Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
FRossetti - Tradition and the Individual Talent
by - (2009-01-24)
Up to Modernist Literary Output. From V. Woolf to T.S.Eliot to J. Joyce
Analysis of Tradition and the Individual Talent by T.S. Eliot
The Tradition and the Individual Talent written in 1920 is an essay of literary criticism. It talks about poets and their relationship with tradition and present.
We can divide the text in two parts, which means we have two thesis. In the first part he writes “the most individual parts of his (poet’s) work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously”. People are usually satisfied when they read something they think they have never read before. T.S. Eliot says that a poet shows is greatness when, in is works he shows the presence of his predecessors most vigorously. A poet is able to do this only with great labour. Only with hard work someone can be great. T.S Eliot says that you can gain tradition only if you grasp the historical sense. This sense gives you the right level of consciousness to recognize the mixture of past and present we find in texts. “The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation but[…]has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order”. When a poet has gained the historical sense he is considered a traditional poet.
Thesis number two says that “no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone”. His significance is appreciated only because of his relation to past poets or artists. “You can’t value him (the artist) alone”. Whenever a poet or an artist composes something, his work is the sum of what has preceded him. At the end he says that whenever a work is made it modifies all the relations that where before, and will modify also the future works.
The Tradition and the Individual Talent written in 1920 is an essay of literary criticism. It talks about poets and their relationship with tradition and present.
We can divide the text in two parts, which means we have two thesis. In the first part he writes “the most individual parts of his (poet’s) work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously”. People are usually satisfied when they read something they think they have never read before. T.S. Eliot says that a poet shows is greatness when, in is works he shows the presence of his predecessors most vigorously. A poet is able to do this only with great labour. Only with hard work someone can be great. T.S Eliot says that you can gain tradition only if you grasp the historical sense. This sense gives you the right level of consciousness to recognize the mixture of past and present we find in texts. “The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation but[…]has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order”. When a poet has gained the historical sense he is considered a traditional poet.
Thesis number two says that “no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone”. His significance is appreciated only because of his relation to past poets or artists. “You can’t value him (the artist) alone”. Whenever a poet or an artist composes something, his work is the sum of what has preceded him. At the end he says that whenever a work is made it modifies all the relations that where before, and will modify also the future works.