TS Eliot

• The essay first appeared in Eliot's The

• Towering figure of the 20th century Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism
in 1920
• Poet, playwright, journalist & critic
• Finest example for destructive or
• In criticism, he speaks with authority &
iconoclastic criticism
conviction
• Hamlet lacks ‘Objective Correlative’ because
• Prose style—precise & memorable he is dominated by an emotion which is
inexpressible
• Largely responsible for the revival of interest
• Regards Hamlet as an artistic failure
in the Metaphysical poets
18th century poetry
Works
• Cursed with a pastoral convention and a
• Critical works—2 types ruminative mind.

 Theoretical criticism—essays dealing • In this age, Johnson is the most alien figure.
with nature & function of criticism, He was a student of mankind & no way an
poetry & drama. E.g. Function of imitator of Dryden or Pope.
Criticism
• Johnson has ‘the proper wit of poetry’.
 Practical Criticism—essays dealing
with a number of authors & their • Eliot’s remarks on Dryden & Johnson reveal
works. E.g. The English Metaphysical his penetrating intellect & higher power of
Poets analysis.

• Popular essays in literary criticism • Did not agree with Arnold as critic. Regarded
Arnold’s criticism as too dry, abstract,
• Tradition and the Individual Talent
intellectual, & devoid of emotion. But
• Poetry and Drama
admired Arnold, the poet.
• Function of Criticism
Tradition and the Individual
• The English Metaphysical Poets
Talent
• The Frontiers of Criticism
• First published in 1919 in The Egoist
The Metaphysical Poets • Influenced by Bergson and Babbitt
• Metaphysical poets possessed unification of • Unofficial manifesto of Eliot’s critical creed
sensibility. Later poets like Milton,
• Three parts
Dryden, Tennyson, etc. lack it.
o Conception of tradition
• In the 17th century, a dissociation of
o Undue stress of individuality shows
sensibility set in from which English poetry
that the English have an uncritical
has never recovered.
turn of mind
o In the best & most individual part of
Hamlet and His Problems
the modern poets, the dead poets
• An essay written in 1919 assert their immortalityI

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1-Tradition implies • The artist, like the God of the creation,
remains within or behind or beyond or above
• Recognition of the continuity of literature.
his handiwork, invisible, refined out of
• A critical judgement as to which of the existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
writers of the past continue to be significant
Quotations from tradition and individual
in the present.
talent
• Knowledge of these significant writers
• We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's
obtained through painstaking effort.
difference from his predecessors, especially
• Dynamic conception of tradition his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to
find something that can be isolated in order to
• Just as the past directs & guides the present, be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet
so the present alters & modifies the past. without this prejudice we shall often find that
• To know the tradition the poet must judge not only the best, but the most individual
critically what are the main trends & what are parts of his work may be those in which the
not. dead poets, his ancestors, assert their
immortality most vigorously. And I do not
2—Impersonality of Poetry mean the impressionable period of
• Personality of the poet is not important, the adolescence, but the period of full maturity.
important thing is his sense of tradition. • The historical sense involves a perception,
• Honest criticism & sensitive appreciation is not only of the pastness of the past, but of
not directed upon the poet but upon the its presence; the historical sense compels a
poetry. man to write not merely with his own
• Compares the mind of a poet to a catalyst; generation in his bones, but with a feeling
the process of poetic creation, a chemical that the whole of the literature of Europe
reaction. from Homer and within it the whole of the
• Gives the example of Oxygen and Sulphur literature of his own country has a
Dioxide producing Sulphurous Acid in the simultaneous existence and composes a
presence of the Filament of Platinum simultaneous order. This historical sense,
which is a sense of the timeless as well as of
• Compares poet’s mind to a jar or receptacle the temporal and of the timeless and of the
in which numberless feelings & emotions, etc. temporal together, is what makes a writer
are stored. Thus poetry is organisation rather traditional. And it is at the same time what
than inspiration makes a writer most acutely conscious of his
place in time, of his contemporaneity.
• Greatness of the poem lies in the intensity
of the process of poetic composition. • Some one said: "The dead writers are
remote from us because we know so much
• Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but
more than they did." Precisely, and they are
an escape from emotion; it is not the
that which we know.
expression of personality but an escape from
• It is not the "greatness," the intensity, of the
it.
emotions, the components, but the intensity
• III part—Concludes the discussion of the artistic process, the pressure, so to
speak, under which the fusion takes place,
Joyce endorses!
that counts.

