INTRODUCTION:

 Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965) was an essayist, playwright, critic, and "one of the twentieth
century's major poets”.
 He was born in the United States, but he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and
was naturalized as a British citizen in 1927 at age 39.

ELIOT AS A CRITIC:
 Thomas Stearns Eliot is considered to be one of the most influential critic of the modern era.
 He is widely influential for his famous essay Tradition and the Individual Talent.
 The essay influenced the emerging theory in the literary theory known as New Criticism and
hence Eliot is also sometimes referred to be as the anticipate of New Criticism theory.
 He has contributed critical terms such as the Impersonality theory, objective correlative,
unification of sensibility and autotelic text.
 George Walton says, " Eliot made English criticism look different, though
not in a simple sense".

ELIOT’S Major Books of Criticism

Eliot’s critical pronouncements were first published largely in the form of articles and essays in various
periodicals and journals of the day. They were later collected in the following books:

 1.The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1939)

 2. On Poetry and Poets (1957)
 3. To Criticize the Critic (1965)
 4. Tradition and Individual Talent
 5. Poetry and Drama
 6. The Function of Criticism
 7. The English Metaphysical Poets
 8. The Frontiers of Criticism
 9. Hamlet and His Problems
Tradition and Individual Talent (1919) is considered as the manifesto of modern criticism.

ELIOT’S CRITICISM ON ROMANTICISM/THEORY OF IMPERSONALITY:

  Eliot's concept of impersonality is important in the literary process to reveal that the mind
of the writer is like a receptacle in which are stored a number of varied feelings,
emotions and experiences
 In his essay "Tradition and Individual Talent" Eliot attack on certain critical views in
Romanticism particularly up on the idea that poetry is primarily an expression of the
personality of the poet.
 Romantic poet says that poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and personal
emotions.
 Bus Eliot says that poetry is not so but an escape from personality. According to him poetry
is not inspiration, it is organization.
 A.G George says: " Eliot's theory of impersonality of poetry is the greatest
on the nature of poetic process, after Wordsworth's romantic conception
of poetry".

Objective Correlative:
 T.S. Eliot used this phrase to describe “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which

shall be the formula of that particular emotion” that the poet feels and hopes to evoke in the

reader.

 Eliot put forward the theory of Objective Correlative in the context of Shakespeare’s tragedy

Hamlet.

 In his essay on Hamlet he has insisted that Hamlet is an artistic failure.

 Eliot argues that there is no compatibility between prince Hamlet emotion and the stimulus or

excitant which aroused the emotion.

Dissociation of Sensibility and Unification of Sensibility:

 Eliot has used the term ‘dissociation of sensibility’ and Unification of Sensibility in his essay
Metaphysical poets and insisted that there must be synthesis between mind and heart and
emotion and intellect.
 He praised the poetry of 17th century metaphysical poets led by John Donne in whose amorous
poems he noticed a blend of rationality and sensuousness which was nowhere noticed in the
poetry of the romantic poets.
 The influence of Dryden and Milton has been particularly harmful in this respect.

ELIOT’S CRITICISM ON DIFFERENT POETS:

 1. ON PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY:

 Eliot rejected Shelley`s poetry in which he found nothing but ‘bad jingling’.
 He lacks a steady track of mind and is just like a butterfly moving from one flower to another.
 He also called him a poet of muddled thinking.
 His poetry is also vague and obscure.
 There is intellectual incoherence in his poetry.

2. ON ROBERT BROWNING:

 Eliot does not regard Browning to be a great poet.

 He has ideas but fails to transmit his ideas into emotions and sensations.
 Merely dry thoughts or logic do not make a great poet, a mature poet can experience or feel his
thought as he does the fragrance of a rose; a bad poet cannot do so.

CONCLUSION:
 To conclude, Eliot's influence as a critic has been wide and realistic.
 He has corrected and educated the taste of his readers and has brought about a re-thinking
regarding the function of poetry and the nature of the poet process.
 He gave a new orientation, new critical ideas, and new tools of criticism.
 “No critic, indeed, since Coleridge, has shown more clearly the use of poetry and of
criticism”—(John Hayward)