T.S. Eliot was an American-born English poet, playwright and critic considered one of the most important English poets of the 20th century. He is known for poems like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, and Four Quartets. Eliot also wrote literary criticism where he argued that a poet's work is not solely a product of their individual talents and emotions, but is shaped by their understanding of literary tradition and the dead poets who came before them. He believed the role of the poet was not self-expression but as a vessel for tradition. Eliot received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

1. Thomas Stearns Eliot

2. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) was an American-born
English poet, playwright, and literary critic,
arguably the most important English-language poet
of the 20th century.
Eliot declared himself to be a "classicist in
literature, an Anglo-Catholic in religion, and a
royalist in politics.'
It has been common to think of Eliot as the father-figure
of modern literary criticism, but it may be
more accurate to think of him as the last major
figure in the line of poet-critics (Jonson, Dryden,
Coleridge, Arnold) for whom poetry and criticism
have been complementary routes to a definition of
what matters in our culture.

3. The poem that made his name, The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock is regarded as a masterpiece of
the modernist movement.
He followed this with what have become some of
the best-known poems in the English language,
including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land
(1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday
(1930), and Four Quarters (1945).
He is also known for his seven plays, particularly,
Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

4. His essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
(1919) is one of the more well known works that
Eliot produced in his critic capacity. It formulates
Eliot's influential conception of the relationship
between the poet and the literary tradition which
precedes him. Eliot presents his conception of
tradition and the definition of the poet and poetry
in relation to it.
For Eliot, the term "tradition" is 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 same time, a sense of present
temporality.

5. In his essay, he seeks to rebut the Romantic emphasis
on the 'originality' and 'personality' of the poet as the
most important feature of literature. Eliot challenges
our common perception that a poet's greatness and
individuality lies in his departure from his
predecessors. Rather, Eliot argues that "the most
individual parts of his (the poet) work maybe those in
which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their
immortality most vigorously."

6. A poet must embody "the whole of the literature of
Europe from Homer," while, simultaneously,
expressing his contemporary environment.
Eliot claims that "historical sense." is not only a
resemblance to traditional works, but an awareness
and understanding of their relation to his poetry.
Eliot's so-called "Impersonal Theory" of poetry
implies that since the poet engages in a "continual
surrender of himself" to the vast order of tradition,
artistic creation is a process of depersonalization.
The mature poet is viewed as a medium, through
which tradition is channeled and elaborated.
Eliot rejects the theory that art expresses
metaphysical unity in the soul of the poet. The
poet is a depersonalized vessel, a mere medium.

7. Eliot looks for an almost mystical blending of the
temporal and the timeless in the poet's perception,
a sense that past and present confront each other
endlessly; each new work adds to -- and at the
same time redefines -- a tradition which is so much
greater than the individuals who contribute to it.
The art of the poet is thus not one of self-expression
but one of self-denial: 'the progress of
the artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual
extinction of personality.'

8. His private experiences and emotions may have
nothing to do with his poetry at all, Eliot argues,
directly attacking Wordsworth's 'emotion recollected
in tranquility' formula: 'Poetry is not a turning loose
of emotions but an escape from emotion; it is not
expression of personality but an escape from
personality. But, of course, only those who have
personality and emotions know what it means to want
to escape from these things. '