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Literary Criticism – Classical Approach ENGBA(605)

Edited by
Dr. Haroon Rasheed
Department of English
Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti Urdu, Arabi -Farsi
University, Lucknow

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Paper V
Literary Criticism – Classical Approach
ENGBA(605)- Sem- 6

Unit- 2
Chapter 2 :
TS Eliot – THE FUNCTION OF
CRITICISM

About Author :

An introduction to T. S. Eliot’s life and work

We could write thousands of words as part of a T. S. Eliot
biography, but instead we’ll limit ourselves to a reasonably short
piece that distils all of the most interesting aspects of Eliot’s life
into one relatively brief post. What follows, then, is a very short

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guide to the amazing life of T. S. Eliot (1888-1965). We hope it’s

also an interesting summary of his life. For the serious Eliot scholar,
this short biography should be complemented with one of the major
biographies of Eliot’s life – we have some suggestions for where to
start here in our ‘further reading’ section at the end of this article.
Early Life
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on 26 September 1888 in St Louis,
Missouri. His ancestors had lived in America for the last couple of
centuries, since Andrew Elliott had left East Coker in Somerset for
Massachusetts in the 1660s. (Elliott was one of the jurists who tried
the Salem ‘witches’ in 1692, alongside John Hathorne, great-great-
grandfather of the American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne.)

Eliot was also related to three US presidents: John Adams, John

Quincy Adams, and Rutherford B. Hayes. His family belonged to
the New England aristocracy, meaning that Eliot was a New
Englander by descent, and he would become an Englander by
emigration: he moved to England in 1914, and swapped his US
passport for UK citizenship in 1927.
Poetry Career
After spells of study at Harvard and then at Oxford, Eliot became
part of the London literary scene, following a meeting with Ezra
Pound in 1914. Pound would champion Eliot and promote his work
– he even helped to pay for the publication of Eliot’s first volume of
poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917.
Eliot’s early poetry took its cue from several different sources: from
French Symbolists, especially the French-Uruguayan Jules
Laforgue (1860-1887); the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists;
and the seventeenth-century Metaphysical poets. He would write
numerous lectures and essays about the dramatists and
Metaphysical poets in particular. In 1919, in an influential essay

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titled ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, he set himself squarely

against the Romantic notion of poetry as (in Wordsworth’s words)
‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’, instead seeing it as
an ‘escape from emotion’ and an ‘escape from personality’. He was
becoming associated with other poets of the time whose work
would later become known as ‘modernist’ – Ezra Pound was
another leading modernist poet who was born in the US but moved
to Europe in his youth.
The Waste Land
Eliot’s landmark poem, which would bring him to a wider audience,
was The Waste Land, published in 1922. (For an informative short
documentary about Eliot’s poem, which analyses The Waste
Land in under four minutes, see this Youtube video.) Ezra Pound
acted as the editor of the work, and cut much of the original content
from the early drafts: the poem started out as something of around
800-1,000 words, but the final version would be just over 430 lines.
Eliot’s first wife, Vivienne, whom he had married in 1915, would
also help to edit the poem. Its popularity made Eliot one of the most
important poets of his generation. Many have read The Waste
Land biographically, and T. S. Eliot’s own verdict (expressed some
years later) was that it was merely a ‘the relief of a personal and
wholly insignificant grouse against life’; however, such a person
and biographically informed view of the poem goes against Eliot’s
earlier theory of poetic impersonality.
Conversion to Christianity and Later Work
The breakthrough came in 1927, when T. S. Eliot converted to
Anglo-Catholicism and would write, in the ensuing years, a long
confessional poem Ash-Wednesday (1930) and, later, Four
Quartets (1943), this latter poem sometimes thought as his true
masterpiece (e.g. by Helen Gardner, in her The Art of T. S.
Eliot). Eliot would spend much of the last thirty-odd years of his
life doing two things: being a public intellectual, and trying to write

