Tradition and Individual Talent by T.S Eliot: Analysis

Tradition and mortal talents by T.S Eliot AnalysisT.S Eliot Tradition and Individual Talent and The Love stress of J. Alfred PrufrockTradition and individual talentEliots trys actu completelyy map a super personal set of preoccupations, responses and ideas ab let on specific authors and works of art, as wellhead as formulate more general theories on the connections between song, stopping advert and society. Perhaps his best-known essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent was first promulgated in 1919 and soon after included in The Sacred woodland Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920). Eliot attempts to do two things in this essay he first redefines custom by emphasizing the importance of story to writing and beneathstanding poetry, and he then argues that poetry should be basic bothy impersonal, that is separate and distinct from the personality of its writer. Eliots idea of tradition is complex and unusual, involving something he describes as the historical sense whic h is a perception of the ultimoness of the yesteryear scarcely also of its presence. For Eliot, past works of art form an order or tradition however, that order is always being altered by a new work which modifies the tradition to make room for itself-importance. This view, in which the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past, requires that a poet be familiar with well-nigh all literary history not just the immediate past further the distant past and not just the literature of his or her own country but the whole beware of Europe.Eliots second point is one of his most famous and contentious. A poet, Eliot maintains, must self-sacrifice to this superfluous awareness of the past once this awareness is achieved, it will erase both trace of personality from the poetry because the poet has become a mere metier for expression. Using the analogy of a chemical reaction, Eliot explains that a mature poets mind works by being a passive re ceptacle of images, phrases and feelings which are combined, under immense concentration, into a new art emotion. For Eliot, true art has postcode to do with the personal tone of the artist but is merely the egress of a greater ability to synthesize and combine, an ability which comes from deep convey and comprehensive knowledge. Though Eliots belief that Poetry is not a round loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality sprang from what he viewed as the excesses of Romanticism, many scholars have noteworthy how continuous Eliots thought and the whole of Modernism is with that of the Romantics his impersonal poet even has colligate with John Keats, who proposed a similar figure in the chameleon poet. however Eliots belief that critical study should be diverted from the poet to the poetry molded the study of poetry for half a century, and while Tradition and the Individual Talent has had many detractors , especially those who question Eliots insistence on approved works as standards of greatness, it is difficult to overemphasize the essays influence. It has shaped generations of poets, critics and theorists and is a separate text in modern literary criticism.According to Eliot, Every nation, both race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical squirm of mind (page 47 ). And herein lies the impossible task of defining tradition. exclusively we do is establish upon this creative or critical turn of mind, based upon our religions or our morals or our art and this has been true throughout all of history. And this is on one side tradition. But when a nation rises and falls, when a kingdom expands or a city dies in a buy of flame, tradition is lost. I would add to Eliots words that any city, every family, every individual has his or her own tradition. Habits, ideas, though process these are all part of this turn of mind that Eliot speaks of in his essay. Thought proce ss is tradition although Eliot says, Yet if the only form of traditionconsisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before ustradition should be positively discouraged, still my claim is this tradition is in ones own critical and creative turn of mind, within ones self the masses have no rove in this tradition, no place in its creation, its encouragement, or its defining. And so this word, as many differents, goes forever vague it eludes the human mind as something invisible and impalpable eludes our fingers, as a scent eludes our grasping hands. This is tradition. And beyond this, we washstand only speculate.Criticism is an fatal as breathing, and that we should be non the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we teach a nurse and feel and emotion about it. (T. S. Eliot Tradition and individual talent, 1920, page 48)I really never thought about how much we criticize authors and poets. When we read a book we compare it to another author of the sa me genre or we compare it to another book by that same author. In almost every single one of Literature classes in my utility(prenominal) school, we compared one writer to another one. Whenever you read a book or a poem thither is some kind of criticism passing game on inside your head. When we criticize a poet, author, or some other writer we always look at their history, we have to find out every part of their background because that may explain why they wrote this or that. I have to ask, why do we do this? Im sure there are times where the author/poet/whoever is not writing about their life and general experiences but something they are interested in. It is a tradition in schools, that we have to learn not only the poem or a novel, but also we have to know everything about the writer. In my aspect is that, when we getting older and older we realize that we do not learn to look after the writers life to understand his or her work. Without knowing these facts we can enjoy the book and understand it.The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockThis poem, the earliest of Eliots study works, was completed in 1910 or 1911 but not published until 1915. It is an scrutiny of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poems speaker, seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to force the moment to its crisis by somehow consummating their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of life to dare an come out to the woman In his mind he hears the comments others make about his inadequacies, and he chides himself for presuming emotional interaction could be possible at all. The poem moves from a series of fairly concrete (for Eliot) physical settings a cityscape (the famous longanimous etherised upon a table) and several interiors (womens arms in the lamplight, coffee spoons, fireplaces) to a series of vague ocean images conveying Prufrocks emotional distance from the instauration as he comes to recognize his second-rate status (I am not Prince Hamlet). Prufrock is powerful for its range of intellectual reference and also for the semblance of character achieved.C. S. Lewis once stated, Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must institute it to no one. To love is to be vulnerable. Throughout T. S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a mans characterization explains why he hides his true self behind an thick shell, unintentionally stunting his personality. This poem uses J. Alfred Prufrock, a nervous and obsessively introspective man, to show readers that only open vulnerability, not fantasy and dreams, can take to heart as a bridge to meet emotional needs and generate meaning to life.ReferencesB.C. Southam A Students Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot (Fifth Edition, 1990)T.S Eliot The Sacred Wood Essays on poetry and criticism ( Seventh Edition 19 50)George Williamson T.S. Eliot (1980)Jay Martin A collection of critical essays on The Waste Land (1968)B.C. Southam T.S. Eliot Prufrock, Gerontion, Ash Wednesday and other shorter poems (1994)