Mathew Arnold Mathew Arnold was a great poet

Mathew Arnold

• Mathew Arnold was a great poet , prose writer and critic he belonged to the nineteenth century English literature • Mathew Arnold the most influential of the victorion critics has been characterized by David Daiches as ”the great modern critic” • The title was well deserved as Arnolds time has mainly adopted his method and outlook , in fact Arnold stays within the classical tradition and therefore shares an essential bias in their approach to criticism

• Arnold deplored the lack of firm authority and centrality of excellence in the literature of their age and within their criticism each has sought to establish critical standards which would be valid independent of time and space

• Arnold fought against the romantic theory of criticism with its emphasis on the mind of the poet and the psychological patterns which prevail in the given work and stressed the need to see the esthetic object as a thing independent of the mind of its creator

• Arnold influenced not only T. S. Eliot but a number of other twentieth century critics among whom Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, F. R. Leavis and Lionel Triling stand out

• Triling says “if we look for the reason of Arnold’s continuing importance we are not likely to find it in his talent alone, great as these are, but rather in the power of the traditions which he consciously under took to continue and transmit. For our times in England America Arnold is the continuator and transmitter of humanism”

• Arnold turned criticism after having first tried his hand at poetry , in a way his criticism as a reaction against his poetical practice. As a poet he was always torn between his romantic impulse and his classical tradition • Though a romantic at heart he turned his back completely on the romantic theory of poetry nor did he subscribed to the view that poetry was rhe expression of the state of one”s own mind in figurative language

• He believed like Aristotle that the fit subject for poetry was action. It was to combat this tendency namely the lack of action and a morbid preoccupation with thought that he launched his critical manifesto in 1853

• Arnold’s criticism measures the distance between his ambition as a poet and his performance. A poet in tradition of Keats he seeks in his prose to extricate himself from the romantic tradition he both loves and despise • Nothing in the history of criticism is more familiar than the spectacle of a poet turning in early middle age to justify his achievements and rationalize his failures as Dryden has done or Baudelaire and Eliot to explore in prose notions for which as poets they felt themselves unready

• His criticism begin in hostile spirit and in self disgust and his attack upon the rejected Empedocles in the 1853 preface upon it subjectivity and its lack of action is not much less than an attack upon the whole of his brief career as a poet

His Critical Works • His poetical career came to an end in 1867 , he devoted the remaining twenty years of his life to criticism • In 1857 he was elected to the chair of poetry at oxford which offered him an advantageous and honorable position to develop his critical powers • It was during this period that he delivered a series of lectures which formed the bulk of his literary criticism

• His chief critical works include his three lectures On translating Homer 1861, lectures on the study of celtic literature 1867 and the two series of essays on criticism 1865, 1888 and various articles contributed to different periodicals

Essay in Criticism • Two volumes of essay in criticism are the best known of Arnold’s critical works • The first two essays “the function of the criticism at the present times” and “the influence of academies “ soberly treats the main ideas already expressed in the preface of 1853

• Arnold declares the rule for english criticism mainly summed up in one word: disinterestedness • Arnold elaborates the term disinterestedness and explains that it can be shown by keeping aloof from what is called the practical view of things

• The criticism of literature must not be prejudiced by any tradition of religion and politics or even personal likes and dislikes. • It should not be conditioned by any caprice waywardness or provinciality • I wish to decide he declares nothing of my own authority the great art of criticism is to get oneself out of the way and to let humanity decide only thus can criticism be of any value to society

• Criticism in order to be first trait must be free from the practical view of things, by the practical view Arnold means the view distorted by irrelevant considerations. He advises the reader “to try and approach truth on one side after another , not to strive or cry, not to persist in pressing forward on any one side, with violence and self will, it is only thus, it seems to me , that mortals may hope to gain any vision of the mysterious goddess, whom we shall never see except in outline , but only thus even in outline. ”

• In the essay on the literary influence of academies Arnold criticizes the provincial spirit. The provincial spirit he argues exaggerates the vales of its ideas for want of a high standard at hand by which to try them so we get the eruptive and digressive manner in literature the former prevails most in our criticism the later in our newspaper.

• For, not having the lucidity of a large and centrally placed intelligence the provincial spirit has not its graciousness it does not persuade it makes war it has no urbanity of the center the tone which always aims at spiritual and intellectual effect and not excluding the use of banter it never disjoins banter itself from politeness.

• Arnold was not a scientific critic. He was much of a moralist he thinks too much of the uses of literature and too little of its pleasures he attaches too much importance to taste and too little to relish it is horrible to see him sometimes tasting without swallowing • There is a tendency in him to call no man a poet unless he has been baptized he took literature as a part of church service

• Poetry of revolt against moral ideas was a poetry for him of revolt against life all this seriously offence the modern mind • He was not a great scholar and much less a linguist. Placed against Dr Jhonson or coleridge he was unlearned He embarks upon criticizing authors and languages he does not understand

• His critical methods are also very doubtful he made a lot of fuss about disinterestedness but is doubtful if he himself was ever a disinterested critic • His obsession with high seriousness makes him a dogmatic critic