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Literary Criticism of Matthew Arnold - Letters to Clough, the 1853 Preface and Some Essays (Paperback)
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Literary Criticism of Matthew Arnold - Letters to Clough, the 1853 Preface and Some Essays (Paperback)
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Many of the ideas that appear in Arnold's Preface of 1853 to his
collection of poems and in his later essays are suggested in the
letters that Arnold wrote to his friend Arthur Hugh Clough.
Analysis of the Preface reveals a poet who found a theoretical
basis for poetry (by which he means literature in general) in the
dramas of the Greek tragedians, particularly Sophocles: action is
stressed as an indispensable ingredient, wholes are preferred to
parts, the didactic function of literature is promoted -- in short,
the Preface reads like the recipe for a classical tragedy. It is a
young poet's attempt to establish criteria for what poetry ought to
be. He found the Romantic idiom outworn. Literature was, in
Arnold's perception, meant to communicate a message rather than
impress by its structure or by formal sophistication. Modern
theories of coalescence between content and form were outside the
contemporary paradigm. T S Eliot's ambivalent attitude to Arnold --
now reluctantly admiring, now decidedly patronizing -- is puzzling.
Eliot never seemed able to liberate himself from the influence of
Arnold. What in Arnold's critical oeuvre attracted and at the same
time repelled Eliot? That question has led to an in-depth analysis
of Arnold as a literary critic. This book begins with an
examination of Arnold's letters to Clough, where "it all started"
and proceeds with a close reading of the 1853 Preface. A look at
some of the later literary essays rounds off the picture of Arnold
as a literary critic. This work is the result of Reader and Review
comments of the author's well received Eliot's Objective Criticism:
Tradition or Individual Talent? "Yet he is in some respects the
most satisfactory man of letters of his age." -- T S Eliot, The Use
of Poetry and the Use of Criticism.
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