Although he never wrote a novel, T.S. Eliot did write prose. This could come as a surprise to many, who know him and love him for his poetry - bold, radical and representative of the Modernist desire to eschew convention. As a poet, Eliot was tired of the nineteenth-century insistence on realism and long novel; he deals with this theme in his prose as well as broader questions in literature. Written over the course of his many decade career, in which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, his prose draws back the veil on Eliot's life, permitting the reader to perceive afresh this most enigmatic of twentieth-century writers.
His stand-out essay, 'Tradition and the Individual Talent', muses on, as its title implies, the position of the individual writer in relation to tradition. In it, he makes the case that an author's work cannot be viewed in isolation. Instead, it is necessary to compare to it other works by the same author and other works published at a similar time in history, to be able to fully appreciate and critique it. Additionally, Eliot tackles the reality of writing poetry, which he labels 'not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.' This essay has stood the test of time and today represents a key contribution to the field of literary criticism.
Although less well-known, in recent times more critical attention has been paid to the rest of Eliot's essays. In essays on 'Hamlet and his Problems' and authors including Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and John Dryden, Eliot tackles the positions of some of our best-loved characters and writers, revealing his inner thoughts on their dilemmas, contradictions and discrepancies and what makes them canonical figures. In essays including 'The Frontiers of Criticism' and 'Notes towards the definition of Culture', Eliot grapples directly the issue of literary criticism, its function and its worth. A key figure in the school known as 'New Criticism', Eliot contributed to developments in readings and interpretations of texts, emphasizing the importance of viewing a work in the round and the possibility of multiple different interpretations if properly supported by the text.
In spite of the fact that T.S. Eliot is often studied and read as a poet, he contributed significantly to the field of literary criticism during his writing career. Giving us a view of Eliot as the private reader, and not the famous poet, we can better understand his textured and bold poetry because of his prose writing.
