ABSTRACT
Literary criticism in the United States after World War I was in an interesting state of evolution. The movement which made the most noise, that of the new humanists, was the least significant, while all the time the prime mover, T. S. Eliot, worked quietly and forcefully to transform the subject. Eliot's criticism is relevant to the humanists' attack on modern literature, and it tells us a good deal about Eliot's own later critical principles. Eliot’s most permanent literary contribution may have been to put to work with originality and incisiveness in his criticism, as in his poetry, his Vico-like view of literary history, a correlative of his encompassing view of tradition. Without any question, Eliot’s Criterion was the most distinguished literary magazine in English of the period on either side of the Atlantic. Its only rival in the United States was The Dial, which was good, but hardly as good as The Criterion.