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modern verse-drama. In this latter endeavour he was probably most

successful in his 1950 play The Cocktail Party, although some also
praise his earlier play, The Family Reunion (1939). His 1935
play, Murder in the Cathedral, about the murder of Archbishop
Thomas Becket in 1170, was also popular with audiences.
Personality
We can’t cover every aspect of Eliot’s life in a very short
biography, but it’s worth mentioning his quirkier side. The life of T.
S. Eliot, and the character of the man, is often painted as a highly
serious one in the various biographies of him – and it’s true that
Eliot can be highly serious, intellectually challenging, and a bit of a
snob (he reportedly considered ordinary people ‘termites’), but he
was more than this. For instance, he enjoyed detective fiction and
wrote an essay on ‘Wilkie Collins and Dickens’ (in his Selected
Essays). In 1927, he reviewed some 24 detective novels in his own
journal, the Criterion. One of Eliot’s party tricks was to recite long
passages of Sherlock Holmes from memory. Although many
consider Eliot a cultural snob, his tastes went to both ends of the
cultural spectrum: when Marie Lloyd, the celebrated comedian and
star of the working-class London music hall, died, Eliot wrote a
glowing obituary of her.
He also liked a joke. Eliot went to work for the publishing firm
Faber and Gwyer in 1925, the firm that would shortly become Faber
and Faber. Eliot’s name would become synonymous with the
publishing house for the next forty years. Eliot was a consummate
professional at the firm, and would help to give a string of poets a
much-needed break (these would include W. H. Auden and Ted
Hughes, among others). But there was also a mischievous side to
him. He once broke up a board meeting at Faber on 4th of July by
setting off a bucketful of firecrackers between the chairman’s legs.
As we’ve revealed in our five fascinating facts about T. S. Eliot,
Eliot was also a huge fan of Groucho Marx; he wrote the comedian
a fan letter and kept a picture of him on his wall.

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Charges of Anti-Semitism
Was T. S. Eliot anti-Semitic? Critics and biographers remain
divided on the answer, and the evidence seems to rest on a less-
than-favourable references to Jewish people in a handful of poems,
notably ‘Gerontion‘, ‘Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a
Cigar‘, and early drafts of The Waste Land (lines which Ezra Pound
actually cut out – surprisingly, given Pound’s vocal anti-Semitism).
There is also a controversial reference to ‘free-thinking Jews’ in a
book of Eliot’s American lectures, After Srived that he was to be
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Vivienne died in the late 1940s, and Eliot married his secretary,
Valerie Fletcher, in 1957. It is fitting, almost poetically so, that
Eliot married Valerie in the same London church in which Jules
Laforgue, the poet who had first showed him how he might forge
his own poetic voice almost fifty years ago, had married an English
girl in 1886. The following year, in 1958, his final play, The Elder
Statesman, was staged and published. Eliot died in 1965, aged 76.
His ashes were interred in the churchyard of St. Michael’s Church
in East Coker, the subject of the second of his Four Quartetsand the
village which his ancestors had left in the seventeenth century when
they had departed for the New World. Eliot’s widow, Valerie,
would survive until 2012, having acted, for the best part of fifty
years, as Eliot’s executor, editor, and devoted guardian.
They are both commemorated in the plaque that marks the final
resting-place of Eliot’s ashes. Fittingly, the first and final words of
‘East Coker’ are also inscribed on the stone: ‘In my beginning is my
end.’ ‘In my end is my beginning.’
If you enjoyed this very brief biography of T. S. Eliot, you can
find more information on the life of T. S. Eliot in the further reading
below, especially the biographies by Ackroyd and Gordon.

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THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM

According to Eliot, the function of criticism is to quest for some common
principles for the perfection of art. Thisfunction can only be served when
the tradition of art is followed which has been derived from the long
experience of ages.
TS. Eliot is as famous for his works in the field of criticism as for
those in the field of creative art. His essay ‘The Function of Criticism’ was
published in 1923 and is one of the most well known of his works as a
critic. This essay was a response to Middleton Murry’s challenge to the
opinions that Eliot had presented in one of his earlier essays, namely
‘Tradition and Individual Talent’. This essay had been published in 1919
and Murry had opposed the views therein in his own essay titled
‘Romanticism and the Tradition’. In ‘The Function of Criticism’, Eliot has
revised his views presented in ‘tradition and Indivi
dual Talent’; presented the opposition suggested by Murry to those views;
expresses his opposition to Murry’s views; and, also presents his views
about different aspects of the tendencies and functions of criticism. So, the
essay has been divided into 4 parts each one dealing with one of the four
features mentioned above, respectively.

