Poetic tradition
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{{short description, Poet or author is evaluated in the context of the historical period in which they live and write Poetic tradition is a concept similar to that of the poetic or
literary canon The term canon derives from the Greek (), meaning "rule", and thence via Latin (language), Latin and Old French into English. The concept in English usage is very broad: in a general sense it refers to being one (adjectival) or a group (noun) of ...
(a body of works of significant
literary merit Artistic merit is the artistic quality or value of any given work of art, music, film, literature, sculpture or painting. Obscenity and literary merit The 1921 US trial of James Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'' concerned the publication of the ''Nausi ...
, instrumental in shaping Western culture and modes of thought). The concept of poetic tradition has been commonly used as a part of historical literary criticism, in which a poet or author is evaluated in the context of his historical period, his immediate literary influences or predecessors, and his literary contemporaries. T. S. Eliot claimed in '' Tradition and the Individual Talent'', published in 1919, that for a poet to fully come into his own, he must be aware of his predecessors, and view the work of his predecessors as living, not dead. The poetic tradition is a line of descent of poets who have achieved a sublime state and can surrender themselves to their work to create a poem that both builds on existing tradition and stands on its own. The necessity of a poet to be aware of his place in relation to his poem and to his tradition, to surrender himself to his work and to the great masters preceding him, is revisited by
Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...
in his 1973 work, ''
The Anxiety of Influence ''The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry'' is a 1973 book by Harold Bloom. It was the first in a series of books that advanced a new "revisionary" or antithetical approach to literary criticism. Bloom's central thesis is that poets are hin ...
''. Bloom argued that each and every “great poet” must struggle with and overcome the anxiety of weakly imitating his predecessor poets. Bloom grounded his arguments on the work of
Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
(notably ''Genealogy of Morals'') and
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
, though he disagrees with the tendency of both authors to “over-idealize the imagination.” To Bloom, a poetic tradition is a tradition of creative misreading, with each upcoming poet clearing a space in the poetic tradition for himself or herself by alleging some inconsistency, or mistake, or insufficient progress on the part of his or her predecessor(s). He cites multiple examples in this work and in his other work on the same topic, ''A Map of Misreading'', published in 1975. One of these is the multiplicity of misreadings by poets and critics—including T. S. Eliot,
Northrop Frye Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Frye gained international fame with his first book, '' Fearful Symmet ...
, and
Percy Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achie ...
—of
Milton Milton may refer to: Names * Milton (surname), a surname (and list of people with that surname) ** John Milton (1608–1674), English poet * Milton (given name) ** Milton Friedman (1912–2006), Nobel laureate in Economics, author of '' Free t ...
’s epic poems, ''
Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse (poetry), verse. A second edition fo ...
'' and ''
Paradise Regained ''Paradise Regained'' is a poem by English poet John Milton, first published in 1671. The volume in which it appeared also contained the poet's closet drama ''Samson Agonistes''. ''Paradise Regained'' is connected by name to his earlier and m ...
''. Poetic tradition remains a problematic concept, subject to the same flaws as the poetic canon. One such flaw is the issue of marginalized groups, or subsets of the population, including female writers and writers of a non-Anglo-Saxon ethnicity or tradition.
Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...
addressed the question of a woman’s place in poetic tradition in ''A Room of One’s Own'', asserting that, to produce artistic works, a woman (or indeed any poet) required personal space, financial support, and literary freedom. Woolf saw a place for women writers in the literary canon, but did not see a supporting system in place for women to use to get there. Notably, Bloom sees the development of a literary tradition as a primarily male-male struggle between father and son, referring several times to the myth of Oedipus. Literary tradition was also called into question for being almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon by
Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe (; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as the dominant figure of modern African literature. His first novel and ''magnum opus'', ''Things Fall Apart'' (1958), occupies ...
, who criticized
Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in t ...
’s canonical novella, ''
Heart of Darkness ''Heart of Darkness'' (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel ...
'', for its racist images and attitudes in his 1975 essay, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Achebe advocated a less subjective study of literary tradition through the accommodation of critical and creative works representing opposing viewpoints. The idea of a poetic tradition is an inherently problematic one, for while it is not so difficult to agree on who should be included in the line of poets that constitute a poetic canon, it is extremely difficult to divine what relation they bear to each other, and how to read their works.


Sources

* Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” ''The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism''. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. * Bloom, Harold. ''A Map of Misreading''. NY: Oxford University Press, 1975. * Bloom, Harold. ''Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. * Bloom, Harold. ''The Anxiety of Influence''. NY: Oxford University Press, 1973. * Eliot, T. S. ''On Poetry and Poets''. London: Faber and Faber, 1957. * Eliot, T. S. ''The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism''. London: Methuen, 1950. * Eliot, T. S. “ Tradition and the individual talent.” ''The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism''. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. * Freud, Sigmund. ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle''. Trans. James Strachey. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975. * Nietzsche, Friedrich. ''On the Genealogy of Morals''. Trans. Ian Johnston. 15 May 2006.
Poetic tradition webpage
* Woolf, Virginia. ''A Room of One’s Own''. NY: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1929. Poetry