The historical
sense is the sense of the timeless and the temporal, as well as combination of
both. This sense makes a writer traditional. One, who has the historical sense,
feels the whole of the literature of Europe
from Homer down to his own day. It includes the literature of one’s own country
which forms one continuous literary tradition.
In this regard he
says, “Tradition is not anything fixed and static. It is constantly changing
and becoming different from what it is.” The function of tradition is, the work
of a poet in the present is to be compared and contrasted with work of the past
and judged by the standard of the past. Because the past helps us to understand
the present and the present throws light on past. Thus we can shift tradition
from the individual elements in a given work of art.
