Ven. Akshay Kamble

hat is a Classic by T.S. Eliot – CRITICAL SUMMARY Introduction and Appreciation ‘What is a classic?’ is the Presidential address delivered by Eliot to the Virgil Society in 1944. It was first published in his volume of essays entitled On Poets and Poetry in 1957. It is a thought-provoking essay in which Eliot expresses his views on the distinguishing features of classic art and literature. The question “What is a classic?” has always been asked since times immemorial, and most varied answers have been given. The word classic has been used merely to mean a “standard author”. It has been used for either Greek and Latin literatures in toto or the greatest authors of these languages. The term “Classic” has also been used as an antithesis to the term “Romantic”. The word would continue to have most varied meanings in varied contexts. But in the present chapter, Eliot is concerned with one particular meaning of the word in one context, his purpose being to show that Virgil alone is a ‘cl