Matthew arnold essays

Matthew arnold essays

Matthew Arnold's grave at the All Saints Church, Laleham, Surrey. In , Arnold published Essays in Criticism: First Series. Essays in Criticism: Second Series would not appear until November , shortly after his untimely death. In , he published Thyrsis, his elegy to Clough who had died in Culture and Anarchy, Arnold's major workFile Size: 1MB Oct 13,  · Perhaps Arnold’s most famous piece of literary criticism is his essay “The Study of Poetry.” In this work, Arnold is fundamentally concerned with poetry’s “high destiny;” he believes that “mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us” as science and philosophy will eventually prove flimsy and unstable In Matthew Arnold: Arnold as critic early put into currency in Essays in Criticism (First Series, ; Second Series, ) and Culture and Anarchy. The first essay in the volume, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” is an overture announcing briefly most of the themes he developed more fully in later work

The Study of Poetry by Matthew Arnold | Poetry Foundation

Matthew Arnold 24 December — 15 April was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnoldthe celebrated headmaster of Rugby Schoolmatthew arnold essays, and brother to both Tom Arnoldliterary professor, and William Delafield Arnoldnovelist and colonial matthew arnold essays. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a sage writera type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues.

He was the eldest son of Thomas Arnold and his wife Mary Penrose Arnold —born on 24 December at Laleham-on-ThamesMiddlesex. Inmatthew arnold essays, Thomas Arnold was appointed Headmaster of Rugby Schoolwhere the family took up residence, that year.

FromArnold was tutored by his clerical uncle, matthew arnold essays, John Buckland, in Laleham. Inthe Arnolds occupied a holiday home, Fox How, in the Lake District. There William Wordsworth was a neighbour and close friend. InArnold was sent to Winchester Collegebut in he returned to Rugby School.

He moved to the sixth form in and so came under the direct tutelage of his father, matthew arnold essays.

He wrote verse for a family magazine, and won school prizes, His prize poem, "Alaric at Rome", was printed at Rugby. In Novemberaged 17, Arnold matriculated at Balliol College, Oxfordwhere in he won an open scholarship, graduating B.

in He attended John Henry Newman 's sermons at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin but did not join the Oxford Movement. His father died suddenly of heart disease inmatthew arnold essays Fox How became the family's permanent residence.

His poem Cromwell won the Newdigate prize. Inafter a short interlude of teaching at Rugby, Arnold was elected Fellow of Oriel CollegeOxford, matthew arnold essays. Inmatthew arnold essays, he became Private Secretary to Lord LansdowneLord President of the Council. Inhe published his first book of poetry, The Strayed Reveller, matthew arnold essays. In Wordsworth died; Arnold published his "Memorial Verses" on the older poet in Fraser's Magazine. Wishing to marry but unable to support a family on the wages of a private secretary, Arnold sought the position of and was appointed in April one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools.

Two months later, he married Frances Lucy, daughter of Sir William WightmanJustice of the Queen's Bench. Arnold often described his duties as a school inspector as "drudgery" although "at other times he acknowledged the benefit of regular work. He spent many dreary hours during the s in railway waiting-rooms and small-town hotels, and longer hours still in listening to children reciting their lessons and parents reciting their grievances.

But that also meant that he, among the first generation of the railway age, travelled across more of England than any man of letters had ever done. Although his duties were later confined to a smaller area, Arnold knew the society of provincial England better matthew arnold essays most of the metropolitan authors and politicians of the day, matthew arnold essays. InArnold published his second volume of poems, Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems, matthew arnold essays.

Inhe published Poems: A New Editiona selection from the two earlier volumes famously excluding Empedocles on Etnabut adding new poems, Sohrab and Rustum and The Scholar Gipsy. InPoems: Second Series appeared; also a selection, it included the new poem, Balder Dead. Arnold was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford inand he was the first in this position to deliver his lectures in English matthew arnold essays than in Latin. On Translating Homer and the initial thoughts that Arnold would transform into Culture and Anarchy were among the fruits of the Oxford lectures.

Inhe conducted the matthew arnold essays of three trips to the continent at the behest of parliament to study European educational practices, matthew arnold essays. He self-published The Popular Education of Francethe introduction to which was later published under matthew arnold essays title Democracy InArnold published Essays in Criticism: First Series, matthew arnold essays. Essays in Criticism: Second Series would not appear until Novembershortly after his untimely death.

