Lecture Literary criticism - Lecture 32: 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.

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