The sacred wood essays on poetry and criticism. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism by Rachel Teubner 2022-11-16
The sacred wood essays on poetry and criticism
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The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism is a collection of 20 essays written by T.S. Eliot, a prominent figure in modernist poetry and literary criticism. The essays, which were originally published in various literary journals between 1920 and 1922, offer Eliot's insights and analysis on a range of topics related to literature, poetry, and criticism.
One of the key themes that emerges in The Sacred Wood is the importance of tradition in literature. Eliot argues that the works of poets and writers, particularly those of the past, are essential for understanding and appreciating the present. In the essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Eliot writes that "the most individual parts of [a poet's] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." This idea of tradition as a living, breathing entity that informs and shapes the work of poets and writers is central to Eliot's understanding of literature.
Eliot also explores the role of the critic in The Sacred Wood. In the essay "The Function of Criticism," he argues that the critic should be a mediator between the work of art and its audience, helping to "place" the work within a broader historical and cultural context. The critic, according to Eliot, should be a "reader" of the work, not a "judge." This approach to criticism is in contrast to the more traditional view that the critic's role is to pass judgment on the merit of a work.
In addition to these themes, The Sacred Wood also includes essays on specific poets and works of literature. For example, Eliot writes about the poetry of John Donne, the plays of Shakespeare, and the influence of Dante on literature. These essays offer a deeper understanding of Eliot's views on literature and provide insight into his critical approach.
Overall, The Sacred Wood is a thought-provoking and influential collection of essays that offers a unique perspective on literature, poetry, and criticism. It is a must-read for anyone interested in modernist poetry and literary criticism, and its insights and ideas continue to be relevant and meaningful today.
The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism by Rachel Teubner
Everyone should read the essay "Hamlet and His Problems", which discusses the Objective Correlative, Eliot's preferred critical wedge to attack those poets whose literary moods surpass their ability to embody them in dramatic action. Coleridge's remarks-too few and scattered-have permanent truth; but on some of the greatest names he passes no remark, and of some of the best plays was perhaps ignorant or ill-informed. This collection defined the coming-of-age angst of an entire new generation of alienated writers in the twenties and thirties. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. Dramatic form, one might say, is too open today. .
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The sacred wood; essays on poetry and criticism : Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888
Also a lot of good one liners. But at least Marlowe has, in a few words, concentrated him into a statement. At other times- - well who's really that bothered about Swinburne these days? Like all books of literary essays, there is the splitting of differences until nothing is left. The poet does not aim to excite--that is not even a test of his success--but to set something down; the state of the reader is merely that reader's particular mode of perceiving what the poet has caught in words. Excerpt from The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism In the Greece of, Pindar and Sophocles, in the England of Shakespeare, the poet lived in a current of ideas in the highest degree animating and nourish ing to the creative power; society was, in the fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, intelligent and alive; and this state of things is the true basis for the creative power's exercise, in this it finds its data, its materials, truly ready for its hand; all the books and reading in the world are only valuable as they are helps to this.
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The Sacred Wood. Essays on Poetry and Criticism [Seventh ed.]
This is a collection of Eliot's critisism. Generally, what Eliot has to say is interesting if rather academic. The two great followers of Shakespeare, Webster and Tourneur, in their mature work do not borrow from him; he is too close to them to be of use to them in this way. It has there become so identified with the reality that you can no longer say what the idea is. For Eliot, "art never improves," but only changes, and each part of the tradition is constantly being reinterpreted in light of what is added to the whole. And probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. The important critic is the person who is absorbed in the present problems of art, and who wishes to bring the forces of the past to bear upon the solution of these problems.
