Introduction to Literary Criticism & Theory

BS.5TH SEM (Afternoon)

Course Facilitator: Aleena Shahzad

LECTURE 8: MATTHEW ARNOLD

* General Characteristics of Victorian Age

* Emergence of Victorian Criticism
Subject Facilitator: Aleena Shahzad

 
• Victorian writer ,Poet, Critic, Sociologist, Educationist,Thinker of Modern
age
• Received his education at Oxford

• Appointed as inspector of Schools, a position he held until 1886

• He criticizes Victorian Society

• First Volume of Poetry : The Strayed Leveler
• Two Volumes of Essays in Criticism between 1865-1888
• Became Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1858

Matthew Arnold( 1822-1888)

• “ My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement
of mind of the last quarter of the century, and thus they
will probably have their day as people become conscious
to themselves of what that movement of mind is”
(Matthew Arnold)
• “ It might be fairly urged that I have less poetical
sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigor and
abundance than Browning ;yet, because I have more of a
fusion of the two than either of them and have more
regularly applied than fusion to the main line of modern
development”
( Matthew Arnold)
• Social Criticism
• He attacked the taste & manners of 19th century English
Society
• Conflict between Science & Religion
• Spiritual Isolation
• Touch stone Method
• Method of Judging Poetry_ Historical Estimate, Personal
Estimate
• Father of Modern Criticism

Key Highlights of his Criticism

Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! You hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
 The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Stanza : 3
 Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! For the world, this seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling  plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
 

Stanza : 4