what is literature without tradition?

Eliot’s essay Tradition and the Individual Talent is an interesting read that brings into light a number of critical points. As it heads up the title of the essay, the idea of tradition in it’s relation to literature exists as the heart of the essay, keeping the blood pumping to all the other points. Eliot stresses that if the artist cannot evolve or create within the proper realms of tradition, which Eliot spends the course of the essay defining, then the artist will not produce a praiseworthy result.
Eliot rejects the common focus that when an artist’s work is unique, unlike anything before it, it is then remarkable. He states that “we dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavor to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those...