00180—How does Matthew Arnold evaluate Chaucer’s greatness?

Matthew Arnold is an admirer of Chaucer’s poetry.  He remarks that Chaucer’s power of fascination is enduring.  “He will be read far more generally than he is read now.”  The only problem that we come across is the difficulty of following his language.  Chaucer’s superiority lies in the fact that “we suddenly feel ourselves to be in another world”.  His superiority is both in the substance of his poetry and in the style of his poetry.  “His view of life is large, free, simple, clear and kindly.  He has shown the power to survey the world from a central, a human point of view.”  The best example is his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.  Matthew Arnold quotes here the words of Dryden who remarked about it; “Here is God’s plenty”.  Arnold continues to remark that Chaucer is a perpetual fountain of good sense.  Chaucer’s poetry has truth of substance; “Chaucer is the father of our splendid English poetry.”   By the lovely charm of his diction, the lovely charm of his movement, he makes an epoch and founds a tradition.  We follow this tradition in Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and Keats.  “In these poets we feel the virtue.”  And the virtue is irresistible.

In spite of all these merits, Arnold says that Chaucer is not one of greatest classics.  He has not their accent.  To strengthen his argument Arnold compares Chaucer with the Italian classic Dante.  Arnold says that Chaucer lacks not only the accent of Dante but also the high seriousness.  “Homer’s criticism of life has it, Shakespeare has it, Dante has it, and Shakespeare has it.”  Thus in his critical essay “The Study of Poetry” Matthew Arnold comments not only on the  merits of Chaucer’s poetry, but also on the short comings.  He glorifies Chaucer with the remark, “With him is born our real poetry.”

00178--Matthew Arnold on the Early Poetry of France

Matthew Arnold is of the view that England is much obliged to France in the field of poetry.  The early poetry of England is ‘indissolubly connected’ to the early French poetry.  In his opinion the 12^th and the 13^th centuries were the seed-time of all modern language and literature.  At that time the poetry of France had a clear predominance in Europe.  The romance-poetry of Europe is French.  It is the pride of French literature.  The romance-poetry was at its height in the middle age.  In the fourteenth century there came an English man who nourished on this poetry.  He got his words, rhyme and metre from this poetry.  Matthew Arnold names this person as Chaucer.  In fact Chaucer received the elements of the romantic poetry immediately, from the Italians, especially from Dante.  But the Italians got this stuff from the French.

00177--What is Matthew Arnold’s estimate of Dryden and Pope? [Robert Burns/Thomas Gray/Chaucer]

“Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry; they are classics of our prose.”  This is how Arnold evaluates Dryden and Pope.  He gives Thomas Gray a greater position.  He says that Gray is our poetical classics of the 18^th century.  Along with the names of Dryden and Pope, Matthew Arnold mentions the name of Robert Burns.  Burns’ English poems are simple to read.  But the real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems.  His poems deal with Scotch way of life, scotch drinks, scotch religion and Scotch manners.  A Scotch man may be familiar with such things, but for an outsider these may sound personal.  For supreme practical success more is required.  In the opinion of Arnold, Burns comes short of the high seriousness of the great classics, something is wanting in his poetry.    In his comparative study Arnold gives Chaucer a better position.  The world of Chaucer is fairer, richer and more significant than that of Burns.

00122--Write a note on the Moralist Critic of the Mid Twentieth Century.

            There emerged a School of Moralist Critics in the mid-twentieth assumed century.   George Watson says: "Most English Critics before  Arnold and Ruskin assumed that  all good poetry is morally edifying, and that it is always a writer's duty to make the world better.  But there is a tradition in twentieth century criticism stemming from Arnold which is distinct from all previous moral theories of literature.  The difference may be simply stated:  Johnson like other Renaissance and eighteenth-century critics took it for granted that everyone is more or less agreed about the difference between right and wrong, and that the moral duty of the poet lies simply in observing a recognized code.  Justice is a virtue independent of time and place.  Modern moralism by contrast, is more often aganostic, exploratory, and self-consciously elitist.  Its toe is more often embittered.  Its very dogmatism is based upon the uncertainty of its dogma and the difficult of finding an audience".

            John Middleton proclaimed that criticism depended on values a delineation of what is good for man.  Geroge Orwell and F.R. Leavis offer and unusually pure example of critical moralism.  The cast school of Shakespearean criticism inspire by Wilson Knight has enthusiastically interpreted dramatic characters as if they were typical philosophers.  The critic's business is to assert what the morally best poems are.

            The moralists are the prophetic figures in modern criticism.  They must readily excite discipleship.  Their influence may even extend to matters of conduct; in some cares the critical interest is a late extension of some wider moral purpose.  George Orwall may be taken us a model of model of modern English moralist.  Raymon Williams's culture and society and its sequel The Long Revolution are both scholarly and prophetic.  Hoggart belongs to the tradition of Arnold.  Thus we see that moralism is as common today as ever before, but it is less sharp than in the past.

