Posted by bo crouch on July 30, 19100 at 13:58:22:

In Reply to: eliot posted by bo crouch on July 30, 19100 at 13:47:10:

: : In the next 2 or 3 days I need info about Eliot's motivation in writing this work. I need background why he wanted to "extinguish the personality of the author" and on the development of New Criticism in general.

The new criticim, I think, was an attempt to establish "art" on a unique footing, since the participants and fans felt like they were slowly being squeezed out culturally (which they were).
One does not evaluate art according to moral or political standards but rather on artistic standards. The new critics were earnest aesthetes. Eliot wanted to establish the importance of poetry (and the arts). He had a theory about the "primitive" consciousness that he had picked up from anthropologists of the time.
The artist carries within his unconscious the wisdom of the ancient past, but he doesn't know it. He can only articulate it through art. Thus Eliot's endorsement of Housman's view that art is more like a "secretion" than anything else.

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