Beginning of Essay
T.S. Elliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and Alain Locke's "The Although many of the authors that we have studied this semester saw fit to express what they considered the Modern artist's relationship to tradition should be, two authors stand out becaus ....

Middle of Essay
.... He found that most critics did not really use the word "Except in a phrase of censure…. If otherwise… with the implication…. Of some pleasing archaeological reconstruction" (1405). Critics were in effect using tradition only to describe something quaint and archaic. The problem with this view is that it creates the misconception among the general public that good poetry is not at all related to anything that has been done before, and it must instead be something entirely new to be good. This misconception was especially destructive because it caused people to ignore the influence of great writers of the past upon contemporary ones. Elliot st ....