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How Would T.S. Eliot View Social Media?

16 July 2009 | social-media | 2 Comments

T.S. Eliot and Formalism

In the 1910s through the 1960s, British and American writers responded to the literary romanticism by launching the “New Criticism” movement (also known as “Formalism”). Previously, the focus of writing had been on the experience of the piece, the prestige of the author and a variety of philosophical perspectives taken toward writing. With the Formalism movement, authors focused on the culture of the reader and became less concerned with the intention or background of the writer.

Formalists became entranced with readers’ perceptions of written word in various ways depending on what they bring to the table. T.S. Eliot unknowingly inspired (and with his earlier writings was a part of) the Formalist movement. His essay, “Traditions and the Individual Talent” was published in a two part series, “The Egoist” followed by “The Sacred Wood,” focused less on his own personal ideologies and intricately tends to the details of every single passage as they pertain to how a reader will experience them.

T.S. Eliot and Social Media

T.S. Eliot is a complicated case study, but in his earlier works, he proved that text has more extrinsic value than intrinsic value and emphasized the culture of the reader and the importance of the lens with which they read the text. Although his works were in a non-digital time and the medium was different, the Formalists preached the same thing as many social media evangelists- the culture of the reader and how they interpret words is excruciatingly important.

In modern times, most bloggers don’t publish works that are only of interest to themselves and because the online culture is collaborative, most digital writers don’t ignore how their reader will experience their work. If writers today subscribed to the notion of the Romanticist movement, the web would be dominated with writing with the most elevated diction level possible, addressing theories that went over the heads of most (and the writer wouldn’t care because the emphasis would be on their own importance and on their intentions).

How would T.S. Eliot view social media? He wouldn’t likely view social media and blogging as a new concept. Eliot’s “New Criticism” was the start of a movement that is still highly applicable today- modern digital writers focus on the culture of the reader and less on their own importance or intentions.

How to use this analysis:

I spent many years at the University of Texas studying English Literature and the last few years as a digital writer and an early adopter of social media, both giving me invaluable insight into how readers and writers function. What I implore you to take away from this article is that as a digital writer you must examine how your reader will interact with your writing and insure that it is never self-serving as that is a severe violation of the culture of social media. With each article you write, a new reader should be able to pick it up and understand it from start to end, so be sure to limit obscure references, self-serving innuendo and never ignore your reader. Social medians’ emphasis on reader experience is a theory dating back nearly 100 years, just ask T.S. Eliot.

originally published on my personal blog
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2 Comments for this entry

  • John Jones
    July 16th, 2009 on 2:39 pm

    Interesting post. The audience focus you note in Eliot’s theory has a long history in western thought. Early Greek rhetoricians argued for the importance of considering a speech’s audience; in fact, the first step in classical composition was to discover the available means of persuading the audience of one’s argument. Later rhetoricians devoted large chunks of their texts to audience psychology and the techniques for convincing specific audiences of the speaker’s trustworthiness and the validity of the speaker’s claims.

    One traditional criticism of this kind of audience focus is that if the audience is “dumb” or vulgar, than the speaker must stoop to their level and communicate with them in dumb or vulgar ways. Of course, most authors want to avoid this kind of blatant pandering. The trick is to find the fine line between talking down to an audience and, as you note, talking over their heads.

    Thanks again for the post.

  • mischa
    August 20th, 2009 on 7:22 am

    Yes, but what if, say, a blog is used as more of an online journal. A place to put down your thoughts which could be considered self-serving. A place where one does not care if there is an audience listening in? This was an interesting post, as was the comment above, something to think about. Thanks.

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