Literary Criticism is, as Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), the Victorian poet and critic factors out, a “disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate” the most effective that is known and thought in the environment. And he strove tricky to satisfy this intention in his vital writings. Attaching paramount worth to poetry in his essay “The Examine of Poetry”, he regards the poet as seer. Without having poetry, science is incomplete, and a lot of faith and philosophy would in foreseeable future be changed by poetry. These kinds of, in his estimate, are the significant destinies of poetry.
Arnold asserts that literature, and primarily poetry, is “Criticism of Life”. In poetry, this criticism of lifestyle ought to conform to the laws of poetic real truth and poetic attractiveness. Truth and seriousness of subject, felicity and perfection of diction and method, as are exhibited in the best poets, are what constitutes a criticism of existence.
Poetry, says Arnold, interprets daily life in two ways: “Poetry is interpretative by possessing organic magic in it, and moral profundity”. And to achieve this the poet need to intention at high and outstanding seriousness in all that he writes.This desire has two crucial qualities. The initial is the preference of great actions. The poet need to opt for those people which most powerfully attractiveness to the terrific primary human emotions which subsist forever in the race. The 2nd important is what Arnold calls the Grand Style – the perfection of form, preference of words, drawing its pressure straight from the being pregnant of issue which it conveys.
This, then, is Arnold’s conception of the character and mission of accurate poetry. And by his standard rules – the” Touchstone Method” – launched scientific objectivity to important analysis by providing comparison and examination as the two most important instruments for judging personal poets. Consequently, Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, and Shelley fall shorter of the most effective, mainly because they lack “higher seriousness”. Even Shakespeare thinks way too considerably of expression and much too tiny of conception. Arnold’s great poets are Homer and Sophocles in the historic planet, Dante and Milton, and between moderns, Goethe and Wordsworth. Arnold places Wordsworth in the front rank not for his poetry but for his “criticism of daily life”. It is curious that Byron is placed over Shelley. Arnold’s inordinate like of classicism built him blind to the natural beauty of lyricism, and we cannot settle for Arnold’s watch that Shelley’s poetry is fewer satisfactory than his prose writings.
Arnold’s criticism of daily life is normally marred by his naive moralizing, by his insufficient perception of the relation in between art and morality, and by his uncritical admiration of what he regarded as the golden sanity of the historical Greeks. For all his championing of disinterestedness, Arnold was unable to practise disinterestedness in all his essays. In his essay on Shelley especially, he shown a lamentable deficiency of disinterestedness. Shelley’s ethical sights have been far too a lot for the Victorian Arnold. In his essay on Keats much too Arnold unsuccessful to be disinterested. The sentimental letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne ended up far too a great deal for him. But Arnold’s insistence on the criteria and his concern above the relation in between poetry and daily life make him one of the excellent modern critics.
