The Sacred Wood (T. S. Eliot) in the context of "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

⭐ In the context of “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” *The Sacred Wood* represents what key aspect of T.S. Eliot’s career?

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⭐ Core Definition: The Sacred Wood (T. S. Eliot)

The Sacred Wood is a collection of 20 essays by T. S. Eliot, first published in 1920. Topics include Eliot's opinions of many literary works and authors, including William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, and the poets Dante Alighieri and William Blake.

One of his most important prose works, "Tradition and the Individual Talent", which was originally published in two parts in The Egoist, is a part of The Sacred Wood. The book also contains the essay "Hamlet and His Problems", in which Eliot first put forward his idea of the objective correlative.

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👉 The Sacred Wood (T. S. Eliot) in the context of Tradition and the Individual Talent

"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) is an essay written by poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot. The essay was first published in The Egoist (1919) and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, The Sacred Wood (1920). The essay is also available in Eliot's Selected Prose and Selected Essays.

While Eliot is most often known for his poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary criticism. In this dual role, he acted as a cultural critic, comparable to Sir Philip Sidney and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is one of the better-known works that Eliot produced in his critic capacity. It formulates Eliot's influential conception of the relationship between the poet and preceding literary traditions.

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The Sacred Wood (T. S. Eliot) in the context of Hamlet and His Problems

"Hamlet and His Problems" is an essay written by T. S. Eliot in 1919 that offers a critical reading of Hamlet. The essay first appeared in Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism in 1920. It was later reprinted by Faber & Faber in 1932 in Selected Essays, 1917-1932. Eliot's critique gained attention partly due to his claim that Hamlet is "most certainly an artistic failure." Eliot also popularised the concept of the objective correlative—a mechanism used to evoke emotion in an audience—in the essay. The essay is also an example of Eliot's use of what became known as new criticism.

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