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Lecture Literary criticism - Lecture 27: Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was a man of letters ,who became a literary critic by accident, he was mainly interested in educational, political and theological subjects The few works of pure literary criticism that he has to his credit are the by products of his genius. | Matthew Arnold Limitations Matthew Arnold was a man of letters ,who became a literary critic by accident, he was mainly interested in educational, political and theological subjects The few works of pure literary criticism that he has to his credit are the by products of his genius Oxford professorship gave him incentive for writing literary criticism though he was selected for this post not for his literary criticism but of his poetry This is evident from the tone in which he speaks of literary criticism he claims to write criticism literature for him was a criticism of life and a critic had to be a critic both of life and literature Pure literary criticism was not his forte, whenever he speaks of literary criticism or the critic he prefixed a derogative and speaks of mere literary criticism Arnold was not a scientific critic he was much of a moralist He thinks too much of the uses of literature and too little of its pleasures This moralistic tendency in Arnold made T. S. Eliot . | Matthew Arnold Limitations Matthew Arnold was a man of letters ,who became a literary critic by accident, he was mainly interested in educational, political and theological subjects The few works of pure literary criticism that he has to his credit are the by products of his genius Oxford professorship gave him incentive for writing literary criticism though he was selected for this post not for his literary criticism but of his poetry This is evident from the tone in which he speaks of literary criticism he claims to write criticism literature for him was a criticism of life and a critic had to be a critic both of life and literature Pure literary criticism was not his forte, whenever he speaks of literary criticism or the critic he prefixed a derogative and speaks of mere literary criticism Arnold was not a scientific critic he was much of a moralist He thinks too much of the uses of literature and too little of its pleasures This moralistic tendency in Arnold made T. S. Eliot compare him with F. H. Bradley Matthew Arnold was not a great scholar and much less a linguist .He built his political house on the bricks of ignorance. Professor Saintsbury deplores his lamentable ignorance. He embarks upon criticizing authors and languages which he does not understand. His essay the study of caltic literature remains overall a useless and stupid performance. He had his own prejudices. His cult of classicism marred much of his critical writings. His dislike of the romantic in literature was as much unjustified as the romantic’s dislike of the classic principles. His method of criticism - the touchstone method-itself is not flawless. This method consists of selling poetry by the pound. He manifests a dislike of the historical method in criticism for which it is difficult to find an excuse. It is true the that too much emphasis on the historical element tends to make criticism dull and pedantic. But it is also true that all values literary and moral are relative and the fact