Eliot’s views on Tradition

At the beginning of the essay, Eliot refers to the views he presented in
‘Tradition and Individual Talent’. The most unique aspect of his theory
about tradition has been that he identifies a direct and strong relationship
between the literature of past and present. He believed that European
literature, right from the very beginning of literature to the present day,
formed a single literary tradition without any break. He also states that
individual writers and individual literary works have significance only
when seen in relation to this tradition. The present merely alters the past
and past directs the present. New works of art disturb the order of already
existing literary works but soon conforms to this order. So, literary
tradition continues without a break though it keeps on changing.
Another aspect of literary tradition, as per Eliot, is that every writer has to
owe allegiance to the authority of tradition. Only surrender to the literary
tradition could give meaning and significance to a writer’s work. The

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writers of all time form a singular ideal community and they all are united
by a common cause and a common inheritance.
Eliot’s views about criticism also follow his views about art and tradition.
However, works of art could have different ends like moral, religious or
cultural but criticism has only one end- i.e., “elucidation of works of art
and the correction of taste.”Criticism, thus depends on art and could not
be an independent activity.
To determine the success of a critic in his performance should be easy
considering that the end of criticism is clear and well defined. However,
Eliot states that in reality it is not that simple. The basic reason he
identifies is that critics believe in asserting their individuality rather than
conforming to the fellow critics. He states that critics trying to attract
audience by competing with others have no value or significance.
However, he also believed that some critics did prove useful on the basis of
their work.

Murry’s Views
In the second part of the essay, Eliot takes on Middleton Murry’s views on
Classicism and Romanticism. Murry had stressed on the belief that
Classicism and Romanticism differ very clearly and no one could follow
both at the same time. Eliot opposed Murry when the latter related the
difference between classicism and romanticism to the difference in French
and English, respectively. Murry also related Catholicism to classicism for
believing in tradition, discipline and obedience to an objective authority
outside the individual. According tohim, Romanticism and Protestantism
are related to social liberalism, for having full faith in the ‘inner voice’, in
the individual, and no restriction to follow outside authority or fixed rules
and traditions.Eliot objected to Murry’s views by stating that his concept
of inner voice was like advocating doing what one likes. He says that the
difference between classicism and romanticism is equivalent to the
difference between the complete and the fragmentary, the adult and the
immature, the orderly and the chaotic. He also disagrees that the French
and the English could be compared to Classics and romantics, respectively.

Eliot’s views about Murry

In the third part, Eliot dismisses Murry’s views that he highlighted in the
second part. Eliot’s attitude in this dismissal seems to be that of ridicule.
He states that criticism’s function is to discover some common principles
for perfection in art. This function could be served only with obedience to

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the laws and tradition of art which have been derived from the experience
of ages. Thus, someone believing in the ‘inner voice’ could not value
criticism. He calls the inner voice ‘whiggery’.

Eliot’s views about Criticism

Link between Criticism and Creativity

In the fourth part, Eliot analyzes various aspects of criticism. First of all,
he comments about the terms ‘critical’ and ‘creative’ and also ridicules the
way Matthew Arnold bluntly distinguished the two.
Eliot says that ‘critical’ activity is of great importance for works of creation.
The major part of the effort of an author in composing his work is ‘critical
labour’ which includes ‘the labour of sifting, combining constructing,
expunging, correcting, testing.’ Eliot considers the critical effort done by a
writer on his own work to be the highest kind of criticism. He believes that
creative writers having superior critical faculty are superior to other
writers.

Creative Criticism
Eliot opposes one of the basic beliefs of literary studies that critical and
creative activities are separate. According to him, criticism forms a large
part of the effort undertaken for creation. However, he states that critical
writing cannot be creative. Because there is a fundamental difference
between creation and criticism, an effort for creative criticism would be
neither creative nor critical. Creation has no conscious aims but criticism
has fixed purpose concerned to something other than itself. Criticism
could not be autotelic and is aimed at elucidation of works of art.

Qualifications of a Critic
Eliot also mentions the qualifications of a critic. He considers a highly
developed sense of fact to be the most important quality of a critic. The
sense of fact is a rare gift and is very slow to develop. Eliot also states that
‘workshop criticism’, i.e. criticism by a person who practises creative art
himself is most valuable. He also says that the part of criticism attempting
interpretation of an author or a work is false and misleading.
According to Eliot, true interpretation is giving the possession of the facts
to the reader. The true critic puts his knowledge about facts about a work

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of art before the reader in simple manner. He also suggests clearly that by
the term ‘facts’, he means the technical aspects concerned to a work of art.

