DEVELOPING AN ARGUMENT

It’s an essay written by T. S. Eliot who tries to demonstrate his ideas to developing an argument. He makes a point and then provides evidence to support it taking into account and refuting possible objections. In the first paragraph the writer explains clearly what is his thesis: the English language is the richest for poetry. In the second paragraph he qualificates this statement, in fact even if the English language is the richest for poetry it doesn’t mean that England has produced the greatest poets or amount of poetry. In the next lines Eliot clarifies that English is the richest language for poetry because it has the largest vocabulary. To support this statement, in the fourth paragraph, Eliot gives some examples. He explains that this richness is due to the variety of elements of which English is made of German, Scandinavian elements (due to the Danish conquest), Norman French element (after the Norman conquest), French influences, Latin and Celtic. The next paragraph is a further clarification in which the writer gives other examples to support his thesis: the English language, in fact, is also rich in its rhythmic variety: there is the rhythm of early Saxon verse, the rhythm of the Norman French, the rhythm of the Welsh, of Latin and of Greek. In the sixth paragraph Eliot explains that he has not taken the trouble to talk in order to praise his own language, but because he think that English is a good language or poetry because it is derived from so many linguistic sources. In spite of this restatement, the writer clarifies that this does not imply that England must have produced the greatest poets. The next paragraph is treated art in general: in fact Eliot states that it is generally thought that the greatest peoples excel in one art, for example Italy and France in painting, Germany in music and England in poetry; but this is not correct because no art has ever been the exclusive possession of any one country of Europe and because there have been periods in which some others country than England has taken the lead in poetry. In fact in the final years of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, the Romantic movement in English poetry certainly dominated, but in the second half of the nineteenth century the greatest contribution to English poetry was certainly made in France. Vice verse, in the eighth paragraph, is explained that a nation which leads in a particular art form in a particular period does not necessarily produce the greatest artist. In the ninth paragraph Eliot writes that no European nation would have accomplished what it has, as far as culture is concerned, if other countries had not developed the same art forms. The conclusion is that the ability of European literature to renew itself depends on two factors: the ability to receive and assimilate influences from abroad and the ability to go back and learn from its own sources.