The Function of Criticism

📖 Overview

• Title: The Function of Criticism

• Author: T. S. Eliot

• Published: 1923 (originally as an essay in The Sacred Wood)

• Genre: Literary Criticism / Essay

• Purpose: To explain what literary criticism should do and what it should avoid

• Main Argument: The critic's role is not to express personal opinions, but to analyze and interpret literature based on understanding and comparison.

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🧠 Main Ideas / Arguments

• Criticism is a secondary activity.
  Eliot argues that creative work (like poetry or fiction) comes first, and criticism follows.

• The true function of criticism is “the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste.”
  That means criticism should:

  • Help readers understand literature

  • Refine and educate public taste

• Criticism should be objective and impersonal.
  Eliot strongly opposes critics who focus too much on personal opinions or emotions.

• Creative and critical faculties are not the same.
  A good poet may not be a good critic, and vice versa.

• Criticism should not aim to promote ideology or moral judgment.
  It should focus on how literature works, not whether it aligns with the critic’s values.

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🔄 Response to Other Critics

• Eliot responds to Matthew Arnold (who wrote The Function of Criticism at the Present Time).

  • Arnold believed criticism should help society by spreading “the best that is known and thought.”

  • Eliot agrees partly, but says Arnold was too vague.

  • Eliot believes criticism should be more technical, scholarly, and precise.

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⚙️ What Makes Good Criticism?

According to Eliot, good criticism should:

1. Explain the meaning and structure of a work

2. Compare it with other works (tradition)

3. Avoid personal bias

4. Focus on the text itself, not the author's life

5. Be clear, precise, and knowledgeable

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✍️ Key Concepts

• Tradition:
  Eliot often emphasizes that writers and critics must be aware of the literary tradition behind a work to judge it properly.

• Impersonality:
  He believes that the critic must put aside personal emotions and judge literature with intellectual detachment.

• Historical Sense:
  Understanding a literary work means understanding its place in literary history.

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💬 Important Quotes

1. “The criticism which alone can much help us is criticism which is directed upon the poetry of the present or the past.”
   – Eliot values criticism rooted in deep literary knowledge, not surface-level commentary.

2. “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.”
   – Focus should be on the work, not the author.

3. “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.”
   – A poet’s work must be seen in relation to past literature (the idea of tradition).

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