Matthew Arnold: A Survey of His Poetry and Prose

219 Pages·1971·20.72 MB·English

by  Douglas Bush (auth.)

Matthew Arnold
MASTERS OF WORLD LITERATURE
PUBLISHED:
GEORGE ELIOT by Walter Allen
COLERIDGE by Walter Jackson Bate
MATTHEW ARNOLD by Douglas Bush
JOHN KEATS by Douglas Bush
JOHN MILTON by Douglas Bush
JONATHAN SWIFT by Nigel Dennis
DANTE by Francis Fergusson
STENDHAL by Wallace Fowlie
THOMAS HARDY by Irving Howe
HONORE DE BALZAC by E. ]. Oliver
GOLDSMITH by Ricardo Quintana
IN PREPARATION:
PROUST by William Barrett
FLAUBERT by Jacques Barzun
T.S. ELIOT by Bernard Bergonzi
SAMUEL JOHNSON by ]ames L. Clifford
ffiSEN by Harold Clurman
EUGENE o'NEILL l:iy Harold Clurman
EMILY DICKINSON by ]. V. Cunningham
YEATS by F. W. Dupee
JOYCE by LeonEdel
CONRAD by Elizabeth Hardwick
EMERSON by Alfred Kazin
SHAKESPEARE by Frank Kermode
JANE AUSTEN by Louis Kronenberger
POE by Dwight Macdonald
VIRGINIA WOOLF by Howard Moss
FIELDING by Midge Podhoretz
HENRY JAMES by Richard Poirier
TOLSTOY by Philip Rahv
TENNYSON by Christopher Ricks
MELVILLE by Harold Rosenberg
BEN JONSON by Raymond Rosenthal
WORDSWORTH by Lionel Trilling
MASTERS OF WORLD LITERATURE SERIES
LOUIS KRONENBERGER, GENERAL EDITOR
Matthew Arnold
cA Survey of His Poetry and Prose
DOUGLAS BUSH
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
©The Macmillan Company 1971
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1971
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.
First published in the United States of America 1971
First published in the United Kingdom 1971
Published 1971 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New Y ark Toronto
Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
Library of Congress catalog card no. 72-144817
SBN 333 13392 7
ISBN 978-1-349-01436-1 ISBN 978-1-349-01434-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01434-7
To Hazel
Contents
PREFACE ix
ABBREVIATIONS xi
INTRODUCTION xiii
I Life 1
II Poetry 20
1. Arnold's Early Critical Theories 20
2. Themes and Ideas 31
POETRY AND THE POET 34
38
THE LOSS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH
NATURE 42
46
FEELING AND REASON: YOUTH AND AGE
POEMS OF AFFIRMATION 66
3· Poetic Craftsmanship 72
III Literary Criticism 85
IV Education, Society, and Politics 134
v Religion 169
187
CONCLUSION
189
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
19.'3
INDEX
Preface
A SHORT SURVEY of Arnold's writings in several areas is necessarily
limited to some main lines and attitudes and must forgo the am
plitude of exposition that he deserves-and has had in larger
general and special studies. Also, in such a book, it seems best to
avoid spacious generalities about his variegated and complex
world, to stick closely to his own utterances, and to try, so far as
one can, to see him as in himself he really is.
During recent decades Arnold's poetry and prose have re
ceived a large and rapidly increasing amount of enlightened and
enlightening criticism, from which of course this book has prof
ited. Some books are listed at the end and some books and arti
cles are recorded in footnotes; many other substantial things
could not be mentioned, since in a sketch of this kind a river of
text (to use Arnold's favorite poetic image) must not pursue a
sluggish course through "a blacker, incessanter line" of notes. One
primary debt is owed to Kenneth Allott's edition of the poems
and R. H. Super's edition, not yet completed, of the prose works.
(If, by the way, some readers are annoyed by the references
given f01 quotations, others may not be; one can spend hours
hunting f0r a desired item and its context.)
I am obliged, for permission to quote, to the following pub
lishers and authors:
The Columbia University Press and Lionel Trilling for quotations
from his Matthew Arnold;
Frederick Crews, The New York Review of Books, and Winthrop
Publishers, Inc., for quotations from "Anaesthetic Criticism: II"
ix
X PREFACE
(New York Review of Books, March 12, 1970; repr. in Psychoanalysis
& Literary Process, Winthrop Publishers, 1970};
Faber and Faber Ltd. and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. for
quotations from T. S. Eliot's Selected Essays;
The Harvard University Press for quotations from T. S. Eliot's The
Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism and from Essays, Letters, and
Reviews by Matthew Arnold, Collected and Edited by Fraser Neiman;
Longmans, Green & Company for the use of The Poems of Matthew
Arnold, ed. Kenneth Allott;
The University of Michigan Press for the use of The Prose Works
of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super;
The Oxford University Press and the Clarendon Press for quota
tions from The Letters of Matthew Arnold to Arthur Hugh Clough,
ed. H. F. Lowry, and The Correspondence of Arthur Hugh Clough,
ed. F. L. Mulhauser;
St. John's College, Oxford, and the Hogarth Press for an extract
from Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies, translated and edited by
J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender;
The Viking Press for quotations from Lionel Trilling's Beyond Cul
ture;
The Yale University Press for quotations from Unpublished Letters
of Matthew Arnold, ed. Arnold Whitridge, and Rene Wellek's History
of Modern Criticism, vol. IV.
Finally, I may once again return thanks to Louis Kronenberger,
most amiable and encouraging of general editors.
D.B.
Abbreviations
Allott =The Poems of Matthew Arnold, ed. Kenneth Allott. London:
Longmans, Green; New York: Bames & Noble, 1965.
Culler = A. Dwight Culler, Imaginative Reason: The Poetry of Mat
thew Arnold. New Haven E.nd London: Yale University Press,
1966.
Lowry= The Letters of Matthew Arnold to Arthur Hugh Clough, ed.
Howard F. Lowry. London and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1932.
Neiman = Essays, Letters, and Reviews by Matthew Arnold, Col
lected and Edited by Fraser Neiman. Cambridge, Mass.: Har
vard University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1960.
Russell= Letters of Matthew Arnold 1848-1888, Collected and Ar
ranged by George W. E. Russell. z v. New York and London:
Macmillan, 1895. This collection was issued in editions with dif
ferent pagination.
Super= The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H.
Super, in progress. Vols. 1-6, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 196o-68.
Whitridge = Unpublished Letters of Matthew Arnold, ed. Amold
Whitridge. New Haven: Yale University Press; London: Oxford
University Press, 1923.
xi