TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT (1920)

Argumentative text

•·         Objective: critic at the negative attitude to tradition of poets

•·         Addressee: Eliot's previous and contemporary poets

•·         Content:            

•a.       Thesis: Eliot's contemporary poets believe that their aim as poets is to find something isolated in order to be enjoyed.

•b.      Argumentation: Eliot believes that in order to be good at writing a poet needs a requirement to know the traditional ways of poetry as well as the historical methodologies. Any form of art cannot be completed without looking back at the past.

In order to Eliot tradition does not consist in following the previous generation's poets, but it is a matter of much wider significance. It involves the historical sense. A work of art has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. Eliot pinpoints in the present extract that tradition is what makes a writer traditional.

Eliot puts into question the way in which literature is conceive of. The present extract deals with the concept of tradition. Mr Eliot takes to consideration the work that an individual poet writes and the relationship that the work has with all what have been written before.

Tradition cannot be inherited, if a poet wants it he must obtain it by great labour. The introduction of a new work modified the balance between all the previous forms of art. Like when a new baby is born, he or she changes the balance in the family.

I think Eliot is a great innovator, a deep analysis of previous works of art can make people better understand the real essence of life. His language is complicate and difficult for common people and in order to better understand his conception of poetry it is useful to analyse in depth his works. Intertextuality is the most frequent technique in Eliot's poetry.