T.S Eliot’s Selected Essays provides a detailed over-view of an idea that eventually changed literary thinking. The book
supplies the reader with many broad and varied examples to enable the reader, despite being well read or not, to gain a more clear understanding on Eliot’s theory. To summarise the book Eliot believes that an author or poet must fully understand his predecessors and think of how their work will fit into the broader view of
literature tradition.
Eliot was originally a philosophy student with his greatest influence being the new ‘humanist’ philosopher Irving Babbit who helped Eliot establish and develop his theories. These theories were relatively ignored but he was in general respected for his important forward thinking. He was still however an American instructing the English what to think, mostly about English writers.
A writer should attempt to become more familiar and through his work show his familiarity to the general public’s emotions whilst bettering the achievements of the last generation. In short, to write better and have readers relate more than writers did before him. The theme of these essays is obviously tradition and whilst the author himself has a clear yet complex opinion of his own of tradition he refers in general to what was tradition to the successful authors of the past.
Eliot relies on ‘Western Classical’ literature to establish his theory of tradition, believing modern writers and critics should read the works from this varied list (from Dante to the Pope) in order for them to write or judge from a more educated point of view. Although sometimes difficult to read, with Eliot’s somewhat indirect style of argument, the authors points are woven into his essays in order to further establish his opinion on the importance of literature tradition and the influence it should hold on future writers.