On T.S.Eliot’s View Of Tradition In Literary Criticism Theory

T.S.Eliot was an influential literary critic in 20th century. His view of tradition has been one of familiar and classical poetic theories. Nowadays the saying about tradition has long been widely accepted and constantly cited by literary criticism as an important judgment. It is the tremendous influence of Eliot to modern chinese poety that enable the results of study on Eliot to focus on his poems and poetic theories. Scholars generally regard all kinds of views of Eliot on poem as a poetic system with intrinsic relevance, in which the opinion of tradition is discussed all the time. Most of these studies on Eliot’s view of tradition mainly comes from his theoretical articles about tradition, and the focus of the study is mainly on the relationship between "tradition" and other theories of poetics, such as "non personalized" and "objective correlative". This paper tries to put Eliot’s view of tradition into the context of criticism theory and regards it as a kind of literature idea which guides his criticism practice. Through this the thesis can explore the modern critical wisdom behind the view of tradition.In addition to the introduction, this paper is divided into four chapters. Starting from the origin of the view, the first chapter analyzes its generating background in order to get a clear idea of the whole pedigree of the matter. T.S.Eliot’s view of tradition is base on the profound philosophy accomplishment and is also a product of specific social background. Moreover, it is closely related to the status of the development of literary criticism at that time.The second chapter mainly expounds the connotation of Eliot’s view of tradition and interpretation of it. The keywords extracted form his view of tradition are historical consciousness, order and authority. They respectively indicate the three aspects of the connotation of tradition:temporality, automatically updated and stable structure, and the mainstream of literature. The explanations for the view of tradition form two opinions: one thinks that it can be viewed as a return of classicism, the other one thinks that it is a holdover from organic holism in literary criticism history.The third chapter mainly reveals the influence of T.S.Eliot’s view of tradition on his criticism practice. First of all, it affects Eliot’s choice of object and standard in literary criticism. Eliot usually focuses on works in the past, not in the contemporary in order to seek a new direction for the development of English poetry at the beginning of 20th century. So the status of metaphysical poets in literary history has been remodeled. In terms of literary evaluation standard, Eliot pursues a nature of capacity conforming to the spirit of tradition. It is most largely reflected on Dante because of the universality of poetic language, the breadth of art emotion, the integrity of the structure, and the application of allusion and materials in his poems. Therefore, Dante is considered as a typical example of "tradition" standard. Secondly, as a literature idea which guides Eliot’s criticism practice, the view of tradition directly influences his critical method and then forms his own unique way to express. John Crowe Ranson summarizes them as a "critic of history" and a style filled with "proverb".The fourth chapter mainly discusses how should we think of Eliot’s view of tradition. It includes two parts. The first part is about the critical wisdom of the view of tradition. It not only contains the elements of formalism criticism in the 20th century, but also presages changes to the literary criticism, which perhaps develops to a social and cultural criticism in the future. This can be seen from the relationship between the view of tradition and two concepts of the "text" and the "intertextuality". The second part discusses the view of tradition and problems about tradition. Because of Eliot’s praise for tradition, he transforms it into a kind of negative tired on the contrary, with a formation of Harold Bloom’s so-called "influence of anxiety". However, Eliot’s criticism practice prompts us to find that tradition is always selected and specific, showing us everyone has their own acceptance history of literary tradition. So the correct attitude towards tradition is to respect it, but not to be tired by it.