Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold (born December 24, 1822 in Laleham , Middlesex , † April 15, 1888 in Liverpool ) was an English poet and cultural critic .

Life

Origin and education

Matthew Arnold was the eldest son of the well-known educator Dr. Thomas Arnold , the head of the rugby school . He attended since 1837, the Rugby School and then studied at Balliol College of Oxford University . With his early poetry he won several prizes, for example in 1843 for the poem " Cromwell ". In Oxford , where he felt particularly comfortable and was soon considered a kind of dandy and "society lion", he was friends with the later Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman . His enthusiasm for French culture also became apparent early on, which was rather unusual for a Briton of the time. Arnold graduated in 1844.

From 1847 he was the private secretary of the influential politician Lord Lansdowne. In 1851 Arnold married Frances Lucy Wightman, daughter of a judge. Through Lansdowne's mediation, he got a job as a school inspector in the same year. In the following years Arnold traveled a lot professionally, visiting France, the Netherlands , Switzerland and Germany to study the higher education institutions there. He also published two books on this subject that were widely regarded at the time. He worked in this position almost until the end of his life. Arnold also visited the USA , now famous, later; however - " Denver is not yet ready for Mr. Arnold, " as it was called at the time.

Poetry and teaching

In 1849 Matthew Arnold published his first volume of poetry, followed in 1852 by the second volume, " Empedocles on Etna ". It was not until 1853 that he published poetry under his real name and exercised strict self-criticism on his earlier works, which in places lacked a classic-antique balance. The poet Arnold was now known. The academic classic tragedy " Merope " (1858) and the " New Poems " (1867) with elegies for the deceased father and a friend followed. In the meantime, the author had turned more and more to cultural criticism .

In 1857 Arnold had become professor of poetry in his beloved Oxford. He was one of the first lecturers who no longer gave their lectures in Latin . The books " On Translating Homer " (1861, 1862) and " On the Study of Celtic Literature " (1867) emerged from his lectures . Already in his inaugural lecture he took literary “modernity” as a topic.

Cultural criticism

Important contributions to Arnold's new form of cultural criticism were his works " Essays in Criticism " (1865) and " Culture and Anarchy " (1869). Arnold, who felt that the contemporary British empire was culturally provincial despite its economic and political successes, also turned to “continental” cultural workers and thinkers such as Spinoza , Goethe , Hegel , Heinrich Heine , Leo Tolstoy and Sainte-Beuve . The British he saw divided into

• aristocratic "barbarians" characterized by graceful customs, but conservative and closed to new ideas
• efficient, non-conformist and energetic, while however the " Mammon " dilapidated and graceless " Philistines " (Arnold took over the modern sense of the term of Thomas Carlyle , the German literature had borrowed it himself)
• the remaining, still raw and uncultivated “broad masses” (“populace”).

Everything depends on forming and humanizing the dynamic middle class of the "Philistines". According to Arnold, this was a state task. Without any cultural countermeasures, uncontrolled Victorian democracy amounts to an anarchy that destroys all values. Arnold's criticism of the then seemingly unassailable British Empire did not go down well with all compatriots.

Effect and criticism

Arnold, who opened up a completely new, fundamental role for criticism, experienced a broader effectiveness as a cultural critic than as a poet. Culture-critical authors like Lionel Trilling , TS Eliot , Clement Greenberg and Harold Bloom are partly in his tradition. At the latest with the dawn of postmodernism, however, this approach, especially its limitation of culture to phenomena of “ high seriousness ”, itself came under fire. Arnold's attempt to establish a compulsory canon of English-speaking poets (he dealt with John Milton , John Keats , with William Wordsworth , who was still known to him personally , with Lord Byron and Percy B. Shelley ) was soon criticized: John Dryden and Alexander Pope for example, he was not considered a "real poet", John Donne was not worth mentioning. In his poem “ To Marguerite ” Arnold even implicitly says the opposite of Donne's well-known sentence “ Nobody is an island ”: the sea gapes between the partners, one is “ enisled in the sea of ​​life ” - everyone is an island. James Joyce is said to have vigorously parodied these lines by the “unfortunate Victorian” Matthew Arnold in his early poem “ In dark pinewood ” - with the usual Joyce sexual connotations .

Arnold's grave in Laleham

Arnold's (abbreviated) view that poetry should turn against life was seen as pessimism. In fact, the poet has not always lived up to the self-imposed norm of the classically objective, clear and sober style in his poetry; many of his poems are more of a sentimental, melancholic and subjective nature; That is precisely why some consider them to be early evidence of modernity. Arnold, as a social person characterized by confidence and casual elegance, indulged in an underground skepticism in his poetry . A good example is his late poem " Dover Beach ". Artists as diverse as the composer Samuel Barber or the rock band " The Fugs " set this poem to music. Even Ralph Vaughan Williams set to music Arnold texts.

The publication of religious essays followed in later years. Arnold devoted himself above all to the modernization of Anglicanism , in which he again met with many critics. Arnold had six children and survived three of his sons. He died in 1888 when he wanted to pick up a daughter from the ship in Liverpool, who was meanwhile in the USA.

