Introduction
TS Eliot is one of the greatest poets ever produced in the history of English Literature. But one defining aspect of his literary personality is his criticism on poetry that was a revolutionary step in making poetry mainstream and remarkable again. The critical stature of Eliot is as high as of Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Johnson, Dryden, Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Matthew Arnold. Eliot wrote five hundred essays as reviews that had a significant impact on the landscape of literary criticism. George Watson expressed his views upon the influence of Eliot in criticism as thus,
Eliot made English criticism look different, though not in a simple sense.
His Influence on New Criticism
New Criticism was a 20th-century literary movement in criticism that focused on a close reading of the texts of literature especially poetry to discover the functionality of the work itself. As it is obvious from the objective of the very movement, Eliot's criticism had a strong influence on New Criticism. His struggling vision to attain the sense of literary tradition looks similar to the close reading objective of New Criticism. To accept the dominance of Eliot over New Critics, William Empson asserts as thus,
I do not know for certain how much of my own mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how much of it is a reaction against him or indeed a consequence of misreading him. He is a very penetrating influence, perhaps not unlike the east wind.
Thus, Eliot had his remarkable authority that successfully moulded their ideas according to his own judgement.
His Appreciation of Metaphysical Poets
Another remarkable contribution of Eliot to criticism is his revival of the so-called Metaphysical Poets. His criticism had been a great source in rekindling the appreciation of the long-forgotten Metaphysical Poetry. Metaphysical Poets were notorious for their abrupt use of unpredictable conceits. Eliot praised those poets for displaying sensual and phycological experiences simultaneously in their poetry. According to Eliot, such a portrayal of both inner and outer experiences was unique and witty.
His Dejection for Romanticism
Eliot openly rejects the enormous overflow of emotions that Romantics depicted in their poetry. He criticizes the subjectivity of the Romantics. Eliot is not against the expression of emotions in poetry. He only objects to the addition of personal emotions to poetry. Eliot does not consider poetry as something personal and links it directly to tradition. But Eliot also asserts that poetry is an escape from emotions and subjective show of personality.
Poetic Process
One of the striking contributions of Eliot in the field of criticism is his introduction to Poetic Process - a roadmap of writing exceptional poetry through the organization of emotions (and ideas). Eliot's Poetic Process is difficult and requires a considerable amount of knowledge and understanding of the works of the "Dead Poets" to form a sense of literary tradition. After a poet successfully acquires the particular sense, he has to pick up the suitable emotions (accumulated through literary tradition) and arrange them in order. After that, the poet should make himself ready to write poetry while remaining as impersonal as possible like a catalyst in a chemical reaction. Eliot also suggests that poetry does not belong to the poet but to the literary tradition. This is Eliot's painful Poetic Process. (But let's see how much of the poetic process does Eliot himself follows in his own poetry).
Limitations
Eliot, no doubt, put the poetic landscape upsidedown through his criticism. But he was authoritative and didactic in his approach. Whatever he wrote, he wanted it to become a verdict (farmaan). Eliot was criticized for unjustly criticizing Milton. Also, the Poetic Process that Eliot suggests is not only difficult but also halts the personality of the poet to be seen. We can read through the lines of a poem if the identity of the poet is visible within a poet. For instance, Robert Frost is a poet of Nature not only because his poems abound in natural imagery, but also his personal attraction to the objects of Nature. Therefore, poetry cannot be disassociated from the poet who composes it. Lastly, Eliot could not follow the product of his own "Personal Workshop of Poetry" which is the Poetic Process. Despite the poetic greatness "The Waste Land" carries with it, the poem is basically a representation of Eliot's own ideas of the horrors caused by World War First.
Conclusion
Despite those sharp limitations in Eliot's judgement, his criticism has brought a new taste of poetry for the readers to relish and new tools of criticism to put a poetic work under scrutiny. The greatness of Eliot as a critic is beautifully summed up by John Hayward as below,
I cannot think of a critic who has been more widely read and discussed in his own life-time; and not only in English, but in almost every language, except Russian.
Sources and Suggested Readings
- Literary Criticism - Current Notes - Page 213
- https://literariness.org/2020/11/21/literary-criticism-of-t-s-eliot/
- http://epicnotes1.blogspot.com/2017/05/t-s-eliots-critic.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot
- http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-optional-subjects/group-v/english-literature/381-t-s-eliot-critic.html
Very good
ReplyDelete