Matthew Arnold's Theory of Poetry and Criticism

Matthew Arnold: The Victorian Critic

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) was a prominent Victorian poet and critic. He defines literary criticism as a "disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." He strove hard to fulfil this aim in his critical writings. Attaching paramount importance to poetry in his essay "The Study of Poetry," he regards the poet as a seer. Without poetry, science is incomplete, and much of religion and philosophy would, in the future, be replaced by poetry. Such, in his estimate, are the high destinies of poetry.

Poetry as a Criticism of Life

Arnold asserts that literature, and especially poetry, is a "criticism of life." In poetry, this criticism of life must conform to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Truth and seriousness of matter, along with felicity and perfection of diction and manner—as shown in the works of the best poets—are what constitute a criticism of life.

The Two Ways Poetry Interprets Life

Arnold says that poetry interprets life in two ways: "Poetry is interpretative by having natural magic in it, and moral profundity." To achieve this, the poet must aim at high and excellent seriousness in all that he writes. This demand has two essential qualities:

• The Choice of Excellent Actions: The poet must choose those which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human feelings which subsist permanently in the race.
• The Grand Style: The perfection of form and choice of words, drawing its force directly from the pregnancy of matter which it conveys.

The Touchstone Method and Critical Evaluation

This, then, is Arnold's conception of the nature and mission of true poetry. Through his general principles—the "Touchstone Method"—he introduced scientific objectivity to critical evaluation by providing comparison and analysis as the two primary tools for judging individual poets.

Evaluating the Great Poets

Under this method, several notable figures fall short of the ideal:

• Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, and Shelley: These poets fall short of the best because they lack "high seriousness."
• Shakespeare: Arnold felt he thought too much of expression and too little of conception.

Arnold's ideal poets are Homer and Sophocles in the ancient world, Dante and Milton, and among moderns, Goethe and Wordsworth. Arnold puts Wordsworth in the front rank not for his poetry alone, but for his "criticism of life." It is curious that Byron is placed above Shelley. Arnold's inordinate love of classicism made him blind to the beauty of lyricism, and we cannot accept Arnold's view that Shelley's poetry is less satisfactory than his prose writings.

Limitations of Arnold's Critical Approach

Arnold's criticism of life is often marred by his naive moralizing, by his inadequate perception of the relation between art and morality, and by his uncritical admiration of what he regarded as the "golden sanity" of the ancient Greeks. For all his championing of disinterestedness, Arnold was unable to practise disinterestedness in all his essays.