Eliot effected a similar revolution in literary criticism when The Sacred Wood (1920) was published. He defined the critic's function as "to preserve tradition--where a good tradition exists, ... to see the best work of our time and the best work of twenty-five hundred years ago with the same eyes." Discussing an impressive range of authors, which included Virgil, Dante, the Elizabethans and Jacobeans, the metaphysical poets, Dryden, Milton, Pascal, Baudelaire, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, and Euripides, Eliot tried simultaneously to emphasize the continuity of literary tradition and to avoid personal impressionism in his criticism. His critical impact led to the widespread use of "objective correlative" and "dissociation of sensibility" and ultimately provided the foundations for the New Criticism. Ironically, although Eliot's critical influence was pervasive, he never wrote a sustained volume of criticism, preferring to have collections of his reviews, essays, and lectures published.
Eliot's poetry and criticism form a comparatively meager part of his writing. The poetry he published in his lifetime came to less than 4,000 lines, and his post-1920 criticism either built on the pronouncements of The Sacred Wood, addressed social and theological rather than literary issues, or concerned his growing interest in poetic drama.
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