Matthew and T.S. Eliot
Arnold and Eliot were the defining critics of their times. Both were compelled to poetry, and both effectively abandoned it for criticism (Marius Hentea the Silence of the Last Poet: Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot…PDF p.304).
Firstly, Arnold propounds the famous theory of touchstone. Arnold’s Touchstone Method of Criticism was really a comparative system of criticism. He was basically a classicist and admired the ancient Greek, Roman and French authors as the models to be followed by the modern English authors. The old English like Shakespeare, Spenser or Milton were also to be taken as models. Arnold took selected passages from the modern authors and compared them with selected passages from the ancient authors and thus decided their merits. This method was called Arnold’s Touchstone Method.
However, this system of judgment has its own limitations. The method of comparing passage with a passage is not a sufficient test for determining the value of a work as a whole. Arnold himself insisted that we must judge a poem by the ‘total impression’ and not by its fragments. But we can further extend this method of comparison from passages to the poems as whole units. The comparative method is an invaluable aid to appreciation of any kind of art. It is helpful not merely thus to compare the masterpiece and the lesser work, but the good with the not so good, the sincere with the not quite sincere, and so on. (Matthew Arnold’s Touchstone Method of Criticism literarycriticismjohn.blogspot.com)
The Essay on A Dual-Criticism Look at The Birthmark
Literature is many things: provoking, heartwarming, emotional, traumatic, poetic, maybe even life-changing. Literature can also be incredibly ambiguous. While literature can be “simply read”, when one takes a step back and looks at a piece through specific lenses, the work can take on an incredibly different, deeper meaning. Taking the lead of criticisms such as formalist, psychoanalytical, ...
T.S. Eliot shares the same idea in his critical essay ‘Tradition and individual talent’ that new work of art can not be evaluated in isolation without reference to past literature and tradition. Evaluation is always comparative and relative. It calls for a comparison with the past that is with tradition. The value of a work depends on how well it is adjusted into the order of existing literary works. No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You can not value him alone. You must set him for contrast and comparison among the dead (What does T.S.Eliot mean iterary-articles.blogspot.com)
Secondly, Matthew Arnold was of the opinion that individual talent (power of man) is not capable to carry out any piece of work without being bolstered by surrounding environment (power of moment).
He states in his essay Function of criticism, “For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment and the man is not enough without the moment.”
Follows, blatantly, T.S.Eliot to Arnold, in his words in Tradition and individual talent he states, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead”.
Thirdly, The whole scope of Arnold’s book culture and anarchy is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us. “the best which has been thought and said in the world” and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically. (Matthew Arnold on Learning newlearningonline.com)
T.S. Eliot in his essay Tradition and individual talent shares the akin perspective but distinctively. He states tradition, “ involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to any one who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity”.
The Essay on Eliot – Tradition and the Individual Talent
A Brief Summary of “ Tradition and the Individual Talent” In T.S. Eliot’s essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, he shares his perspective on the function of poetry in the literary canon. He is able to sum up his thesis in this short sentence: “The emotion of art is impersonal”. Like Wimsatt and Beardsley, Eliot does not believe in the use of poetry as an interpretation of the poet’s ...
Finally, In Arnold’s view, a complete theory of emotion must not only deal with emotional experience, but also with emotional action and emotional expression. And it must not only address the question of how emotions are elicited, but also speak to the consequences of emotions or better, to their functional role in the architecture of the mind; including “the significance of emotion for personality integration” (qtd in Arnold, 1960a, p. 165; see Cornelius, this issue)
T.S. Eliot here stands contrary to his Guru and says at this point, “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things” (Tradition and Individual Talent).
References
1. George Barker T. S. Eliot PN Review 31, Volume 9 Number 5, May-June 1983.
2. Rainer Reisenzein Arnold’s Theory of Emotion in Historical Perspective Psychology Press, part of the Taylor & Francis Group Volume 20, Number 7, November 2006
3. Discuss Matthew Arnold’s Touchstone Method of Criticism URL retrieved on November 25, 2012 http://literarycriticismjohn.blogspot.com/2011/11/00081-discuss-mathew-arnolds-touchstone.html.
The Term Paper on The Personality Traits Of A Manager
A person’s personality trait can define who they are. Some can tell these traits by the way a person reacts to certain situations, personal or on the job. A person develop traits from the way they were raised and the environment that surrounded them. Everyone carries some type of personality trait, but no one carries any that are identical. Managers have personality traits just like everyone else. ...
4. What does T. S. Eliot mean by Tradition and Historical Sense in his Tradition and Individual Talent? URL retrieved on November 25, 2012 http://literary-articles.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-does-t-s-eliot-mean-by-tradition.html.
5. Arnold, Matthew Functions of criticism: Essays in criticism
6. Eliot T.S Tradition and Individual Talent: The Sacred wood 1921.
7. Matthew Arnold on Learning ‘The Best Which has Been Thought and Said’ URL retrieved on November 25, 2012 learning/matthew-arnold-on-learning.
