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36-552: One of his most important prose works, " Tradition and the Individual Talent ", which was originally published in two parts in The Egoist , is a part of The Sacred Wood . The essay "Philip Massinger" contains the famous line (often misquoted) "Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal". This article about a literary essay or essay collection is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Tradition and

72-438: A catalyst in a chemical reaction, in which the reactants are feelings and emotions that are synthesised to create an artistic image that captures and relays these same feelings and emotions. While the mind of the poet is necessary for the production, it emerges unaffected by the process. The artist stores feelings and emotions and properly unites them into a specific combination, which is the artistic product. What lends greatness to

108-418: A conception of tradition that differs from that of Eliot. Whereas Eliot believes that the great poet is faithful to his predecessors and evolves in a concordant manner, Bloom (according to his theory of " anxiety of influence ") envisions the "strong poet" to engage in a much more aggressive and tumultuous rebellion against tradition. In 1964, his last year, Eliot published in a reprint of The Use of Poetry and

144-596: A guise to escape suspicion. Eliot believes that in Shakespeare's version, however, Hamlet is driven by a motive greater than revenge, his delay in exacting revenge is left unexplained, and that Hamlet's madness is meant to arouse the king's suspicion rather than avoid it. Eliot finds these alterations too incomplete to be convincing, and feels that the prose of the two texts is so similar in some sections that it appears that Shakespeare simply revised Kyd's text. Eliot concludes this section by agreeing with Robertson's assertion that

180-461: A poet's greatness and individuality lie in their departure from their predecessors; he argues that "the most individual parts of his [the poet's] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." Eliot claims that this "historical sense" is not only a resemblance to traditional works but an awareness and understanding of their relation to his poetry. This fidelity to tradition, however, does not require

216-546: A poetic lens. This ideal implies that knowledge gleaned by a poet is not knowledge of facts, but knowledge which leads to a greater understanding of the mind of Europe. As Eliot explains, " Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum ." Unwittingly, Eliot inspired and informed the movement of New Criticism . This is somewhat ironic, since he later criticised their intensely detailed analysis of texts as unnecessarily tedious [citation?] . Yet, he does share with them

252-454: A result, the critic becomes biased in favor of and fixated on the character. Eliot accuses Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Samuel Taylor Coleridge of this, stating that Goethe's critique turns Shakespeare's tragic hero into his own Werther while Coleridge's "Lecture on Hamlet" made Hamlet into a Coleridge. Eliot wrote that due to their fixation on Hamlet rather than the play as a whole, the type of criticism that Coleridge and Goethe produced

288-451: A specific, and almost formulaic, prescription of a set of objects, including events and situations. A particular emotion is created by presenting its correlated objective sign. The author is depersonalised in this conception, since he is the mere effecter of the sign. And, it is the sign, and not the poet, which creates emotion. The implications here separate Eliot's idea of talent from the conventional definition (just as his idea of Tradition

324-479: A total neglect of Indian forms of expression, i.e. of its literature. T. S. Eliot is the one major poet whose work bears evidence of intercourse with this aspect of Indian culture" (qtd. in The Composition of The Four Quartets). He does not account for a non-white and non-masculine tradition. As such, his notion of tradition stands at odds with feminist, post-colonial and minority theories. Harold Bloom presents

360-487: A vacuum. The introduction of a new work alters the cohesion of this existing order, and causes a readjustment of the old to accommodate the new. The inclusion of the new work alters the way in which the past is seen; elements of the past that are noted and realised. In Eliot's own words, "What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art that preceded it." Eliot refers to this organic tradition, this developing canon, as

396-403: A work of art are not the feelings and emotions themselves, but the nature of the artistic process by which they are synthesised. The artist is responsible for creating "the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place." And, it is the intensity of fusion that renders art great. In this view, Eliot rejects the theory that art expresses metaphysical unity in the soul of the poet. The poet

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432-675: Is "the most misleading kind possible". Eliot follows this by praising J.M. Robertson and Elmer Edgar Stoll for publishing critiques that focus on the larger scope of the play. He argues that a creative work cannot be interpreted, only criticized according to a standard or in comparison to another work. The function of interpretation in this argument is to make the reader aware of relevant historical information that they are not assumed to know. Eliot credits Robertson in particular for his historical interpretation of Hamlet . Next, Eliot names three sources on which he believes Shakespeare to have based his play: Thomas Kyd 's The Spanish Tragedy ,

