ABSTRACT
‘When we assume that a literature exists we assume a great deal’, wrote T. S. Eliot in a 1919 review of a history of Scottish literature for The Athenaeum, and proceeded to lay the ground rules for a line of argumentation that led him to answer the question posed by his title, ‘Was There a Scottish Literature?’ in the negative:
We do not suppose merely a ‘history’, for there might be a history of Tamil literature; but a part of History, which for us is the history of Europe. We suppose not merely a corpus of writings in one language, but writings and writers between whom there is a tradition; […] a greater, finer, more positive, more comprehensive mind than the mind of any period.
(1919: 680)