Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold
Author: Laurence W. Mazzeno
Publisher: Camden House
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781571132789

Examines the critical reputation of one of the great literary critics. From the publication of The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems in 1849, Matthew Arnold has been a figure of controversy who sparked decidedly strong and divergent opinions -- both about the quality of his artistry and about the ideas he espoused. Not surprisingly, a chronological reading of books and articles focusing on Arnold's writings reveals a century-long civil war among literary scholars. Focusing on studies judged to be most influential in shaping critical opinion of Arnold's poetry and prose, Matthew Arnold: The Critical Legacy explores the interplay between individual critics and Arnold's works, and between one critic and another as they respond to Arnold's writings and the critical commentary. There emerges an appreciation for the key questions that have captured the attention of Arnold's critics for over a hundred years: Was Arnold a first-rate poet, or does he rank below the greatest figures of his century, notably Tennyson and Browning?

Literary Criticism of Matthew Arnold

Literary Criticism of Matthew Arnold
Author: Flemming Olsen
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1782841660

Many of the ideas that appear in Arnold's Preface of 1853 to his collection of poems and in his later essays are suggested in the letters that Arnold wrote to his friend Arthur Hugh Clough. Analysis of the Preface reveals a poet who found a theoretical basis for poetry (by which he means literature in general) in the dramas of the Greek tragedians, particularly Sophocles: action is stressed as an indispensable ingredient, wholes are preferred to parts, the didactic function of literature is promoted -- in short, the Preface reads like the recipe for a classical tragedy. It is a young poet's attempt to establish criteria for what poetry ought to be. He found the Romantic idiom outworn. Literature was, in Arnold's perception, meant to communicate a message rather than impress by its structure or by formal sophistication. Modern theories of coalescence between content and form were outside the contemporary paradigm. T S Eliot's ambivalent attitude to Arnold -- now reluctantly admiring, now decidedly patronizing -- is puzzling. Eliot never seemed able to liberate himself from the influence of Arnold. What in Arnold's critical oeuvre attracted and at the same time repelled Eliot? That question has led to an in-depth analysis of Arnold as a literary critic. This book begins with an examination of Arnold's letters to Clough, where "it all started" and proceeds with a close reading of the 1853 Preface. A look at some of the later literary essays rounds off the picture of Arnold as a literary critic. This work is the result of Reader and Review comments of the author's well received Eliot's Objective Criticism: Tradition or Individual Talent? "Yet he is in some respects the most satisfactory man of letters of his age." -- T S Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism.

Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy
Author: Matthew Arnold
Publisher: BookRix
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2019-06-28
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 3736811152

Culture and Anarchy is a series of essays by Matthew Arnold. According to his view advanced in the book, "Culture is a study of perfection". His often quoted phrase "[culture is] the best which has been thought and said" comes from the Preface to Culture and Anarchy: The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically. The book contains most of the terms - culture, sweetness and light, Barbarian, Philistine, Hebraism, and many others - which are more associated with Arnold's work influence.

Lectures and Essays in Criticism

Lectures and Essays in Criticism
Author: Matthew Arnold
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 598
Release: 1962
Genre: Criticism
ISBN: 9780472116539

The basis of Arnold's high reputation as literary critic

The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time

The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
Author: Robert McCrum
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781903385838

Beginning in 1611 with the King James Bible and ending in 2014 with Elizabeth Kolbert's 'The Sixth Extinction', this extraordinary voyage through the written treasures of our culture examines universally-acclaimed classics such as Pepys' 'Diaries', Charles Darwin's 'The Origin of Species', Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' and a whole host of additional works --