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In his account of that tour, "Civilization in the United States", he observed, "if one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers. His religious views were unusual for his time. Scholars of Arnold's works disagree on the nature of Arnold's personal religious beliefs. Under the influence of Baruch Spinoza and his father, Dr. Thomas Arnold, he rejected the supernatural elements in religion, even while retaining a fascination for church rituals.
Arnold seems to belong to a middle ground that is more concerned with the poetry of religion and its virtues and values for society than with the existence of God.
But the story is not true; it never really happened". He continues to express his concern with Biblical truth explaining that "The personages of the Christian heaven and their conversations are no more matter of fact than the personages of the Greek Olympus and their conversations. However, he also wrote in the same book, "to pass from a Christianity relying on its miracles to a Christianity relying on its natural truth is a great change.
It can only be brought about by those whose attachment to Christianity is such, that they cannot part with it, and yet cannot but deal with it sincerely. Harold Bloom writes that "Whatever his achievement as a critic of literature, society or religion, his work as a poet may not merit the reputation it has continued to hold in the twentieth century.
Arnold is, at his best, a very good, but highly derivative poet, unlike Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins, Swinburne and Rossetti, all of whom individualized their voices. The writer John Cowper Powys , an admirer, wrote that, "with the possible exception of Merope , Matthew Arnold's poetry is arresting from cover to cover — [he] is the great amateur of English poetry [he] always has the air of an ironic and urbane scholar chatting freely, perhaps a little indiscreetly, with his not very respectful pupils.
CPW stands for Robert H. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the poet. For other uses, see Matthew Arnold disambiguation. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. April Learn how and when to remove this template message. The Sage from Carlyle to Mailer. Cornell University Press, Archived from the original on 23 July Retrieved 16 July American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 25 April Also see the introduction to Culture and Anarchy and other writings , Collini, Selections from the Prose Work of Matthew Arnold.
Charles Dickens to H. Ethics in Culture and Criticism.
Perfection, the State, and Victorian Liberalism. Matthew Arnold and English Education: A Survey of His Poetry and Prose.
Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age. Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill.
I have tried to show to what a considerable extent each shared the convictions of the other; how much of a liberal Arnold was and how much of a humanist Mill was. Lionel Trilling and the Critics. University of Nebraska Press. History of Political Thought. If, then, a man come to the criticism of life as Arnold did, with neither a faculty nor a training for logic It has much to recommend it; it is full of ability, novelty, variety, sensation, sympathy, generous instincts; its one great fault is that it is feather-brained.
Available online at attackingthedevil. The Repeal of Reticence: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. On Translating Homer Culture and Anarchy Tristram and Iseult " To Marguerite: Retrieved from " https: Archived copy as title CS1: Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource.
This page was last edited on 24 November , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Matthew Arnold. Wikiquote has quotations related to: Most Old English poems are recorded without authors, and very few names are known with any certainty.
Geoffrey Chaucer is the most highly regarded English poet of the Middle Ages 5th to 15th century. The 16th century marked the beginning of the English Renaissance whose towering figure was undoubtedly William Shakespeare. The early 17th century saw the emergence of a group of writers known as the Metaphysical poets , who were led by John Donne.
The last quarter of the 18th century saw the emergence of the influential movement Romanticism. Romanticism was followed by the Victorian era , which was dominated by Alfred Tennyson. Auden are generally ranked as the three greatest 20th century British and Irish poets. Here are the 10 most famous poets from the United Kingdom and their best known works. Geoffrey Chaucer is widely regarded as the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages.
He was not a professional writer, but a courtier and civil servant who successfully served three kings in a long career.
In Great Britain, movement for social change and a more inclusive sharing of power was also growing. He revered the Bible but was hostile to the Church of England and organized religion in general. His first published poem was "On Shakespeare" , anonymously included in the Second Folio edition of William Shakespeare 's plays in University of Toronto Press, More recent writers, such as Collini, have shown a greater interest in his social writing, [21] while over the years a significant second tier of criticism has focused on Arnold's religious writing. Unrhymed lyrics like Collins ' Ode to Evening in the meter of Milton's translation of Horace 's Ode to Pyrrha were not uncommon after
Still, he was able to achieve considerable fame as an author during his lifetime. The primary characteristics of his works are their variety in subject matter, genre, tone and style. Chaucer went on to have a huge influence on English literature. He considerably expanded the word-stock of English bringing in numerous words from a variety of languages; and he made several innovations in the way poetry and verse were written.
Most importantly, Geoffrey Chaucer was crucial in legitimizing the literary use of the Middle English vernacular at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin. Due to his tremendous contributions, Geoffrey Chaucer is considered as the Father of English literature. His poetry has been loved for generations for its humanity and humour; and continues to be popular. Troilus and Criseyde The Book of the Duchess 1 36 8.
August 6, — October 6, He remains one of the most renowned poets in the English language and among the most frequently quoted writers. Tennyson was appointed the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in and he held the position for a record 42 years till his death in Tennyson was influenced by the writers of the Romantic Age before him as is evident from the richness of his imagery and descriptive writing.
He used a wide range of subject matter ranging from medieval legends to classical myths and from domestic situations to observations of nature. The Charge of the Light Brigade 1 8 June 13, — January 28, Yeats fell deeply in love with her but she turned down at least four marriage proposals from him; and instead married Major John MacBride.
Modernism was an influential movement, primarily in Europe and North America. In literature, the modernists rejected traditional ways of writing ; and experimented with literary form and expression. Yeats, although not a modernist, learned from the movement and adapted his writings. He wrote several poems which are regarded as important works of modernist poetry. In , W. The Second Coming Lake Isle of Innisfree Sailing to Byzantium 1 January 22, — March 31, Metaphysical poetry is a term used to classify poems by a group of 17th-century English poets.
Nevertheless, The Murder of Halland is a true page-turner, written in powerful sentences till the very last period. The Notebook is the first novel of her trilogy on war and identity, following identical twin brothers Lucas and Claus as they are placed with their not at all nice grandmother in a small village somewhere in Eastern Europe to hide from the war. The lack of sentimentality is striking. Taken together, the three books make up a sort of a labyrinth.
When you finish the third novel you want to go back to the first to solve the mystery… Reading The Notebook many years ago persuaded me for the first time of the necessity of the novel — being then pretty arrogant, I had seen prose as the stupid younger sister of poetry!
Rilke even learned Danish in order to read and translate Jacobsen! The style is wonderfully overflowing with detail, and beauty clashes against decay and decadence. Childhood memories from the countryside in Denmark, urban observations of Paris and ruminations on death make this poetic prose simultaneously tender, harsh and heartbreaking. Tracing the lives of an American dynasty — the Hersland-Dehnings family — in painstaking detail that stretches over more than a thousand pages, Stein circles in her sentences, stammers and repeats, slowly giving rise to one of the most nuanced and unique portraits of American life ever written.
Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann - A masterpiece! The Austrian poet and writer Bachmann castigates the structures behind Nazism as well as patrirachal violence. Bachmann might have been overshadowed by some of the men she had relationships with, — including Max Frisch and Paul Celan — but is without any doubt one of the best European modern writers.
Too bad — the language is elegant and cluttered in a very interesting way. Deft turns of humor and a deeply compassionate rendering of bohemian artists in s Paris make the book a treasure. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson - In this verse novel Carson points to the fact that poetry and fiction have never been strictly separate categories.
She combines myth and modernity in the guise of a boy named Geryon, who is also a red, Ancient Greek monster with wings.