A Critical Appraisal of T. S Eliot’s Tradition and Individual Talent

Abstract

" It is an established fact that T.S. Eliot was a multifaceted personality who imparted a new depth and gravity to literary criticism. Although his reputation chiefly rests upon his poetry but without any shade of doubt, his contribution in the sphere of criticism cannot be underestimated. His landmark essay is divided into three parts in which he, first of all, he posit that what often makes poetry great is the degree to which it is in conversation with the poetry of the past. In the second part of the essay, Eliot expounds the idea that the creation of poetry is an act of depersonalization. For him, great art is not an expression of a poet’s personal emotions but rather an act of aesthetic distillation which is primarily typifies built on his idea of the poet as an impersonal medium. This paper throws light on Eliot’s conviction of the tradition where the personality of pure poetry is evidence of the objective correlative paradigm. This suggests too, that honest criticism and sensitive appreciation of essentially poetry are directed not at the poet but upon the poetry. Eliot’s final point is that the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complimentary."