Critic’s tools
Eliot considers comparison and analysis to be the chief tools of a critic that
should be used with care and intelligence. A critic needs to be fully aware
of the facts about a work to employ comparison and analysis. He believes
that the method of comparison and analysis is preferable over the
conventional interpretation even if used injudiciously.

Eliot’s Suggestions to Critic

Eliot states that even trivial facts cannot corrupt taste. However, critics
like Coleridge and Goethe corrupt by offering opinions and fancy. Eliot
also cautions against obsession for facts. Trivial facts should not be
chased. He also says that critics should read the works themselves rather
than reading views about the work.
Eliot also opposes ‘lemon squeezer’ critics, i.e. the critics who try to
squeeze too many meanings from the text. He says that a critic should not
get indulged with trivialities.
So, as per Eliot, a good critic follows tradition, judges on the basis of facts
and is objective. He should not be prejudiced on the basis of preconceived
theories.

The Origin, of the Essay: Its Four

Parts

The essay Function of Criticism 1923, arose out of a controversy.

Eliot’s essay Tradition and Individual Talent was published a few
years earlier in 1919. Middleton Murry challenged the opinions of
Eliot in his essay Romanticism and the Tradition. The present essay
is Eliot’s reply to Murry. The first part gives in brief the opinions
expressed by Eliot in the essay Tradition and Individual Talent, in the
second part, he gives a resume of the views of Middleton Murry, in
the third part, these views of Murry are briefly dismissed, and in the

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concluding fourth part, the poet examines the different aspects of the
nature and function of criticism.

Eliot’s Dynamic Conception of Tradition

Eliot begins the essay by referring to certain views he had expressed

in his earlier essay, Tradition and Individual Talent, because they are
relevant to the present essay. In the earlier essay, he had pointed out
that there is an intimate relation between the present and the past in
the world of literature. The entire literature of Europe from Homer
down to the present day forms a single literary tradition, and it is in
relation to this tradition that individual writers and individual works
of art have their significance. This is so because the past is not dead,
but lives on in the present. The past is altered by the present as much
as the present is directed by the past. Past works of literature form an
ideal order, but this ideal order is disturbed if ever so slightly, when a
really new work of art appears. There is a readjustment of values,
resulting in conformity between the old and the new. Literary
tradition is constantly changing and grow different from age to age.

Literary Tradition: The Value of Conformity

The literary tradition is the outside authority to which an artist in the

present must owe allegiance. He must constantly surrender and
sacrifice himself in order to have meaning and significance. The true
artists of any time form an ideal community, and artist in the present
must achieve a sense of his community. He must realise that artists
of all times are united together by a common cause and a common
inheritance. While a second rate artist assets his individuality
because his distinction lies in the difference and not in similarity with
others, the true artist tries to conform. He alone can “afford to
collaborate, to exchange, to contribute.”

Definition of Criticism and Its Ends

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Eliot’s views on criticism derive from his views on art and tradition as
given above. He defines criticism as, “the commentation and
exposition of works of art by means of written words’“. Criticism can
never be an autotelic activity, because criticism is always about
something. Art, as critics like Matthew Arnold point out, may have
some other ends, e.g., moral, religious, cultural, but art need not be
aware of these ends, rather it performs its function better by being
indifferent to such ends. But criticism always has one and only one
definite end, and that end is, “elucidation of works of art and the
correction of taste.” In his essay The Frontiers of Criticism, he further
explains the aim of criticism as, “the promotion of understanding and
enjoyment of literature.”

The Need of Co-operation and Conformity

Since the end of criticism is clear and well defined, it should he easy
to determine whether a critic has performed his function well or not.
However, this is not such an easy taste. The difficulty arises from the
fact that critics, instead of trying to discipline their personal
prejudices and whims and composing their differences with as many
of their fellow critics as possible and co-operating in the common
pursuit of true judgment, express extreme views and vehemently
assert their individually, i.e. the ways in which they differ from
others. This is so because they owe their livelihood to such
differences and oddities. The result is criticism has become like a
Sunday Park full of orators competing with each other to attract as
large and audience as possible. Such critics are a worthless lot of no
value and significance. However, there are certain other critics who
are useful, and it is on the basis of their works, that Eliot establishes
the aims and methods of criticism which should be followed by all.

