet has not a ‘Personality’ but they
has particular medium to express in which
impressions and experiences combine in
peculiar and unexpected ways
• Impressions and experience which are
important in the man may take no place in the
poetry, and those which become important in
the poetry may play quite a negligible part in
the man, the personality

11. • Poet’s personal emotion, it provoked by particular
events in his, in that poet is in any way remarkable or
interesting
• The business of the poet is not to find new
emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in
working them up into poetry, to express feeling
which are not emotions

12. Thank you..