Matthew Arnold's Critical Concepts: Disinterestedness and Touchstones

Arnold's Concept of Disinterestedness

Matthew Arnold used the word disinterestedness with positive connotations. For Arnold, being 'interested' meant being socially or politically motivated, potentially creating an ideology. Literature was often criticized, he felt, because the 'interested' critic evaluated a work based not on its artistic values but on its political, social, and economic features.

The disinterested critic, in contrast, is not influenced by the practical affairs of everyday life; the critic is immune to external pressures. For Arnold, disinterestedness equates to objectivity. This type of criticism characterized the New Critics of the first half of the 20th century in Europe and the USA.

Arnold criticized publications like the Edinburgh Review (associated with Whigs - liberals, progressives) when he found them writing from a conservative viewpoint, and the Quarterly Review (associated with Tories - conservatives).

Poetry's Role in Society

Amidst the 19th-century battle between science and religion, where science was being elevated, Arnold postulated that poetry would overtake both science and religion, taking possession of the minds and hearts of people. Arnold held a negative view of philosophy, believing poetry would replace science, religion, and philosophy to reconstruct British society.

The Touchstone Method

Arnold argued that only the highest poetry could replace religion, science, and philosophy. This required discriminating between good and bad poetry. He proposed several methods for evaluation:

• Historical estimate
• Personal estimate
• Real estimate

The Real Estimate

The real estimate is intended to be objective. It involves using "lines and expressions of the great masters" as touchstones for comparison.

Critiques of Arnold's Method

Errors arise within this method. For instance, who determines the "great masters"? Choosing someone like Shakespeare inevitably involves a "personal estimate" or "historical estimate," undermining the claimed objectivity.

Arnold asserted his method was objective, not personal, but he committed fallacies:

1. Extracting parts and pieces from a poem risks destroying its integrity. If a poem is considered a unit, its value belongs to the whole, not to parts separated from that unit.

While Arnold wanted to liberate poetry from 'interested' critics, his methods were flawed, difficult to follow, and potentially unfair. He argued that time alone doesn't make a poem better, considering many medieval works overrated.

Arnold on Modernity and Historical Context

For Arnold, a poem's value relates to its adequacy for the period in which it was written. His idea of modernity is not about the mere passage of time. He looked at works from a historical viewpoint, assessing if the poem was adapted to its age. Therefore, a classical work could be considered 'modern' in his sense.

Arnold's concept of historicism is based not on the passage of time, but on a judgment relative to the context in which a work was written.

Cultural Perspectives

He discussed three kinds of poetry: Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Celtic. Some of his views on the interrelation between these 'races' could be seen as politically incorrect today. Nonetheless, he was an initiator of formal English literary studies.