About Author
Matthew Arnold, (born December 24, 1822, Laleham, Middlesex, England—died April 15, 1888, Liverpool), English Victorian poet and literary and social critic, noted especially for his classical attacks on the contemporary tastes and manners of the “Barbarians” (the aristocracy), the “Philistines” (the commercial middle class), and the “Populace.” He became the apostle of “culture” in such works as Culture and Anarchy (1869).Matthew was the eldest son of the renowned Thomas Arnold, who was appointed headmaster of Rugby School in 1828. Matthew entered Rugby (1837) and then attended Oxford as a scholar of Balliol College; there he won the Newdigate Prize with his poem Cromwell (1843) and was graduated with second-class honours in 1844. For Oxford Arnold retained an impassioned affection. His Oxford was the Oxford of John Henry Newman—of Newman just about to be received into the Roman Catholic Church; and although Arnold’s own religious thought, like his father’s, was strongly liberal, Oxford and Newman always remained for him joint symbols of spiritual beauty and culture.In 1847 Arnold became private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, who occupied a high cabinet post during Lord John Russell’s Liberal ministries. And in 1851, in order to secure the income needed for his marriage (June 1851) with Frances Lucy Wightman, he accepted from Lansdowne an appointment as inspector of schools. This was to be his routine occupation until within two years of his death. He engaged in incessant travelling throughout the British provinces and also several times was sent by the government to inquire into the state of education in France, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland. Two of his reports on schools abroad were reprinted as books, and his annual reports on schools at home attracted wide attention, written, as they were, in Arnold’s own urbane and civilized prose.
Matthew Arnold, (born December 24, 1822, Laleham, Middlesex, England—died April 15, 1888, Liverpool), English Victorian poet and literary and social critic, noted especially for his classical attacks on the contemporary tastes and manners of the “Barbarians” (the aristocracy), the “Philistines” (the commercial middle class), and the “Populace.” He became the apostle of “culture” in such works as Culture and Anarchy (1869).Matthew was the eldest son of the renowned Thomas Arnold, who was appointed headmaster of Rugby School in 1828. Matthew entered Rugby (1837) and then attended Oxford as a scholar of Balliol College; there he won the Newdigate Prize with his poem Cromwell (1843) and was graduated with second-class honours in 1844. For Oxford Arnold retained an impassioned affection. His Oxford was the Oxford of John Henry Newman—of Newman just about to be received into the Roman Catholic Church; and although Arnold’s own religious thought, like his father’s, was strongly liberal, Oxford and Newman always remained for him joint symbols of spiritual beauty and culture.In 1847 Arnold became private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, who occupied a high cabinet post during Lord John Russell’s Liberal ministries. And in 1851, in order to secure the income needed for his marriage (June 1851) with Frances Lucy Wightman, he accepted from Lansdowne an appointment as inspector of schools. This was to be his routine occupation until within two years of his death. He engaged in incessant travelling throughout the British provinces and also several times was sent by the government to inquire into the state of education in France, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland. Two of his reports on schools abroad were reprinted as books, and his annual reports on schools at home attracted wide attention, written, as they were, in Arnold’s own urbane and civilized prose.
1. Write about one idea of Matthew
Arnold which you find interesting and relevant in our times.
Arnold says that “Poetry
is a criticism of life”. This definition is very relevant in our present time
also. Whatever writer or a poet write is not simply consider as creative work,
it is also a criticism of nature or life, or anything else from where they got
their subject to write. Arnold also speaks about his main principle of
criticism is that od Disinterestedness or Detachment. We find this great
principal of Arnold relevant in present time also because it speaks about the
fair judgment of a critic.
2.Write about one idea of
Mathew Arnold which you found out of date and irrelevant in our times.
I think Matthew Arnold’s theory of
“Touchstone Method” is out of date and irrelevant in our time. Because Arnold’s
general principal, the “Touchstone Method” introduce scientific objectivity to
critical evaluation by providing comparison and analysis as the two primary
tools for judging individual poets.
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