第14页 New Criticism, moral formalism and F. R. Leavis

 T. S. Eliot was central to many of the tendencies so far, and his early essay 'Tradition and the Individual Talent'(1919) has been perhaps the single most influential work in Anglo-American criticism. In it, Eliot does two things in particular: he emphasizes that writers must have 'the historical sense' - that is, a sense of the tradition of writing in which they must situate themselves; and that this process reinforces the necessary 'depersonalization' of the artist if his or her art is to attain the 'impersonality' it must have if it is 'to approach the condition of science'. Famously, he wrote: 'Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.'