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• The bad poet is usually unconscious where • To elucidate works of art.
he ought to be conscious, and conscious
• Correct taste & educate the taste of the
where he ought to be unconscious. Both
people.
errors tend to make him "personal." Poetry is
not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape • Common pursuit of true judgement
from emotion; it is not the expression of
personality, but an escape from personality. • Promote the enjoyment & understanding of
But, of course, only those who have works of art.
personality and emotions know what it means • By placing before the readers the relevant
to want to escape from these things. facts about the poem, the critic emphasizes its
impersonal nature, & thus promotes correct
The Function of Criticism (1923) understanding.
• Reply to the romantic critic Middleton • Critic shifts, combines, connects, expunges
Murray’s critique on Eliot’s Romanticism and & thus imparts perfection & finish to what has
the Tradition. been created
• Continues his argument in “Tradition and • A critic must find common principles for the
the Individual Talent” pursuit of criticism
• Criticism is not an autotelic activity. • A critic is not to pass judgement or
• End of criticism—elucidation of works of art determine good or bad. His function is to
& the correction of taste. place the similar kinds of facts before the
readers & thus help them to form their own
Qualifications of an Ideal Critic judgement
• Must be entirely impersonal & objective. • Eliot’s conception of a critic & his functions
Considers Aristotle as a perfect critic. is classical
• Must not be emotional.
Eliot’s Critical method
• Must have a highly developed sense of fact
• His style is neutral; works through negatives
—knowledge of technical details of a poem.
& is devoid of emotional phrase &
• Must have developed sense of tradition.
metaphors & underneath it runs a delightful
• The critic & the creative artist must be the current of humour & irony
same person.
• Uses thought-provoking quotations
• Must have a thorough understanding of the
• Exact & precise
language & structure of the poem.
• Irony & devastating wit are potent
• Must be an expert in the use of tools—
instruments in the hands of Eliot
comparison & analysis.
• Leaves the readers to form their judgements
• Must not try to judge the present by the
standards of the past. He must be liberal in his • Comparison is an important aspect of Eliot’s
critical method
outlook & must be prepared to correct &
revise his views from time to time, in the light • Avoids all digressions, biographical,
historical or sociological
of new facts.

Function of a Critic

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Important Concepts: Objective difficult, or fantastic, as their predecessors
were; no less nor more than Dante, Guido
correlative Cavalcanti, Guinicelli, or Cino. In the
seventeenth century a dissociation of
• Term first used by American painter
sensibility set in, from which we have never
Washington Allston in 1840
recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural,
• A set of objects, a situation, a chain of was aggravated by the influence of the two
events, which shall be the formula for the most powerful poets of the century, Milton
and Dryden.
poet’s emotion so that, “when the external
facts are given the emotion is at once • Dissociation of sensibility is the reason for
the “difference between the intellectual and
evoked.
the reflective poet.”
• Hamlet—an artistic failure.
• The intellectual poet “possessed a
• For Cleanth Brooks Objective Correlative mechanism of sensibility which could devour
means “Organic Metaphor”. any kind of experience.”

Dissociation of Sensibility, Unification of • When the dissociation of sensibility

Sensibility occurred, “the poets revolted against the
ratiocinative, the descriptive; they thought
• Used in Metaphysical Poets. and felt by fits, unbalanced; they reflected.”
• Fusion of thought & feeling. Example from Donne
• A re-creation of thought into feeling. • Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
• A direct sensuous apprehension of thought. Though I must go, endure not yet
• Bad poetry results when there is A breach, but an expansion,
“dissociation of sensibility” i.e. poet is unable
to feel his thoughts. Like gold to airy thinness beat

• Eliot finds such Unification of Sensibility in (Valediction)

the Metaphysical poets & regrets that in the
• If they be two, they are two so
late 17th century a Dissociation of Sensibility
As stiff twin compasses are two:
set in.
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
• Influence of Milton & Dryden has been
harmful. To move, but doth if the other do.

• Unification of Sensibility—harmonious (Valediction)

working of the creative & critical faculties of a
• The intellectual conceits are not in
poet.
disharmony with the feeling in the poem
• We may express the difference by the
• They actually add weight and illustrate a
following theory: The poets of the
feeling
seventeenth century, the successors of the
dramatists of the sixteenth, possessed a
mechanism of sensibility which could devour
any kind of experience. They are simple,
artificial,

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What is a Classic  Inspired raymond Williams to explore
the concept of culture, resulting in
 Presented as the presidential address Culture and Society 1958
to the virgil society in 1944  Culture is a misused term and not
 A classic reflects the maturity of synonymous with civilization
culture  Defines culture as an organic shared
system of beliefs .
“If there is one word on which we can fix,
o it cannot be planned or artificially
which will suggest the maxium of what I
created.
meant by term “a classic”.it is the word
o It grows and changes, Is transmitted
maturity …….A classic can only occur when a
through generation
civilization is mature; when a language and
literature are mature and it must be the work
of a mature [Link] is the importance of that
civilization and of that language, as well as the Eliot: Theory & Practice
comprehensiveness of the mind of the
individual poet, which gives the universality.” • Eliot’s theories about modernist poetry are
enacted in his work:
 Elliot discusses the maturity of the
poet in relation in the maturity of the • his writing seeks to shock the reader out of
age complacency

“the maturity of a literature is the relation of • We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
that of the society in which it is produced :an But no longer at ease here, in the old
individual author –notably Shakespeare and dispensation,With an alien people clutching
Virgil- can do much to develop his language: their gods.I should be glad of another death.
but he cannot bring that language to maturity (The Journey of the Magi)
unless the work of his predecessor has
prepared it for its final touch.” • Eliot attempts to find a solution for
disorderliness:
The Way of the World is more mature than
any play of Shakespeare, only because it • By bringing broken, disparate elements into
reflects a more mature society-“so to maturity a sort of conceptual unity.
of mind we must add maturity of manner” • “The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for
The maturity of mind ,maturity of seizing and storing up numberless feelings,
manners ,maturity of language and perfection phrases, images, which remain there until all
of the common style are all illustrated in the particles which can unite to form a new
poetry of 18th century, particularly in poetry of compound are present together”
alexander pope

Notes towards a definition of

culture
 Elliots’s last major published prose
work
 Originally appeared as a series of
articles in new England weekly 1943
 Shows his conservatism