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Tradition and the Individual Talent by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation

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In English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot refer to “the tradition” or to “a tradition”; at most,...

Introduction Often hailed as the successor to poet-critics such as John Dryden, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot's literary criticism informs his poetry just as his experiences as a poet shape his critical work. Though famous for insisting on "objectivity" in art, Eliot's essays actually map a highly personal set of preoccupations, responses and ideas about specific authors and works of art, as well as formulate more general theories on the connections between poetry, culture and society. Perhaps his best-known essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" was first publi

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