Basic information about T.

S Eliot

 His Full name is Thomas sterns Eliot. He was born in the Year 1888 (xxx Hahahah) and
died 1965.
 He was a playwriter, essayist (Essay likhta thaa harami) and social and literary critic.

He has done tremendous services to literary and produced significant work. Few of which are
mentioned below.

 Concept of tradition
 Theory of Impersonality
 Objective correlation
 Hamlet and his problems
 Tradition and individual talent

Tradition and Individual Talent

It is the essay written by the T.S Eliot in the Year 1919. It was initially published in 1919 by the
name of “The egoist” and later it was published in the first book of T.S Eliot named “The scared
wood” in the year 1920. This essay is one of the Major and well known work of his critic
capacity that he had formed.

Abstract It Prepares/Formulates/Create the Relationship or link between the POET and the
literary tradition which Precedes (come before him).

If We were to describe what this essay is about : Eliot argues in this essay that there is a
difference between a poet's personality and his art, and that great poetry exists in a kind of
dialog with the tradition of poetry, which, for Eliot, means the European tradition.

It is divided into three parts

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Eliot articulates (Bayan karna)
his notion (Khayal/view) of
literary tradition (rawayat).
Eliot argues that often what
marks great poetry is the
degree to which it is able to
evoke (Bring or recall) the
poets of the past most
In part two, Eliot focuses on
the poetic practices this
position requires. He argues
that the mature poet writes
not because he has "more to
say" but because his
technique has made it
possible for him to more
finely articulate emotion. He
Part three is a short
conclusion. Here, Eliot
recapitulates (Summarize and
state again the main points)
his argument: that "the
emotion of art is impersonal,"
and the work of the artist is to
articulate feeling within the
context of the living literary
"vigorously." (strong and full
of energy). His point isn't that
great poetry should simply
imitate (Follow as model)
poetry of the past, but that it
should exist in awareness of
the "whole of the literature of
Europe" as its context. In this
sense, the meaning of a poem
is never created solely by the
author; its significance comes
from the author's
"appreciation" of his
relationship to the tradition.
In this sense, Eliot claims that
the life of an artist is
"continual self sacrifice, a
continual extinction of
personality."
explains this using tradition of Europe
an analogy from chemistry:
how platinum, in the presence
of oxygen and sulfur dioxide,
acts as a catalyst to create
sulfurous acid. The poet is
akin (of similar character) to
the platinum: through the
practice of his art, new work
is brought into being, but the
poet himself, personally, is
unchanged. In this regard,
Eliot makes a distinction
between "emotion" and
"feeling." The poetic mind is a
receptacle (a hollow object
used to contain something)
for recording feelings, which
the poetic process turns into
"emotion."