Matthew+Arnold

[[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Matthew_Arnold_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_16745.jpg caption="Matthew Arnold (Wikimedia Commons)"]]
Matthew Arnold is regarded as one of the most influential poets, sage writers, and critics of the Victorian era (1). The son of Thomas Arnold, the renowned headmaster at England’s influential Rugby School, Matthew led an intellectually engaging childhood (2). In 1828, after relocating with his family from Lalehem on the Thames to Rugby, Warwickshire Arnold had the opportunity to interact with the famous poets Arthur Clough and William Wordsworth. At the age of nine, Arnold was placed under the educational guardianship of his uncle, Reverend John Buckland, with whom he spent a year. But, eventually he returned to continue his educational vows along with his brother, Thomas (2). Enrolling in the Rugby School at age 14, Arnold received his first literary recognition for the publication of his award-winning lyrical poem “Alaric of Rome.” Continuing his education at Balliol College, Oxford, Arnold was the recipient of the Newdigate Prize, an undergraduate English award, for his ode “Cromwell.” In 1844, he graduated from Oxford with a second-class degree in //literae humaniores//. Soon after his graduation, Arnold was briefly employed as a master at the Rugby School before winning a fellowship at Oriel College. In 1851 he received a promotion as a member of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools. It was during his time as a fellow that Arnold wrote the majority of his poetry (3).

In 1849, Arnold published a volume of verse poems entitled "//The Strayed Reveller" and Other Poems// under the pseudonym A. The volume explored the poet’s spiritual choices and relationship between God and nature (2). The collection was harshly criticized and was soon removed from bookstore shelves. Fellow Victorian William Rossetti said that Arnold’s “verse can be read as prose” (4). Later in 1851, Arnold penned his collection //Memorial Verses// as an ode to the fallen poet William Wordsworth. Arnold married in April 1851 and continued to write poetry. He published "//Empedocles on Etna" and Other Poems// in 1852. The poems in that volume dealt with the “crisis of youths” and the need to define a true self (5). Poorly received, it was soon removed from circulation, although two poems, "To Marguerite,” a poem about a long lost poetic muse, and “Tristram and Iseult,” the first modern English re-telling of the classic twelfth-century French romance, remained examples of Arnold’s Romantic poetry (6).

Arnold’s first poetic success soon came with the publication of his collection //Poems: A New Edition// in 1853. Included within this publication is one his most famous poems “The Scholar-Gipsy,” which chronicles the journey of a young Oxford student who abandons his education to join a band of gypsies. The poem marks the beginning of Arnold’s critique of his own desire to “preserve the self from the corrosive world…” (7). Heavily focusing on the trope of man’s psychological journey to find peace within his inner self, the collection represents Arnold’s move towards what can be regarded as a modernist poetic approach (7). While most of Arnold’s poems were published between 1851 and1853, his best-known poetic work remains his 1867 poem, “Dover Beach” (9).

Towards the end of the 1850’s Arnold’s role as a critic began to take predominance over the production of poetry. In reality, Arnold only dedicated a quarter of his life to poetic production. Accompanying his appointment to his position as a Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857 (2), Arnold published a collection of his own lectures on various translations of Homer entitled //On Translating Homer// (10). The collection provided literary criticism through its debasement of modern translations and its promotion of the poetic adaptation and defense of historical writing style of Homer (10). In these lectures, Arnold further relates that many modern translators did not possess the necessary “gifts” to reproduce such historical work (10). Arnold’s advance into prose continued with the release of his 1865 //Essays in Criticism//, where in the chapter titles “Criticism In The Present Time” he depicts an era where literary criticism exists as “spiritual work” that has kept man from self-satisfaction (11). Arnold extended his literary critiques to the social sphere in his 1869 collection of critical essays, //Culture and Anarchy// (12). One of Arnold’s most famous prose works (3), its essays focus around the idea that culture could aid present societal difficulties thanks to its consistent pursuit of perfection. Arnold further discusses that this pursuit of perfection promotes the continued production of new thoughts (13).

In the decade that followed Arnold released more critical works on literary, social, and religious topics, including //Literature And Dogma// (1873) that urges man to remember God “as the Eternal Power” (14). Known by many as the first //modern critic,// Arnold’s work is still widely read among contemporary students (15). Retiring form his post as an educator in 1886, Matthew Arnold died of a sudden heart attack in 1888.

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