Analysis Of T. Eliot's Tradition And The Individual Talent

and history of other poets before them and are credited based on their similarity or practice of another poet's work. Eliot reinforces this view by stating "You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and The importance of a nation's past poets helps define the way poetry is viewed and judged in the present. T.K Eliot's argument in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is that poetry of the present is linked to poetry of the nation's past and those who formed it.
Eliot believes that the creative history and tradition of nations is what makes them unique and district from other nations as portrayed in his first page as "Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind." (Eliot 36). Eliot also adds that poets are great because of the ancestors that built the poets art stile before him, "we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his …show more content…
The historical sense is "historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence" (Eliot 37) which leads to Eliot showing how the history of your nation or people influence your work. Eliot does this by explaining that "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" (Eliot 27) and by doing so, Eliot makes further connections as to how a nation's history effects poets of that nation. Past poets are also by the tradition comparison, among the dead." (Eliot 27) which also adds Eliot's view on that any person is judged by their predecessors. Eliot than goes on to say how the present affects the past as the past affects the present and by doing this, strength is added to the deep connection which they both