期刊名称：International Journal of Humanities & Social Science Studies
印刷版ISSN：2349-6711
电子版ISSN：2349-6959
出版年度：2016
卷号：3
期号：3
页码：191-197
语种：
出版社：Scholar Publications
摘要：In his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, T.S. Eliot assigns a definite meaning to the word ‘tradition’. He advocates a comparison and contrast between the past and the present poets with a view to finding out something new and original or ‘individual’ in poetry. He feels that by this comparison alone, one can separate tradition from the individual talent. The idea of ‘individual talent’ seems to emerge from the theory of Imitation by Aristotle. In Aristotle’s theory, the artist in the process of imitation, knowingly or unknowingly, adds something to it which forms the basis for the production of art. And this ‘new’ added in the act of imitation is ‘art’. In Eliot’s theory, while setting a recent poet in comparison and contrast with some writer or poet of the past in order to ascertain whether or not the recent poet keeps within the tradition, there is found to be a great deal different which is new and individual. Eliot defines it as ‘individual talent’. So, the whole idea of ‘individual talent’ seems to have emerged from Aristotle’s theory of imitation. Eliot’s concept is also very close to Matthew Arnold’s concept, who in his Touchstone method, has advocated the lines of poetry under consideration for criticism to be compared with the lines of some great classics. This paper compares the concepts of Aristotle, Matthew Arnold, and T.S. Eliot and tries to find out the similarities among the three concepts by putting them in comparison and contrast with one another.