468-435: Is a depersonalised vessel, a mere medium. Great works do not express the personal emotion of the poet. The poet does not reveal their own unique and novel emotions, but rather, by drawing on ordinary ones and channelling them through the intensity of poetry, they express feelings that surpass, altogether, experienced emotion. This is what Eliot intends when he discusses poetry as an "escape from emotion." Since successful poetry

504-418: Is absolutely necessary for the poet to study, to have an understanding of the poets before them, and to be well versed enough that they can understand and incorporate the "mind of Europe" into their poetry. But the poet's study is unique – it is knowledge that "does not encroach," and that does not "deaden or pervert poetic sensibility." It is, to put it most simply, a poetic knowledge – knowledge observed through

540-472: Is impersonal and, therefore, exists independent of its poet, it outlives the poet and can incorporate into the timeless "ideal order" of the "living" literary tradition. Another essay found in Selected Essays relates to this notion of the impersonal poet. In " Hamlet and His Problems " Eliot presents the phrase " objective correlative ." The theory is that the expression of emotion in art can be achieved by

576-434: Is separate from the conventional definition), one so far from it, perhaps, that he chooses never to directly label it as talent. The conventional definition of talent, especially in the arts, is a genius that one is born with. Not so for Eliot. Instead, talent is acquired through a careful study of poetry, claiming that Tradition, "cannot be inherited, and if you want it, you must obtain it by great labour." Eliot asserts that it

612-404: The "mind of Europe." The private mind is subsumed by this more massive one. This leads to Eliot's so-called "Impersonal Theory" of poetry. Since the poet engages in a "continual surrender of himself" to the vast order of tradition, artistic creation is a process of depersonalisation. The mature poet is viewed as a medium, through which tradition is channelled and elaborated. He compares the poet to

648-548: The Individual Talent Defunct "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) is an essay written by poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot . The essay was first published in The Egoist (1919) and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, The Sacred Wood (1920). The essay is also available in Eliot's "Selected Prose" and " Selected Essays ". While Eliot is most often known for his poetry, he also contributed to

684-557: The Use of Criticism , a series of lectures he gave at Harvard University in 1932 and 1933, a new preface in which he called "Tradition and the Individual Talent" the most juvenile of his essays (although he also indicated that he did not repudiate it.) Hamlet and His Problems Hamlet and His Problems is an essay written by T. S. Eliot in 1919 that offers a critical reading of Hamlet . The essay first appeared in Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism in 1920. It

720-502: The ancient Indian languages and while I was chiefly interested at that time in Philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility." His self-evaluation was confirmed by B. P. N. Sinha, who writes that Eliot went beyond Indian ideas to Indian form: "The West has preoccupied itself almost exclusively with the philosophy and thoughts of India. One consequence of this has been

756-580: The audience to understand her mental state. One critical objection to Eliot's essay is that although Eliot begins "Hamlet and His Problems" with a complaint against critics that conflate Hamlet and its hero, he then spends a large portion of the essay focused on Hamlet the character and his effect on the play. It has been noted that if Eliot's intent was to focus his critique on the play, he could have titled his essay "Hamlet and Its Problems" instead. Some critics have also pointed out that Eliot offers no formal critique or concrete suggestions of how to improve

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792-517: The audience's resultant inability to localize that emotion. The madness of Shakespeare's character, according to Eliot, is a result of the inexpressible things that Hamlet feels and the playwright cannot convey. Eliot concludes that because Shakespeare cannot find a sufficient objective correlative for his hero, the audience is left without a means to understand an experience that Shakespeare himself does not seem to understand. The objective correlative concept that Eliot popularized in this essay refers to

828-425: The belief that art progresses through change – a separation from tradition, literary advancements are instead recognised only when they conform to the tradition. Eliot, a classicist , felt that the true incorporation of tradition into literature was unrecognised, that tradition, a word that "seldom... appear[s] except in a phrase of censure," was actually a thus-far unrealised element of literary criticism. For Eliot,

864-536: The concept of "Tradition," then the Theory of Impersonal Poetry, and finally the conclusion. Eliot presents his conception of tradition and the definition of the poet and poetry in relation to it. He wishes to correct the fact that, as he perceives it, "in English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence." Eliot posits that, though the English tradition generally upholds