Murry’s Views or the Classic and the

Romantic

In the second part of the essay, Eliot digresses into a consideration of

Middleton Murry’s views on classicism and Romanticism. While

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there are critics who hold that classicism and romanticism are the
same thing, Murry takes a definite position, and makes a clear
distinction between the two, and says that one cannot be a classic and
a romantic at one and the same time. In this respect, Eliot praises
Murry, but he does not agree with him when he makes the issue a
national and racial issue, and says that the genius of the French is
classic and that of the English is romantic. Murry further relates
Catholicism in religion with classicism in literature, for both believe
in tradition, in discipline, in obedience to an objective authority
outside the individual. On the contrary, romanticism and
Protestantism, and social liberalism, are related, for they have full
faith in the ‘inner voice’, in the individual, and obey no outside
authority. They care for no rules and traditions.

Eliot’s Rejection of Murry’s Views

But Eliot does not agree with these views. In his opinion, the
difference between classicism and romanticism is, the difference
between the complete and the fragmentary, the adult and the
immature, the orderly and the chaotic. To him the concept of the
inner voice sounds remarkably like doing, What one likes. It is a sign
of indiscipline leading to vanity, fear and lust. Neither does he agree
with the view that the English as a nation are romantics and so
‘humorous’ and ‘non-conformists’, while the French are ‘naturally’
classical.

“Inner Voice”: Ironic Treatment of It

In the third part of the essay, Eliot summarily dismisses the views of
Murry. The tone is one of light ridicule. He contemptuously calls the
inner voice, whiggery. For those who believe in the ‘inner voice’,
criticism is of no value at all, because the function of criticism is to
discover some common principles for achieving perfection in art.
Those who believe in the “inner voice” do not want any principles. In
other words, they do not care for perfection in art, which can result
only through obedience to the laws of art, and to tradition which
represents the accumulated wisdom and experience of ages.

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Criticism and the Creative Faculty

In the fourth part, Eliot deals with the problem of criticism in all its
manifold aspects. In the very beginning, he comments upon the
terms ‘critical’ and ‘creative’. He ridicules Matthew Arnold for having
distinguished rather bluntly between the ‘critical’ and the ‘creative’
activity. He does not realise that criticism is of capital importance in
the work of creation. As a matter of fact, “the larger part of the labour
of an author in composing his work is critical labour’, the labour of
sifting, combining constructing, expunging, correcting, testing.” Eliot
further expresses the view that the criticism employed by a writer on
his own work is the most vital and the highest kind of criticism.
Elsewhere, Eliot calls such criticism, workshop criticism. Its high
worth and value cannot be denied, for a poet who knows from
personal experience the mysteries of the creative process is in a
better position to write about it than those who have no such
knowledge. Eliot goes to the extent of saying that some creative
writers are superior to others only because their critical faculty is
superior. He ridicules those who decry the critical toil of the artist,
and hold the view that the greater artist is an unconscious artist. He
calls such concepts whiggery and pours his ridicule on such people.
He comments those who, instead relying on the ‘Inner voice’, or
‘inspiration’, conform to tradition, and in this was try to make their
works as free from defects as possible.

Can There be Creative Criticism?

It is a mistake to separate critical and creative activities. A large part

of creation is in reality criticism. But critical writing cannot be
creative. There can be no creative criticism. Creative criticism is
neither criticism nor creation. This is so because there is a
fundamental difference between creation and criticism. Creation, a
work of art, is autotelic. It has no conscious aims and objectives.
Criticism, on the other hand, is always about something, other than
itself. In other words, it is not an autotelic activity, its aim being the
commentation and elucidation of works of art. Hence it is that we

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cannot fuse creation with criticism as we can fuse criticism with

creation. The critical activity finds its highest fulfilment when it is
fused with creation, with the labour of the artist.

The Qualifications of an Ideal Critic: A

Highly Developed Sense of Fact

Eliot next proceeds to consider the qualifications of a critic. The

foremost quality which an ideal critic must have is a highly developed
sense of fact. The sense of fact is a rare gift. It is not frequently met
with, and it is very slow to develop. The value of a practitioner’s
criticism—say that of a poet on his own art, ‘workshop criticism’ as
Eliot elsewhere calls it—lies in the fact that he is dealing with facts
which he understands, and so can also help us to understand them.
Eliot’s own criticism is such workshop criticism, and Eliot is all
praises for such critics and their criticism. There is a large part of
criticism which seeks to ‘interpret’ an author and his work. But most
of such interpretation is no interpretation at all. It is mere fiction; the
critic gives his views, his impression of the work, and so is false and
misleading. Eliot has no use for such impressionistic criticism; it
gives us no insight into the work under study.

