Eliot’s contribution to the History of English Criticism

• Eliot’s criticism seems to be assured of an even more permanent and significant place in the history of English literature than his poetry.He played a significant part in the reassessment of the past writers to suit the modern sensibility

• His anti-romantic insistence on an outside authority as against the inner voice brought afresh attitude to English criticism. He absorbed various influences from the past, but absorbed them so well that they have become a part of him. Therein lies his greatness

• Eliot belongs to the line of poet critics extending from Sidney down to the modern age, a line that includes Ben Johnson. Dryden, Dr. Johnson, Coleridge, and Arnold. Eliot being a practicing poet, misstatements on poetry and poets carried an additional authority., and a greater conviction

• He called his criticism “by- product of my poetical workshop”.

• After Arnold,Eliot argued that criticism was a complementary activity to that of creativity.There is evidence of ken perception and acumen in he remarks made by Eliot,especially in regard to the problems of his times,both as the critic and the poet.The virtues of a good critic-sensitiveness,erudition,sense of fact,generalizing power are to be found in emits’ critical pronouncements.

• At the same time,here is the vision of a creative artist,too.His early criticism is indeed a defence of his own poetry,(as workshop criticism is bound to be),but that is so because he was writing a new kind of poetry.It was necessary to educate taste so that this different kind of poetry would find an audience.

• The mass of Eliot’s reviews,essays and published lectures fall into three periods.He terms the first period the “Pre-Christian” decade(1919-1928),in which there is a literary pre-occupation,mainly with the sixteenth and seventeenth century dramatists and poets.To this period belong the Sacred Woods(1920),Homage to John Dryden:Three Essay(1924),and for Lancelot Andrews(1928).

• The second period is of social and religious criticism following his conversion,and includes Dante(1929).Thoughts after Lambeth(1931) and After Strange Gods(1934).The third period is what Watson terms as the post-war Olympian period,which marks the renewal of interest in critical issues.There are,says Watson,three voices of Eliot as the critic”First the youthful,exploratory enthusiasm of the twenties where an almost ideal balance between poetic and critical activity is realized;second an abortive o social and religious advocacy in frankly obscurantist causes,and third,a bold but exhausted attempt to recover the creative urge,followed at once by denial and desperation,These three voices of Eliot the critic,according to Watson,are clear and distinct.

• In Eliot's later criticism,evening social and religious criticism we find races and elements woof what he had written in the purely literary essays at the beginning of his career,In Irving Babbitt and Humanism and notes towards the definition of culture,there is much that is already there in his early essays.

• His social criticism cannot be said to be completely different or opposed to his views on literature.The desire for disciple and order,the search for an outside authority and the submission of the individual to this authority and getting salvation through faith,are expresses in his literary as well as in his social and religious writings.One sees in Eliot’s critical career an integrated approach.Eliot never really changed any of his views completely;at the most he modified them.This,however,shows his maturity as a critic.

• Eliot’s best work as the critic lies in his earlier work.His earlier essays were the ones which played a great part in changing the outlook and attitude to the literature of the past.And in these essays,the best known of which are tradition and the individual talent,the metaphysical poets,john Dryden,Andre Marvell,four Elizabethan dramatists,Hamlet,Ben Jonson we find his critical method at its best.

• Eliot illustrates his theory of how a critic should practice.It involves elucidation,comparison and contrast,inability to make generalizations on the basic problems of poetic creativity,and introducing a reader to the basic and centrally important features of an author.The aim of this criticism was to stimulate the reader into thought,making his own conclusions.

• Eliot puts forward his critical opinions in a language,clear,consists and as far as possible,scenically accurate.Eliot’s critical method was necessarily accurate.This is an aspect of his classicism.Eliot’s critical method was necessarily the result of an “intense and highly conscious work of critical intelligence,F.R.Leavie points out:’Eliot’s best,his important,criticism has an immediate relation to his technical problems as the poet who,at that moment in history was faced with altering expression.His criticism is remarkable for its directness and its concentrated purity of interest.

• Eliot’s concept of tradition is different from that of the Augustans.To Eliot tradition is living,it is dynamic.The past is not dead and distinctly not removed from the present.

• The past is always present,It lives on,evolves through the present that is what a sense of tradition means to Eliot.It implies a consciousness of the presenters of the past,and of the timelessness of tradition.The concept of tradition is basic to Eliot’s critical opinions.It forms the basic of the Impersonal theory of poetry,as it does his idea of what the critic should do.

• Eliot brought a fresh approach to the literature of the past.He raced a traditional English poetry from Chaucer,through Shakespeare the metaphysicals Dryden and Pope.and part of Wordsworth and Keats,to the present times.And he brought over how this tradition was valid for the sensibility of his own period.This was a statement of perspective which made his contemporaries take a different look at the literature of the past this general statement of the living English literary tradition compelled critics to alter their outlook.

CLASSICAL ATTITUDE OF CRITICISM

• Eliot’s attitude towards criticism was classical.It opposed to the rend of the inner voice and subjective criticism that was essentially romantic in nature.His important contribution to criticism was the insistence on complete objectivity

• His was a reaction against romanticism and humanism Criticism should not show any shade of personal prejudice.There is no place for subjectivism in criticism.A critic has to uphold objective standards,And sense of tradition was important in gaining this objectivity.A poem should be appreciated as a poem,as a work of art.The poem and not the poet,should be the concern of a literary critic.A respect for order,discipline and a sense of tradition were necessary for a critic.

IMPERSONAL THEORY OF POETRY

• Eliot’s classicism is manifest in his theory of poetry.This again was a clear reaction against the romantic and humanistic schools of thought.He insists that the poet should subject his personal self to the discipline of absorbing literary tradition.Tradition and the Individual talent should be read along with The Function of Critics.

• His theory of criticism is related to his theory of poetry-impersonality is a basic essential in both.This theory had a great deal of impact;I questioned basically the existing ideas and gave a fresh direction to thought.As it went against existing concepts,it has been called a revolutionary theory of poetry;the greatest theory on the nature of the poetic process after the romantic theory put forward by Wordsworth.

• The Romantics considered poetry to be the expression of personal emotions and the very personality of the poet.This concept is firmly rejected by Eliot.He considers poetry to be not the letting loose of emotion,but an escape from emotion.It is not the expression of personality,but an escape from personality.It is not,as Wordsworth stated,a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings or emotions recollected in tranquility.

• Eliot however does not deny personality or emotion to the poet.He merely demands that the man who feels or experiences that is the poet’s personality,he separate from the artist’s mind which creates.The personal feelings and emotions of the man in the poet should be ransomed into the artistic emotions,something which is universal and impersonal.Thus the man and the poetry are two different things.

• As such,criticism should be focused on the poetry and not on the poet.Eliot thus changes the direction of critical theories.His theory eschews biographical,psychological or sociological factors which are irrelevant to the criticism of poetry.

• Eliot’s essay on the Metaphysical poets brought about a revaluation of these poets.Donne and the other poets of the 17th century had been appreciated before.But it was Eliot,however who brought about a significant revival of interest in these poets in the 20th century.It is due to him that interest began to be taken in the Jacobean dramatist.

• His approach to Dryden,Pope and the Augustans,brought about a re-instatement of these poets in the living English Literary traditions.In each case.he sheds fresh light on the writer’s work.There is a concise,precise and helpful analysis of their works.Their suggestive which leads the reader to make his own conclusions.It is thought his method that Eliot revaluates the earlier writers.All the statements may not be acceptable;their ability to provoke thought,however,cannot be denied.