900-418: The concept that the only way to express an emotion through art is to find "a set of objects, a situation, [or] a chain of events" that will, when read or performed, evoke a specific sensory experience in the audience. This sensory experience is meant to help the reader understand the mental or emotional state of a character. Eliot writes that Hamlet's state of mind is a direct result of his confused emotions and

936-424: The essay by stating that the primary problem of Hamlet is actually the play itself, with its main character being only a secondary issue. Eliot goes on to note that the play enjoys critical success because the character of Hamlet appeals to a particular kind of creatively minded critic. According to Eliot, a creative-minded individual who directs his energy toward criticism projects his own character onto Hamlet. As

972-427: The field of literary criticism. In this dual role, he acted as a cultural critic, comparable to Sir Philip Sidney and Samuel Taylor Coleridge . "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is one of the better-known works that Eliot produced in his critic capacity. It formulates Eliot's influential conception of the relationship between the poet and preceding literary traditions. This essay is divided into three parts: first

1008-447: The great poet to forfeit novelty in an act of surrender to repetition. Rather, Eliot has a much more dynamic and progressive conception of the poetic process: novelty is possible only through tapping into tradition. When a poet engages in the creation of new work, they realise an aesthetic "ideal order," as it has been established by the literary tradition that has come before them. As such, the act of artistic creation does not take place in

1044-455: The hero of Hamlet is driven more by his mother's guilt than revenge for the father, and Shakespeare fell short in combining this altered motive with his source material. The latter portion of the essay is dedicated to Eliot's criticism of Hamlet based on his concept of the objective correlative. He begins by arguing that the greatest contributor to the play's failure is Shakespeare's inability to express Hamlet's emotion in his surroundings and

1080-515: The lack of external representation for these emotions in an objective correlative. He goes on to say that Hamlet's initial conflict is a disgust in his mother , but his feelings regarding the situation are too complex to be represented by Gertrude alone. Neither Hamlet nor Shakespeare can grasp or objectify these feelings, and so it acts as an obstacle to the character's revenge and Shakespeare's plot. But Eliot points out that if Shakespeare had found an objective correlative for Hamlet's internal conflict,

1116-554: The literary tradition as the "mind of Europe" as Euro-centric . However, it should be recognized that Eliot supported many Eastern and thus non-European works of literature such as the Mahabharata . Eliot was arguing the importance of a complete sensibility: he didn't particularly care what it was at the time of tradition and the individual talent. His own work is heavily influenced by non-Western traditions. In his broadcast talk "The Unity of European Culture," he said, "Long ago I studied

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1152-454: The play would be entirely changed because the bafflement that characterizes it is a direct result of Shakespeare's shortcomings in this respect. Eliot does, however, give credit to Shakespeare's use of the objective correlative in his other works. As an example, he references a scene in Macbeth in which Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and the imagined sensory impressions Shakespeare provides allow

1188-747: The same focus on the aesthetic and stylistic qualities of poetry, rather than on its ideological content. The New Critics resemble Eliot in their close analysis of particular passages and poems. Eliot's theory of literary tradition has been criticised for its limited definition of what constitutes the canon of that tradition. He assumes the authority to choose what represents great poetry, and his choices have been criticised on several fronts. For example, Harold Bloom disagrees with Eliot's condescension towards Romantic poetry, which, in The Metaphysical Poets (1921) he criticises for its "dissociation of sensibility." Moreover, some criticise Eliot's discussion of

1224-483: The so-called Ur-Hamlet (which he attributes to Kyd), and a version of the play performed in Germany during Shakespeare's lifetime. He notes the differences between Hamlet and its supposed source material, pointing out that in the earlier works the only motive for murder is revenge, the delay of which is the result of circumventing the king's guards. The Hamlet of the supposed earlier play also uses his perceived madness as

1260-424: The term "tradition" is imbued with a special and complex character. It represents a "simultaneous order," by which Eliot means a historical timelessness – a fusion of past and present – and, at the same time, a sense of present temporality. A poet must embody "the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer ," while, simultaneously, expressing their contemporary environment. Eliot challenges the common perception that

1296-487: Was later reprinted by Faber & Faber in 1932 in Selected Essays, 1917-1932 . Eliot's critique gained attention partly due to his claim that Hamlet is "most certainly an artistic failure." Eliot also popularised the concept of the objective correlative —a mechanism used to evoke emotion in an audience—in the essay. The essay is also an example of Eliot's use of what became known as new criticism . Eliot begins

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