00086--Point out the limitations of Matthew Arnold as a critic.

Mathew Arnold

                                       

There is no denying the fact that as a critic of literature, Arnold has well-marked limitations and short comings which may be listed as follows:

1.      He is incapable of connected reasoning at any length, and often contradicts himself.  Thus first he lays down the test of total impression for judging the worth of a poet, but soon after contradicts himself and prescribes the well-known Touchstone Method.

2.      There is a certain want of logic and method in Arnold's criticism.  He is not a scientific critic.  Often he is vague, and fails to define or state clearly his views.

3.      He frowns upon mere literary criticism.  He mixes literary criticism with socio-ethical consideration and regards it as an instrument of culture.  Pure literary criticism with him has no meaning and significance.

4.      There is some truth in the criticism that he was a propagandist and salesman.  As Wimsatt and Brooks point out, "very simply, very characteristically, and very repetitiously, Arnold spent his career in hammering the thesis that poetry is a "criticism of life".  All his practical criticism is but an illustration of this view.

5.      His criticism lacks originality.  Practically all of his critical concepts are borrowed.  In his emphasis on 'action' and 'high seriousness', he merely echoes Aristotle; his concept of "grand style" is exactly the same thing as "the sublime" of Longinus. 

6.      His learning is neither exact nor precise.  He does not collect his facts painstakingly.   His illustration of his ‘touch stone’ method is all misquotations.  Similarly, his biographical data are often inaccurate.

7.      He is in favour of biographical interpretation; he is also conscious of the importance of the moment", and yet he is against the historical method of criticism.

8.      He advocates "disinterestedness", but ties the critic to certain socio-ethical, interests.  He would like him to rise above "practical" and "personal" interests, but he wants him to establish a current of great and noble ideas and thus promote culture.  But disinterestedness means that the critic should have no interests except aesthetic appreciation.

9.      He speaks of the moral effects of poetry, of its "high seriousness", but never of its pleasure, the "aesthetic pleasure" which a poem must impart, and which is the true test of its excellence.  His standards of judgement are not literary.

His literary criticism is vitiated by his moral, classical and continental prejudices.  He is sympathetic only to the classics, he rates the continental poets higher than the great English poets, and the moral test which he applies often makes him neglect the literary qualities of a poet.  The immoral in a poets' life, prejudices him against his poetry. 

00085--[Matthew Arnold]Which is higher between creative faculty and critical faculty?

                             

            Arnold holds the view that the creative faculty is better and higher than critical faculty.  But the issue is not so simple as it appears to be on the surface.  The fact is that creative faculty and critical faculty are interdependent on each other.  One cannot exist without the other.  It is true that creative power 'is the highest function of man; it is proved to be so by man's finding in it his true happiness.'  Great poetry has the power 'to please, to move, to elevate'.  Critical literature subsists on creative literature.  Creative literature is the foundation upon which critical literature is built, Arnold further says that 'for the creation of a mater-work of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment'.

            This brings us to the other side of the issue.  Who creates 'the power of the moment'?  It is the critic.  No man, however gifted, can produce a great literary work without a proper intellectual atmosphere around him.  This proper atmosphere for the creation of a great creative work is prepared by the critic.  It is the basic and most important function of the critic to make 'a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and true ideas'.  The creative artist is enabled to produce his great works in the background and with the aid of this atmosphere which Arnold calls 'the power of the moment'.  A such the creative and the critical faculties are complementary to each other, neither is better or higher than the other.

00084--Discuss Matthew Arnold's Concept of Grand Style.

Discussing the essential ingredients of Grand style, Arnold says that Grand Style 'arises in poetry when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or severity a serious subject'.  The grand style issues from rapidity of movement, plainness and directness of language, nobility of nature and simple lucidity of mind.  It is the same thing that Longinus calls sublimity.  There can be no sublimity without sublime thoughts, and sublime emotions issuing from a sublime heart.  There can be no sublimity without the sublimity of the soul.

Great thoughts and great words issue only from great minds.  At the same time the subject treated therein also should be serious and grand enough to bear the weight of the grand style.  A trivial subject cannot bear the weight of grand style.  The subjects fit for treatment in grand  style must "powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections; to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time".  There are universal subjects that cannot be bound down by any limits of time or place.  They are fundamental  with human nature sublimely elevated.  The action or situation to be treated under grand style must have the power 'to please, to move, to elevate'.  The greatest practitioners of grand style are Homer in Greek, Dante in Latin, and Milton in English.  Arnold advises the modern poets to study and analyse their style and subject matter if they seek to develop grand style in their own writings.