Tradition and the Individual Talent: A Critical Study

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Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919) elaborates the concepts of tradition , individual talent and impersonality , also conveys the format of a new approach with poets of everlasting significance providing the boundaries for the assessment of the genius or the artist. Eliot disputes the common critical assertion that a poet’s greatness lies in his most individual moments, when he diverges from tradition. Eliot explains his process of depersonalization through a chemical process. He says that the mind of artist is like neutral platinum. But, what would have happened if platinum, in a sense the mind wouldn’t have taken part in that process? At another point, Eliot recommends that the emotion of poetry should be different from his personal emotion. As a reader, he may not like a poet, but the poet’s work may be liked by the reader. Then, with what the reader should deal with? For without the present there would be no past. In that case, what are the duties of the present generation to establish the present? And what are the requirements of an individual to be an individual talent? This book figures out all these answers and the principles of Eliot’s writing this essay.