T. S. Eliot Thinking Activity

T. S. Eliot: Tradition and Individual Talent

Thomas Stearns Eliot

T.S.Eliot’s “Tradition and Individual Talent” was published in 1919 in The Egoist - the Times Literary supplement. Later, the essay was published in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism in 1920/2. (Gallup). This essay is described by David Lodge as the most celebrated critical essay in the English of the 20th century. The essay is divided into three main sections:

1. the first gives us Eliot’s concept of tradition;

2. the second exemplifies his theory of depersonalization and poetry. And in

3. the third part he concludes the debate by saying that the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things.

Que 1)How would you like to explain Eliot's concept of Tradition? Do you agree with it?

Ans:

In his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” Eliot spreads his concept of tradition, which reflects his reaction against romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. He also signifies the importance of the tradition. He opines that tradition gives the reader something new, something arresting, something intellectual and something vital for literary conception.

Tradition, according to Eliot, is that part of living culture inherited from the past and functioning in the formation of the present. Eliot maintains that tradition is bound up with historical sense, which is a perception that the past is not something lost and invalid.

According to Eliot tradition is a living culture which is inherited from the past and also has an important function in forming (shaping) the present. To Eliot tradition is bound up with historical sense of a poet or writer. Historical sense is a perception that past is not something that is lost or invalid. Rather it has a function in the present.

  

 I am agree with Eliot because tradition give as sense of the how the past poet thing , their thoughts and Brilliantness of their society tradition is important function to forming shape the present. 

Que 2)- What do you understand by Historical sense?

 Ans: Historical sense is the sense of the timeless and the temporal, as well as of the timeless and the temporal together. A writer, who has much sense of tradition, is fully conscious of his own generation, of his place in the present, but he is also actually conscious of his relationship with the writers of the past.

          If we know about figures and facts of history we can understand the time in which people are living and their ways of living, we can compare literary things which are changed, which is better, which is not, many things we can develop with historical sense.

There is quote from his essay on historical sense

"The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence"

          It gives a sense of writing timeless and temporal to the writer. Timelessness in the sense that work of art doesn't have its past and present. Temporal means it still exist or present in modern times.

Que 3)What is the relationship between “tradition” and “the individual talent,” according to the poet T. S. Eliot?

Ans: Tradition and Individual talent both helps each other. All new  beginner writer does not have their own style, first they read and try to write related to the reading. Some new writer have individual talent, they read but they gives new style of  his writing with tradition. Tradition and Individual talent are similar or closely related to each other.