Art, Criticism, Virtues

I've always found it odd that Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is so closely connected to New Criticism, since to me it seems to promote historicization and intertextuality. While Eliot considers poetry, I think the fine arts (painting and sculpture mostly) illustrate his argument more apparently. We can't look at modern art (or for that matter any pre- or neo- movements) without considering the tradition to which it was responding (how do we differentiate Mondrian from design, or understand Rothko or Pollack, without a sense of tradition?). Perhaps because language is arguably our most familiar and prevalent form of communication, it is less apparent that we need to look at the language arts within a certain tradition to contextualize/historize. My Derrida references should relent a bit now that the class is over, but Eliot's essay recalled to me Derrida's spectres and disjointed time. Texts do not exist in a self-referential vacuum.

I'm assuming that most of us aren't doing New Criticism in our doctoral work, but just to what extent do we have to look at the tradition in order to do justice to the text? And, of course, what does doing justice to the text mean? Anabelle brings up the issue of canons--what constitutes the tradition? Eliot talks about the poet being a catalyst and that poetry is not personal expression. More often we think of theory/criticism as impersonal. What room is there for the personal in the production and reception of art?

The virtues of an academic profession seems to be many, in terms of teaching and research as practices, or in a more synthesized way, the pursuit of knowledge "for it's own sake," that is, not for any external good (although some academics achieve fame and wealth, I doubt it's their overriding motivation to work). Perhaps we can look at the work of scholarship, the virtuousness of it, in the abandonment of the self to the social need for the advancement of knowledge. Then again, I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I would have probably taken more time to construct this response if I was offered some sort of external good, like getting a good grade, but I would justify that by saying that my desire for the external good of a grade is so I can advance my career to the point where I don't have to worry about external goods and can focus on the internal goods of scholarship--is that what they call tenure?