Abstract
“Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) is T. S. Eliot's expression of his poetics of impersonality, a spirited rejection of romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. But could Eliot's modernist essay be derived in part from what he presents as the unremittingly “emotional” philosophy of Schopenhauer? Section 51 of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation I (1818) presents a metaphor resoundingly familiar to modern readers: the chemistry of verse-writing. A closer examination of “Tradition” and “Hamlet and his Problems” (1919) betrays Schopenhauer's unacknowledged role in Eliot's dictums of impersonal emotion and the “objective correlative.”
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 527-537 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Philosophy and Literature |
Volume | 39 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2015 |
Bibliographical note
© 2016 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Philosophy and Literature, Volume 39, Issue 2, October, 2015, pages 527-537.Fingerprint
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Aakanksha Virkar
- School of Humanities and Social Science - Senior Lecturer
- Centre for Design History
Person: Academic