A Century of Neglect: John Henry Newman and T. S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

Abstract

The unexpected obstacle to our juxtaposition of these two authors is that Newman does not answer that illustrious roll call, the index of Donald Gallup’s T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Eliot never devoted a single essay to him. What could be the cause of so protracted a silence? Certainly, it was not lack of familiarity. For three straight years, fall and winter, beginning in the fall of 1916, Eliot’s University of London Extension class on “Modern English Literature” devoted a week to Newman. The printed syllabus gives only a tantalizing glimpse of the proceedings: “His temperament, with regard to his change in religious attachment. Reasons for joining the Church of Rome. His thought. Style. Read: Apologia, Idea of a University.” (131)