Sense of Fact: The Technical Aspects

True interpretation is no interpretation at all; it is merely putting the

reader in possession of the facts which he might have missed
otherwise. The true critic himself knows the facts about a work of
art—its conditions, its settings, its genesis—and puts them before his
readers in a simple and easy manner. Thus it is clear that by ‘facts’
Eliot means the various technical aspects of a work of art.

The Tools of the Critic: Comparison and

Analysis

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Comparison and analysis are the chief tools of a critic. These are the
tools of the critic, and he must use them with care and intelligence.
Comparison and analysis can be possible only when the critic knows
the facts about the works which are to be compared and analysed. He
must know the facts about the work of art—technical elements like its
structure, content and theme—and not waste his time in such
irrelevant fact-hunting as the inquiry into the number of times
giraffes are mentioned in the English novel. However, the method of
comparison and analysis, even when used unjudiciously, is preferable
to ‘interpretation’ in the conventional sense.

Warning Against Fact-hunting

Facts, even facts of the lowest order, cannot corrupt taste, while
impressionistic criticism, like that of Coleridge and Goethe, is always
misleading. The function of criticism is to educate taste or, as Eliot
puts it elsewhere, to promote enjoyment and understanding of
literature. Now facts, however trivial, can never corrupt taste; they
can only gratify taste. Critics like Goethe or Coleridge, who supply
opinion or fancy, are the real corruptors. In the end, Eliot cautions us
not to become slaves to facts and bother about such trivialities as the
laundry bills of Shakespeare. Such fact-hunting is not criticism.
Similarly, he warns us against the vicious taste for reading about
works of art instead of reading the works themselves.

‘Lemon squeezer’ and Impressionistic

Criticism: Eliot’s Condemnation

Eliot’s emphasis on facts makes it clear that his critical stand is with
such New Critics as F.R. Leavis and I.A. Richards. He commands
textual criticism, but he is against the ‘lemon-squeezer’ school of
critics who try to squeeze every drop of meaning out of words. A critic

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should concentrate on the text, compare and analyse, but he should

never stoop to trivialities or empty hair-splitting. A good critic is
objective, his judgment is based on facts, he is guided by tradition,
the accumulated wisdom of ages and not by his, “inner voice”. He
does not indulge in mere expression of opinion or fancy. Eliot is
against impressionistic criticism, but he does not expound any
theories or lay down any rules and principles. Impressionistic
criticism is erratic, while adherence to rigid theories hampers the
critic and curtails his freedom

Eliot’s Originality: Objective, Scientific

Attitude

The critic should be guided by facts and facts alone. He should

approach the work of art with a free mind, unprejudiced by any
theories or preconceived notions. Only then can he be completely
objective and impersonal. It is in this way that criticism
approximates to the position of science. It is only in this way that
criticism becomes a co-operative activity, the critic of one age
cooperates with critics of the previous ages in common pursuit of
truth. Such truths are provisional, for ‘truths’ of one age are likely to
be modified and corrected by truths discovered by future ages. In this
objective-scientific attitude Eliot is different from all other previous
English critics. Herein lies his individuality and originality. He is like
a scientist working with an open mind and co-operating with others,
for the realisation of truth which he knows can only be tentative.

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Reference

• Arnold, Mathew. 1964, Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism.

London: Everyman's Library.
• The Greeks and the Irrational by E R Dodds.
• European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages by Ernst Robert
Curtius.
• The Mirror and the Lamp by MH Abrams.
• The Rhetoric of Religion by Kenneth Burke.
• Colors of the Mind by Angus Fletcher.
• English Literary Criticism and Theory by M. S. Naagrajan. Eliot T. S.
The Sacred Wood , 1964: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. 1920, ed.
London: Methuen 1928, rpt. New York: Bames and Noble.
• Internet Material.
• Gross, John, 1969, The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters: Aspects
of English Literary Life Since 1800. Middlesex: Penguin.
• Ian Gregor, , 1970, and Mathew Arnold" in Eliot in Perspective: A
Symposium. Ed. Graham Martin. London: Macmillan.
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