Values of Formalism in Eliot

Just based on Eliot, the first primary value of formalism that I can notice is a positive stance on reading. Eliot says that

criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism. (NA 1092)

Eliot is simply asserting that when a person reads, they can’t help but to critique what they are reading, to analyze it, to think about it. And when one does think about their reading, it is not a bad thing to think on one’s thoughts in relation to reading. It is fair to conclude that Eliot believes that contemplating what we read and “criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism” (NA1092) is a good thing.

Eliot’s positive opinion of reading differs from the Romantic viewpoint greatly; the Romantics believe just the opposite, in fact. They are quite suspicious of reading, as Emerson’s The American Scholar portrays, and believe that reading is only for inspiration. Any kind of thinking about reading is allowing someone else’s thoughts to pervade one’s own, thus hindering one’s imagination.

Another primary value of formalism that Eliot addresses is that literature is literature. Eliot argues that

[t]he business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all…Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion… (NA 1097)

The poet is not trying to discover more emotions, or even express emotions at all, rather the poet is articulating feelings that are not even within emotions. The poet deliberately escapes from emotion this way, and thus the poet is not expressing his own emotion or using poetry as a medium in which to articulate what he or she is feeling.

This value of formalism differs from the values of the Romantics because the Romantics believe that the poet is indeed trying to express what others cannot, including emotions. The poet tries to express ultimate truth, and uses poetry to get as close to truth as possible, where as for formalists, literature is literature, it is a work of art, and nothing else.