24 pages 48 minutes read

T. S. Eliot

Tradition and the Individual Talent

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1919

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Index of Terms

Criticism

Any response to a work of art, including all possible emotions and thoughts. The critical impulse is inherent and specific to every culture. The collective act of criticism over time gives art its significance.

Depersonalization

The total surrender of the individual personality in the pursuit of maturity as a poet. By relinquishing the self, the poet creates an opening for a poem to emerge. Depersonalization is a conscious act that can only be performed after the poet knows who she is and knows her place in the literary tradition.

Emotion

A transformative experience not inherent in the art but experienced through the art such as happiness, sadness, joy, or regret. The use of an emotion is not personal, not indicative of the poet’s experience of an event. Emotion is an essential component of transformative art along with feeling and artistic practice, and it may be created for the sake of the poem as a composite of the various combinations of the poet’s experience and knowledge.