Lake Forest College
Lake Forest College Publications
All-College Writing Contest
5-1-1994
T. S. Eliot: Impersonal Poetry And Tradition
Darlene Tennerstedt
Lake Forest College
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Tennerstedt, Darlene, "T. S. Eliot: Impersonal Poetry And Tradition" (1994). All-College Writing Contest.
http://publications.lakeforest.edu/allcollege_writing_contest/60
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T. S. ELIOT: IMPERSONAL POETRY AND TRADITION
by Darlene Tennerstedt
T. S. Eliot was the harbinger of a revolutionary wave of literary criticism that swept
over the academic world in the twentieth century and culminated in the postmodern philosophies of Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault. Central to Eliot's approach was his concept
of "impersonal poetry" and, closely related, his attitude justifying "tradition" as an integral part of the process in writing poetry.
Impersonal poetry arose as a direct reaction against Romanticism, where the poet
saw his poetry as an extension of himself and where, similarly, criticism treated poetry as
a personal object. In "A Defense of Poetry," Shelley says, "A poet is a: nightingale, who
sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds" (Q., 519). Eliot
puts an end to this personal approach, at least as far as criticism is concerned.
In "Tradition and Individual Talent," Eliot says, "Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry" (3., 5), and in this same
essay he examines the importance of tradition. The link to tradition is...