The Concept of Tradition: its Progress and Potential*

Abstract

This chapter argues that the remnants of idealism still to be seen in Tradition and the Individual Talent are replaced in Eliot’s later work by a thoroughgoing historical and material concept of tradition and its related notion prejudice, both of which escape the usual labels of liberal or conservative. There are several reasons why Eliot’s view of tradition is so widely misunderstood and so easily misrepresented as mere conservatism. The chapter provides a better understanding of Eliot’s conception of tradition by tracing its development. As the inherent flexibility of Eliot’s concept of tradition is considerably contradicted and concealed by its metaphorical portrayal in terms of monuments and timeless orders, so the role of criticism in tradition is overshadowed by the suggestion that within the literary past which includes both bad and good, there is embedded an ‘ideal order’, ‘main current’, or essence of tradition which is wholly good and calls for no criticism.