This is an extract from Joyce’s essay Tradition and the Individual Talent published in 1920.

Joyce is not only remembered from his poetry, but also for his literary criticism. Indeed, this extract deals with the importance of tradition and his relationship between new and past works.

In the first lines Joyce criticizes his contemporaries’ approach to new poetry. According to Joyce critics do not have to search something new and unique, but they have to read without this prejudice. Only in this way they can discover that lot of aspects that seems to be innovative actually  have origin in dead’s poetry.

After that Joyce introduce an antithesis: if tradition consist only “in following the immediate generation before[…] tradition should be positively discouraged”.

Against that, the writer asserts that “tradition is a matter of much wider significance” and he explains why: tradition is not hereditary, and we to obtain it with a great labour.

In order to arguments this thesis, he introduces the concept of “historical sense” that implies a particular concept of time for the poet: poet has to understand that past is in the present. So poet does not have to write only with his own generation, but he has to bear in mind all the literature before him.

This “historical sense” is what makes a writer traditional.

Besides, Joyce asserts that it is impossible value a poet alone: “you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead”. But it is not the only conclusion.

Joyce puts the principle idea of the text after the all arguments, Joyce puts the most important thing of the text: when a new work is created, it change the order of all works before it. The order before is complete, but after the new work it must be altered to create a new balance.

In conclusion  ”the poet who is aware about this, will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities”.

To sum up, this extract should be divided in three parts: in the first part Joyce criticizes the current approach to new works. In the second one, he introduces the concept of tradition and the related “historical sense”. In the last part the writer concludes explaining relationships between tradition and new works, and after that, the effects of new work on all the previous literature.

It is difficult for me to well understand what Joyce means, but I think that in order to understand the present, is essential to know what there were before us. We come from what it was before us. On the other hand, if we have a new key to read past, it may change its meaning.