Inhe published Thyrsishis elegy to Clough who had died in Culture and AnarchyArnold's major work in social criticism and one of the few pieces of his prose work currently in print was published in Literature and DogmaArnold's major work in religious criticism appeared in In andArnold toured the United States and Canada [10] delivering lectures on education, democracy and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He was elected a Matthew arnold essays Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in An edition of Poems by Matthew Arnoldwith an introduction by A. Benson and illustrations by Henry Ospovatmatthew arnold essays, was published in by John Lane.

Arnold died suddenly in of heart failure whilst running to meet a train that would have taken him to the Liverpool Landing Stage to see his daughter, who was visiting from the United States where she had moved after marrying an American.

He was survived by his wife, who died in June Russell in Portraits of the Seventiesis "a man of the world entirely free from worldliness and a man of letters without the faintest trace of pedantry ".

He read constantly, widely, and deeply, and in the intervals of supporting himself and his family by the quiet drudgery of school inspecting, filled notebook after notebook with meditations of an almost monastic tone, matthew arnold essays. In his writings, matthew arnold essays often baffled and sometimes annoyed his contemporaries by the apparent contradiction between his urbane, even frivolous manner in controversy, and the "high seriousness" of his critical views and the melancholy, matthew arnold essays, almost plaintive note of much of his poetry.

Warren's description of him. Arnold is sometimes called the third great Victorian poet, along with Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. In an matthew arnold essays to his mother, he wrote:.

My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the matthew arnold essays quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary productions which reflect it.

It might be fairly matthew arnold essays that I have matthew arnold essays poetical sentiment than Tennyson and matthew arnold essays intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning; yet because I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two than either of them, matthew arnold essays, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn as they have had theirs.

Stefan Collini regards this as "an exceptionally frank, but not unjust, matthew arnold essays, self-assessment.

Arnold's poetry continues to have scholarly attention lavished upon it, in part because it seems to furnish such striking evidence for several central aspects of the intellectual history of the nineteenth century, especially the corrosion of 'Faith' by 'Doubt'.

No poet, presumably, would wish to be summoned by later ages merely as an historical witness, but the sheer intellectual grasp of Arnold's verse renders it peculiarly liable to this treatment. Harold Bloom echoes Arnold's self-characterization in his introduction as series editor to the Modern Critical Views volume on Arnold: "Arnold got into his poetry what Tennyson and Browning scarcely needed but absorbed matthew arnold essaysmatthew arnold essays, the main march of mind of his time.

Whatever his achievement as a critic of literature, society, or religion, his work as matthew arnold essays poet may not merit the reputation it has continued to hold in the twentieth century.

Arnold is, at his best, a very good but highly derivative poet. As with Tennyson, Hopkins, and Rossetti, Arnold's dominant precursor was Keatsbut this is an unhappy puzzle, since Arnold unlike the others professed not to admire Keats greatly, while writing his own elegiac poems in a diction, meter, matthew arnold essays, imagistic procedure, that are embarrassingly close to Keats.

Sir Edmund Chambers noted that "in a comparison between the best works of Matthew Arnold and that of his six greatest contemporaries the proportion of work which endures is greater in the case of Matthew Arnold than in any one of them. its simplicity, lucidity, and straightforwardness; its literalness His literary career — leaving out the two prize poems — had begun in with the publication of The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems by A.

It matthew arnold essays what is perhaps Arnold's most purely poetical poem, matthew arnold essays, "The Forsaken Merman.

In he published his tragedy of Merope, calculated, he wrote to a friend, "rather to inaugurate my Professorship with dignity than to move deeply the present race of humans," and chiefly remarkable for some experiments in unusual — and unsuccessful — metres. His poem, " Dover Beach ," depicted a nightmarish world from which the old religious verities have receded. It is sometimes held up as an early, if not the first, example of the modern sensibility. In a famous preface to a selection of the poems of William WordsworthArnold identified, a little ironically, as a "Wordsworthian.

Arnold's poem, "Dover Beach" was included in Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheitand is also featured prominently in the novel Saturday by Ian McEwan. It has also been quoted or alluded to in a variety of other contexts see Dover Beach. Henry James wrote that Matthew Arnold's poetry will appeal to those who "like their pleasures rare" and who like to hear the poet "taking breath. Assessing the importance of Arnold's prose work inStefan Collini stated, "for reasons to do with our own cultural preoccupations as much as with the merits of his writing, the best of his prose has a claim on us today that cannot be matched by his poetry.