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The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism by T. S. Eliot
It is one of the greatest merits of Dante's poem that the vision is so nearly complete; it is evidence of this greatness that the significance of any single passage, of any of the passages that are selected as "poetry," is incomplete unless we ourselves apprehend the whole. Although these essays include some interesting general reflections on the nature and role of the critic, they go into rather too much detail to demonstrate just where these particular forgotten people went wrong. Th~ narrowness of the aim makes easier the detection 'of the merit or feebleness of the work ; even of these writers there are very few-so that their " criticism " is of great importance within its limits. Eliot, for proving that point. I r6 THE SACRED WOOD He is now inclined to believe that the ; 1,. Plus, his exhaustive knowledge of earlier literature, part of the secret of his own success, filled me with wonder as to how a former English Literature major could be so ignorant.
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The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism by T.S. Eliot
Poetic drama is not so foreign from the work non-naturalistic plays of Anouilh, Giraudoux, and Brecht, up to Frayn, Stoppard and Kushner today. I do like it but at arms length. But the true mystic is not satisfied merely by feeling, he must pretend at least that he sees, and the absorption into the divine is only the necessary, if paradoxical, limit of this contemplation. This seminal book, Eliot's first collection of literary criticism, appeared in London in 1920, two years before The Waste Land. Chapman borrowed from Seneca; Shakespeare and Webster from Montaigne.
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T. S. Eliot. 1921. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism
Of course, there is a certain d The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays has been in my library for a long time. But compared with Swinburne, Coleridge writes much more as a poet might be expected to write about poets. I harbor a tone of mixed response about this tome, much as I do towards the literary theory of Ezra Pound. While Eliot's writing is unsurprisingly insightful, this theme of re-examination and the tone in which i Originally published on my blog The poetry of the past was extremely important to T. On the contrary, the true generalization is not something superposed upon an accumulation of perceptions; the perceptions do not, in a really appreciative mind, accumulate as a mass, but form themselves as a structure ; and criticism is the statement in language of this structure ; it is a development of sensibility.
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The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism
For there is no other intelligence than this, and so far as artists and men of letters are intelligent we may doubt whether the level of intelligence among men of letters is as high as among men of science their. . We assume the gift of a superior sensibility. His hyperventilating essay on Blake actually made me laugh; his presumption to understand a poet wholly indifferent to Eliot's own concerns, perhaps even hostile to Eliot's notions of poetry and what makes a poem "great. .
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(PDF) Eliot, T. S. 1921. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism
Not to attend, but to give one. Some of the chapters, however, are not about poets at all but critics, people who were no doubt well-known in their day but are not important now. Upon the whole, the two poets are in harmony upon the subject of Massinger ; and although Coleridge has said more in five pages, and said it more clearly, than Swinburne in thirty-nine, the essay of Swinburne is by no means otiose : it is more stimulating than Coleridge's, and the stimulation is never misleading. Coleridge is apt to take leave of the data of criticism, and arouse the suspicion that he has been divertecf into a metaphysical hare-and-hounds. Dryden is -- far more disinterested; he displays much free intelligence ; and yet even Dryden-or any literary critic of the seventeenth century-is not quite a free mind, compared, for instance, with such a mind as Rochefoucauld's.
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The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism by Rachel Teubner
Aristotle had what is called the scientific minda mind which, as it is rarely found among scientists except in fragments, might better be called the intelligent mind. Many of his most famous critical pronouncements come from the pages of The Sacred Wood. It was a different sorta growing up fast, for his coming-of-age coincided with his mid-life crisis. He published his influential early criticism, much of it written as occasional pieces for literary periodicals. I was preparing for my very first university lecture. I call it an amusement, an amusement pour distraire les honnĂȘtes gens not because that is a true definition, but because if you call it anything else you are likely to call it something still more false. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (Classic Reprint)
In most of them, the emphasis is on where earlier critics had gone wrong in their assessments of the significance and stature of the poets. Eliot venerates his wood. Atalanta at Calydon is quite brilliantly done. Even so, there are important ideas to extract from these essays as Eliot sets forth the ideas proper for the critic. He read everything, and he read with the single interest in finding literature. He must simply eludtlate: the reader will form the correct judgment for himself. Alfred Prufrock 1917 , The Waste Land 1922 , The Hollow Men 1925 , and Four Quartets 1945 were considered major achievements of twentieth century Modernist poetry.
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