T.S. Eliot's Poetics: Tradition, Language, and the Poet's Role

T.S. Eliot's Concept of Literary Tradition

This concept forms a crucial point of union between Eliot, Pound, Arnold, and the New Critics. While 'traditional' often implies outdated, for Eliot, it held a unique meaning. Eliot's perspective on history sometimes appears contradictory. He sometimes viewed the poet's role as simply expressing their epoch, and at other times, as actively disagreeing with their contemporary period. Eliot leaned towards the former, believing a poet should passively represent their era's ideas without disagreement. This is why he praised Elizabethan poets for their wonderful capacity to 'poetize' their period.

Great universal classic art, in his view, lacks a critical historical capacity; it doesn't question events but simply represents them. For Eliot, classicism or tradition signifies the atemporal quality of art. A work is traditional when it is classic, existing 'out of time'.

Eliot on Common Speech in Poetry

While not a formalist critic, Eliot consistently emphasized that poetry is language and should be judged, studied, and analyzed as such. This led to his crucial question: What is the proper language of poetry? He famously stated, "Poetry should not deviate from the ordinary everyday language which we use and hear." He believed the closer poetry adhered to common speech, the more effective it would be.

Eliot cited Dante's language as "the perfection of common language" and praised Dryden for restoring English to "the condition of speech." Conversely, he criticized Milton for corrupting the English language by writing it as if it were Latin, treating it like a dead language.

Eliot's Criticism: A Poetic Byproduct

Eliot famously described his criticism as the "byproduct of my private poetic workshop," indicating that for him, critique was not an end in itself but rather an instrument to defend and inform his own poetic work.