tradition and individual talent

1. NAME:- SEJAL R PARMAR
SEM:- 2
ENROLLMENT NO:- 2069108420190033
YEAR:- 2018-2020
EMAIL:- sejalpamar095@gmail.com
PAPER:- LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM-
WESTERN POTICS-1
SUBMITTED TO:- DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, MKBU

2.  One of the twentieth
century's major poet.
 “ we can hardly make the
word agreeable to English
ears without this
comfortable reference to
the reassuring science of
archaeology.

3.  British poet
 Playwright
 Essayist
 Publisher
 Social and literary critic.

4.  Objective correlation
 Theory of Impersonality
 Concept of Tradition
 Disassociation of Sensibility
 ESSAYS:
 Traditional and individual talent(1919)
 Hamlet and his problem(1920)
 Metaphysical poets(1921)

5.  “Tradition and individual talent” (1919) is an essay
written by the poet and literary critic T. S. ELIOT.
 The essay was first published in “The Egoist”(1919)
and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, “The
sacred wood” (1920).
 Tradition and Individual talent is one of the more
well known work that Eliot produced in his critic
capacity.
 It formulates Eliot's influential conception of the
relationship between the poet and the literary
tradition which proceeds him.

6.  Part 1:- Eliot's concept of tradition
 Part 2:- Eliot's theory of impersonality of
poetry
 Part 3:- Summary

7.  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TRADITION
 1. Tradition doesn’t mean a blind adherence to
the ways of the previous generation.
 2. Tradition cannot be inherited; it can only be
obtained by hard labor.
 3. Tradition can only obtained by those who
have historical sense.

8.  Recognition of the continuity of literature
 A critical judgment as to which of the writers of
the past continue to be significant in the
present.
 A knowledge of the significant writers obtained
through painstaking effort.

9.  Tradition isn't anything fixed and static;
it is constantly changing, growing and
becoming different from what it is.
 When a new work is created, the whole literary
tradition is modified.
 The relationship between the past and the present is
not one-sided; it is reciprocal.
 The past directs the present, and is itself modified
and altered by the present.

10.  The work of art a poet in the present is
to be compared and contrasted with
works of the past….
 This judgment doesn’t mean “good” or “bad”.
 The comparison is for knowing the facts about
the new works of art.
 The comparison is for the purpose of analysis
and forming batter understanding of the new.

11.  It doesn’t mean to know the past as a whole
without any discrimination.
 The sense of tradition doesn’t mean that the
poet should know only a few poets whom he
admires, a particular age, or period which he
likes. This is a sign of immaturity and
inexperience.

12.  The artist must surrender himself to tradition.
 He must allow his poetic sensibility to be
shaped and modified by the past.
 His emotions and feeling must be
depersonalized; he must be as impersonal and
objective as a scientist.
 The poets personality is merely a medium; as a
catalytic agent, or a receptacle in which
chemical reaction take place.

13.  ‘it is not the “greatness”, the intensity of
emotions, the components, but the
intensity of the artistic process, the
pressure, under which the fusion takes
place, that accounts.’
 The more intense the artistic process, the greater
the poem.
 The mind of the poet is like the catalytic agent.
 It is merely a medium of combination.

14.  ELIOT CONCLUDES:
 “poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an
escape from emotion; it is not the expression of
personality, but escape from personality.”
 Eliot doesn’t deny personality or emotion to the
poet. Only he must depersonalize his emotions.
 The poet can know what is to be done if he acquires
a sense of tradition; the historic sense which makes
him conscious not only of the present but also of
the present moment of the past.