00083--[Matthew Arnold]-On what type of subjects can great poetry be written?

            
All art is dedicated to joy, and there is no higher and no more serious problem than how to make men happy.  Only the right art creates the highest enjoyment.  In order to achieve this end, the first problem that comes before a poet is to choose a subject fit for high poetry.  What can be those subjects?  Arnold himself replies:  "Those certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections; to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time."

            The modernness or antiquity of a subject has nothing to do with its fitness for poetical representation.  Its fitness depends upon its inherent qualities.  The date or the age of an action signifies  nothing.  The action or situation itself, its appeal to permanent human feelings, its power to please, to move, and to elevate - these are the basic requisitions of the subject fit for high class poetry.  Whether past or present the subject should be excellent because without an excellent subject excellent poetry cannot be written.  Quoting Aristotle, Arnold says, "All depends upon the subject:  Choose a fitting subject, penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situation; this done, everything else will follow."

            A trivial subject cannot be raised to poetic excellence only by the art and craft of the poet.  Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats and all other great poets were able to write excellent poetry because they were able to choose excellent subjects to write upon.  The proper choice of subject is, therefore, a matter of prime importance for a great poet.

00082--Discuss Matthew Arnold's definition of poetry as 'Criticism of life.' OR Discuss Mathew Arnold's views on the relationship between poetry and morality.

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Matthew Arnold defines poetry "as a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty."  He adds by saying that the future of poetry is immense because in poetry we will find an ever surer and surer stay.  The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
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            Quoting Wordsworth, he says that poetry is "the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science."  But these observations apply to the high and sublime poetry of high excellence.  High poetry has a power of 'forming, sustaining, and delighting us as nothing else can.' This kind of poetry is, therefore, essentially moral, not in the narrow didactic sense, but in the larger sense of conforming to the highest ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty.  In his essay on Wordsworth he says, "A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life."  But the term 'moral' should be used in its broadest sense, bearing upon the question 'how to live?'

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00081--Discuss Matthew Arnold's Touchstone Method of Criticism.

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Matthew Arnold's Touchstone Method of Criticism was really a comparative system of criticism.  Arnold was basically a classicist.  He admired the ancient Greek, Roman and French authors as the models to be followed by the modern English authors.  The old English like Shakespeare, Spenser or Milton were also to be taken as models.  Arnold took selected passages from the modern authors and compared them with selected passages from the ancient authors and thus decided their merits.  This method was called Arnold's Touchstone Method.

            However, this system of judgement has its own limitations.  The method of comparing passage with a passage is not a sufficient test for determining the value of a work as a whole.  Arnold himself insisted that we must judge a poem by the 'total impression' and not by its fragments.  But we can further extend this method of comparison from passages to the poems as whole units.  The comparative method is an invaluable aid to appreciation of any kind of art.  It is helpful not merely thus to compare the masterpiece and the lesser work, but the good with the not so good, the sincere with the not quite sincere, and so on.
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            Those who do not agree with this theory of comparative criticism say that Arnold is too austere, too exacting in comparing a simple modern poet with the ancient master poet.  It is not fair to expect that all hills may be Alps.  The mass of current literature is much better disregarded.  By this method we can set apart the alive, the vital, the sincere from the shoddy, the showy and the insincere.
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00080--What, according to Matthew Arnold, are the basic functions of a literary critic?

            Matthew Arnold, himself a great critic, lays heavy responsibilities upon a literary critic.  He says that a critic is basically a teacher and he has a mission to fulfill, holding that literature is a 'criticism of life'.  The first duty of the critic, therefore, is 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."  This is the keynote of the task of a critic.  Arnold lays emphasis upon the word 'disinterested.'  The critic must be absolutely impartial without any prejudice or bias against or in favour of any particular author or literary school.  He must "see things as they really are."  The next function of the critic is to make the best ideas prevail."  In this respect the critic is a missionary.  Thereafter his next function is to prepare an atmosphere favourable for the production of creative literature.  He must promote "a current of ideas in the highest degree animating and nourishing to the creative power."  In his 'Culture and Anarchy' he says that the critic as a man of culture should be concerned with all aspects of living.  In brief, the function of the critic in the broadest sense of the term is to promote culture..... to promote that part of culture which depends upon knowledge of letters.  He is motivated by the 'moral and social passion for doing good."

00078--Describe various stages of the evolution of victorian criticism.

Victorian Criticism

                                          

            A brief survey of the Victorian sense reveals that literary criticism during the age easily falls into three clear-cut and distinct times: the Early Victorian, the Mid-Victorian and the Later Victorian.  The early Victorian era (1835-1860) is a period of the decay and decline of literary criticism,  there is practically no talented critic, and no outstanding work of literary criticism.  The only names worth mentioning are those of Keble and Brimley.  No doubt, Macaulay, Carlyle and John Stuart Mill belong to this age, but they are not literary critics.  Their literary criticism though of a high standard, is only incidental; their interests are historical, social or philosophical.

            To the middle period (1860-1880) belong Arnold and Ruskin, both outstanding thinkers and scholars.  Of these two, Ruskin is more an art critic than a literary critic, though his literary criticism too is illuminating and original.  Ruskin considered the art to be the greatest medium which conveyed to the reader the greatest number of the greatest ideas.  Thus he could achieve a synthesis or compromise or reconciliation between art and morality.  This very compromise Arnold did achieve by advocating that poetry should be a criticism of life, and that criticism should propagate the best that ever was thought or written.

            In the third phase (1880-1910) this synthesis is broken, and the cult of "art for Art's sake" as distinguished from the earliest cult of 'Art for life's sake' acquires prominence.  Pater and Oscar Wilde are the most powerful exponents of this cult.  They stand in front rank of the English aesthetes, who made the pursuit of beauty to the total exclusion of life and reality,  the concern, of their art.  The ultimate source of this school of 'art for and sake' may be traced to idealistic philosophy of Kant and other German philosophers.  Now it was revived under the influence of the French Critic Gautier, and the French symbolist Baudelaire.  The critics of this school sough refuge from the ugliness and harshness of reality in the realm of art.  Their method of evaluation is largely individual and impressionistic. 

            To the later Victorian phase also belong a number of able and scholarly university professors who devote themselves to literary criticism.