Eliot's objective correlative

A now famous term used by T. S. Eliot in an essay on Hamlet (1919). The relevant passage is "the only way of expressing emotion: in the form of art is by finding an objective correlative; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked". Eliot goes on to suggest in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking speech and in the speech that Macbeth makes when he hears of his wife's death the words completely adequate to the state of the mind; whereas Hamlet the prince is "dominated by a state of mind which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear". These observations have provoked a good deal of debate.

In other terms a successful artistic creation requires an exquisite balance between, and coalescence of form and matter. If the matter (though, feeling, action) is "too much", ("in excess of") the form (words) we have a discrepancy, strain, a lack of unity (that is unsuficient correlation; they don't "fadge"). In reverse, lacking the formula again we over describe, say too much.