Sgt. Pepper and Mr. Eliot

"Alexander ... could place a shift of seam or change of cut in relation to tradition and the individual talent almost as well as he could a verse-form or a vocabulary."


"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) is an essay by poet and literary theorist T. S. Eliot. http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html

While Eliot is most often known for his poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary theory. In this dual role, he acted as poet-critic, comparable to Sir Philip Sidney and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "Tradition and the Individual Talent" formulates Eliot’s influential conception of the relationship between the poet and the literary tradition which precedes him.

Is man no more than this?

"Was it all a considered "statement", as the painter would have said, about accommodated and unaccommodated man?"

Act III, scene iv

KING LEAR

[Why,] thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? Consider him well.

Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume.

Ha! here's three on 's are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself,

unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art.

Off, off, you lendings! Come unbutton here.

Tearing off his clothes

Thomas Cromwell

"Alexander thought, surveying Thomas Cromwell and the mock-soldiers, about the nature of modern parody."

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (c. 1485 – 28 July 1540) was an English statesman who served as King Henry VIII's chief minister from 1532 to 1540.

Thomas Cromwell was one of the patrons of Hans Holbein the Younger, as were Sir Thomas More and Anne Boleyn.

Holbein painted this famous portrait of Cromwell.

The Temple Well Purged?

"... after the iconoclastic excesses under young Edward VI, when angels, Mothers and Children had flared and crackled in the streets, immolated to a logical absolute God who disliked images."

Edward VI of England: Reigned 28 January 1547 – 6 July 1553

During this period, the English Reformation advanced under pressure from two directions: from the traditionalists on the one hand and the zealots on the other, who led incidents of iconoclasm (image-smashing) and complained that reform did not go far enough.

Begging in London

"Some carried brand new Benares begging bowls."

Sand et Sacripant

"Several George Sands, Mesdemoiselles Sacripant, in trousers, frilled shirts, and velvet berets."

An artist's rendering of George Sand (Aurore Dudevant)

Sand and the Proustian character Sacripant were women who dressed as men.

These photos (in male and female attire) are purportedly of the same woman --Odette-- the "original" from whom Proust drew his portrait of "Miss Sacripant."