In 1883 Arnold was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Works (selection)

Poetry

• Alaric at Rome. A Prize Poem (1840)
• Cromwell. A Prize Poem (1843)
• The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (1849)
• Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852, 1900)
• Poems. A New Edition (1853)
• Poems. Second Series (1855)
• Merope. A Tragedy (1858)
• New Poems (1867)
• A Matthew Arnold Birthday Book (1883)
• The Works of Matthew Arnold (ed. By GWE Russell, 15 vols., 1903)
• The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (ed. V. Tinker and HF Lowry, 1950)
• The Poems of Matthew Arnold (ed. By Kenneth Allott, 1965)

Essays, cultural criticism and other prose

• England and the Italian Question (ed. By Merle M. Bevington, 1859)
• The Popular Education of France, with Notices of That of Holland and Switzerland (1861)
• On Translating Homer. Three Lectures Given at Oxford (1861)
• On Translating Homer. Last words. A Lecture Given at Oxford (1862)
• Heinrich Heine (1863)
• A French Eton; or, Middle Class Education and the State (1864)
• Essays in Criticism (1865)
• Schools and Universities on the Continent (1867)
• On the Modern Element in Literature (1869)
• Culture and Anarchy. An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (1869)
• Literature and Dogma. An Essay towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible (1873)
• Higher Schools and Universities in Germany (1874)
• God and the Bible. A Review of Objections to "Literature and Dogma" (1875)
• Last Essays on Church and Religion (1877)
• Mixed essays (1879)
• The Study of Poetry (1880)
• Irish Essays, and Others (1882)
• Friendship's Garland Being the Conversations, Letters and Opinions of the Late Arminius, Baron von Thunder-ten-Tronckh (1883)
• On the Study of Celtic Literature (1883)
• St. Paul and Protestantism; with an Introduction on Puritanism and the Church of England (1883)
• Culture and Anarchy (1883)
• Discourses in America (1885)
• Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve. In: Encyclopedia Britannica , ninth edition, IX: pp. 162–165 (1886)
• Education Department (1886) Special Report on Certain Points Connected with Elementary Education in Germany, Switzerland, and France
• General Grant. An Estimate (1887)
• Schools. In The Reign of Queen Victoria (ed. By TH Ward, II: pp. 238-279, 1887)
• Essays in Criticism. Second Series (1888)
• Civilization in the United States. First and Last Impressions of America (1888)
• Reports on Elementary Schools 1852–1882 (ed. By Sir Francis Sandford, 1889)

Editorial activity

• A Bible-Reading for Schools. The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration (1872)
• Isaiah XLLXVI; with the Shorter Prophecies Allied to It (1875)
• The Six Chief Lives from Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," with Macaulay's "Life of Johnson" (1878)
• (Preface) The Hundred Greatest Men.Portraits of the One Hundred Greatest Men of History (1879)
• Poems of Wordsworth (1879)
• Letters, Speeches and Tracts on Irish Affairs by Edmund Burke (1881)
• Poetry of Byron (1881)
• " Isaiah of Jerusalem " authorized English version, with introduction, corrections and annotations (1883)

literature

• Joseph Carroll: The cultural theory of Matthew Arnold. Berkeley: University of California Press 1982. ISBN 0-520-04616-1
• Patrick Carill Connolly: Matthew Arnold and "Thyrsis". London: Greenwich Exchange 2004. ISBN 1-871551-61-7
• Ian Hamilton : A gift imprisoned. The poetic life of Matthew Arnold. London: Bloomsbury 1998. ISBN 0-7475-3671-6
• David Keppel-Jones: The strict metrical tradition. Variations in the literary iambic pentameter from Sidney and Spenser to Matthew Arnold. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 2001. ISBN 0-7735-2161-5
• Peter Krahé: Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold. The ideological crisis and its literary processing. Bonn: Bouvier 1978. (= Studies on English Literature; 19) ISBN 3-416-01445-6
• Laura Cooner Lambdin; Robert Thomas Lambdin: Camelot in the nineteenth century. Arthurian characters in the poems of Tennyson, Arnold, Morris, and Swinburne. Westport, Conn. among others: Greenwood Press 2000. (= Contributions to the study of world literature; 97) ISBN 0-313-31124-2
• James C. Livingston: Matthew Arnold and Christianity. His religious prose writings. Columbia, SC: Univ. of South Carolina Pr. 1986. ISBN 0-87249-462-4
• Clinton Machann: Matthew Arnold. A literary life. Basingstoke among others: Macmillan among others 1998. ISBN 0-333-63376-8
• Laurence W. Mazzeno: Matthew Arnold. The critical legacy. Rochester, NY among others: Camden House 1999. (= Studies in English and American literature, linguistics, and culture) ISBN 1-57113-278-3
• Nicholas Murray: A life of Matthew Arnold. London: Hodder u. Stoughton 1996. ISBN 0-340-62488-4
• Linda Ray Pratt: Matthew Arnold revisited. New York, NY: Twayne 2000. (= Twayne's English authors series; TEAS 560) ISBN 0-8057-1698-X
• Mary W. Schneider: Poetry in the age of democracy. The literary criticism of Matthew Arnold. Lawrence, Kansas: Univ. Pr. Of Kansas 1989. ISBN 0-7006-0380-8
• James Simpson: Matthew Arnold and Goethe. London 1979.
• Thomas Spielkamp: literary criticism as "Criticism of life". On the central position of the concept of criticism in the literary theory of Matthew Arnold. Frankfurt am Main among other things: Lang 1994. (= work on aesthetics, didactics, literature and linguistics; 18) ISBN 3-631-47108-4
• Douglas W. Sterner: Priests of culture. A study of Matthew Arnold & Henry James. New York among others: Lang 1999. (= Sociocriticism; 9) ISBN 0-8204-4181-3
• Ilse-Maria Tesdorpf: Matthew Arnold's argument with Heinrich Heine, the critic with the critic. A special case of constructive misunderstanding and idiosyncratic borrowing. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaeum 1971. (= New contributions to English and American studies; 6)

Web links

Commons : Matthew Arnold  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Matthew Arnold in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Matthew Arnold  in the German Digital Library
• Short biography of Matthew Arnold
• Works by Matthew Arnold in Project Gutenberg ( currently not generally available for users from Germany )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1850–1899 ( PDF ). Retrieved September 24, 2015