George Watson follows George Saintsbury in dividing Arnold's career as a prose writer into three phases: 1 early literary criticism that begins with his preface to the edition of his poems and ends with the first series of Essays in Criticism ; 2 a prolonged middle period overlapping the first and third phases characterised by social, political and religious writing roughly — ; 3 a return to literary criticism with the selecting and editing of collections of Wordsworth's and Byron's poetry and the second series of Essays in Criticism.

More recent writers, such as Collini, have shown a greater interest in his social writing, [25] while over the years a significant second tier of criticism has focused on Arnold's religious writing. Selections from the Prose Work of Matthew Arnold [28]. Arnold's work as a literary critic began with the "Preface to the Poems". In it, he attempted to explain his extreme act of self-censorship in excluding the dramatic poem "Empedocles on Etna".

With its emphasis on the importance of subject in poetry, on "clearness of arrangement, rigor of development, simplicity of style" learned from the Greeks, matthew arnold essays, and in the strong imprint of Goethe and Wordsworth, matthew arnold essays, may be observed nearly all the essential elements in his critical theory.

George Watson described the preface, written by the thirty-one-year-old Arnold, as "oddly stiff and graceless when we think of the elegance of his later prose. Criticism began to take first place in Arnold's writing with his appointment in to the professorship of poetry at Oxford, matthew arnold essays, which he held for two successive terms of five years.

In his lectures On Translating Homer were published, to be followed in by Last Words on Translating Homer. Especially characteristic, both of his defects and his qualities, are on the one hand, Arnold's unconvincing advocacy of English hexameters and his creation of a kind of literary absolute in the "grand style," and, matthew arnold essays, on the other, his keen feeling of the need for a disinterested and intelligent criticism in England, matthew arnold essays.

Although Arnold's poetry received only mixed reviews and attention during his lifetime, his forays into literary criticism were more successful. Arnold is famous for introducing a methodology of literary criticism somewhere between the historicist approach common to many critics at the time and the personal essay; he often moved quickly and easily from literary subjects to political and social issues.

His Essays in Criticism, remains a significant influence on critics to this day, and his prefatory essay to that collection, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", matthew arnold essays, is one of the most influential essays written on the role of the critic in identifying and elevating literature — even while admitting, "The critical power is of lower rank than the creative.

He considered the most important criteria used to judge the value of a poem were "high truth" and "high seriousness". By this standard, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales did not merit Arnold's approval. Further, Arnold thought the works that had been proven to possess both "high truth" and "high seriousness", such as those of Shakespeare and Milton, could be used as a basis of comparison to determine the merit of other works of poetry. He also sought for literary criticism to remain disinterested, and said that the appreciation should be of "the object as in itself it really is.

He was led on from literary criticism to a more general critique of the spirit of his age, matthew arnold essays. Between and he wrote Culture and Anarchymatthew arnold essays for the term he popularised for the middle class of the English Victorian era population: " Philistines ", a word which derives its modern cultural meaning in English — the German-language usage was well established from him.

Culture and Anarchy is also famous for its popularisation of the phrase " sweetness and light ," first coined by Jonathan Swift. In Culture and Anarchy matthew arnold essays, Arnold identifies himself as a Liberal and "a believer in culture" and takes up what historian Richard Bellamy calls the "broadly Gladstonian effort to transform the Liberal Party into a vehicle of political moralism.

Many subsequent critics such as Edward AlexanderLionel TrillingGeorge Scialabbaand Russell Jacoby have emphasized the liberal character of Arnold's thought. Kahan places Arnold's critique of middle-class philistinism, materialism, and mediocrity within the tradition of 'aristocratic liberalism' as exemplified by liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville.

Arnold's "want of logic and thoroughness of thought" as noted by John M. Robertson in Modern Humanists was an aspect of the inconsistency of which Arnold was accused, matthew arnold essays. Arnold must be added; the son's fundamental likeness to the father was early pointed out by Swinburneand was later attested by Matthew Arnold's grandson, Mr. Arnold Whitridge.

Matthew Arnold

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Mixed Essays : Matthew Arnold : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Oct 13,  · Perhaps Arnold’s most famous piece of literary criticism is his essay “The Study of Poetry.” In this work, Arnold is fundamentally concerned with poetry’s “high destiny;” he believes that “mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us” as science and philosophy will eventually prove flimsy and unstable Oct 26,  · Essays and criticism on Matthew Arnold - Critical Essays. Last Updated on October 26, , by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: T. B. Smart, Bibl. of Matthew Arnold, An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon