Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :The Sacred Wood
It is part of the business of the critic to preserve tradition—where a good tradition exists. It is part of his business to see literature steadily and to see it whole; and this is eminently to see it not as consecrated by time, but to see it beyond time; to see the best work of our time and the best work of twenty-five hundred years ago with the same eyes.
Eliot's insights helped inspire the New Criticism movement. Here, he gets at one of the central ideas that would characterize the theory: the critic needs to see literature not as some historical artifact, but as a timeless art. As a bundle of meaning-laden words that can be picked up any place, at any time, and fully appreciated.
For example, we're not supposed to view Hamlet as some antique of the Renaissance, but as one of the best pieces of literature to ever come out of the Western tradition. As Eliot puts it, we need to see the best work—regardless of when and where it came from—"with the same eyes."
Just because you're reading Elizabethan drama doesn't mean you need to wear Tudor-rose colored glasses.
BTW, Eliot was writing before New Criticism was a thing (or even a proper name). But his ideas were super important to starting the movement. The New Critics agreed with Eliot: literary criticism should be all about studying the best works across time, not about getting caught up in what those different times were like.
Why are certain works so great? What makes them last? These were the questions that really lit the New Critics' fires.