This paper analyses T. S. Eliot's
essay "Tradition and Individual Talent" and discusses classical and modern
literary theory
as a whole according to T. S. Eliot. It examines the
essay with a focus on Eliot's concepts of modernity which he used in his poetry. It also looks at how "Tradition and Individual Talent" shows some of the furthest reaches of Eliot's theories and
literary philosophy and how he asserts the value of poetic creation as the process by which a whole culture locates itself in the present in relation to an acquired sense of the past.