EMAIL<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0SYLLABUS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0POLICIES<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0| QUESTIONS<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0|\u00a0PRESENTATIONS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0JOURNALS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0PAPER<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0EXAM<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Assigned: \u201cThe Buried Life\u201d (1356-58), \u201cDover Beach\u201d (1368-69), \u201cStanzas from the Grande Chartreuse\u201d (1369-74), \u201cPreface to Poems<\/em>\u201d (1374-84), Optional: \u201cThe Function of Criticism at the Present Time\u201d (1384-97).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Buried Life\u201d (1356-58)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. How can this poem be compared to Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cIntimations of Immortality\u201d? What is the speaker searching for that might compare to the object sought in \u201cIntimations\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. What is the \u201cburied life\u201d? Is it ever accessible, either in part or in full? What obstacles hinder us when we try to gain access to it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. What accusation does the speaker make against language? What is the relationship between language and emotional expression? What, if anything, does the speaker\u2019s treatment of language suggest about Arnold\u2019s view of poetry\u2019s therapeutic value? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. What solution does the poem offer for alleviating the individual\u2019s isolation and inability to render the world morally intelligible? Do you find that solution convincing? Why or why not? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDover Beach\u201d (1368-69)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Describe \u201cDover Beach\u201d as a Greater Romantic Lyric\u2014characterize the three stages as they occur specifically in Arnold\u2019s poem. Do you find the affective resolution convincing? Why or why not? (Note: Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cTintern Abbey\u201d is a good example of the type of lyric referenced: such poems follow a meditative scheme: a) description of a natural scene, b) analysis of the spiritual problem the scene brings to mind, and c) emotion-based resolution of the problem.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Explore Arnold\u2019s treatment of religion: What is the \u201cSea of Faith\u201d? How does the phrase \u201cbright girdle furled\u201d involve Carlyle\u2019s metaphor of clothes? What \u201csocial prophecy\u201d does Arnold make about the consequences of Europe\u2019s loss of Christian faith? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. How does the speaker\u2019s lament that \u201cthe world… \/ Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, \/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain\u201d amount to a rejection of Wordsworth\u2019s \u201creligion of nature\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. At what point does Arnold\u2019s mimetic description of nature turn into an investigation of emotional and spiritual matters? Why does he enlist the classical Greek tragedian Sophocles\u2014not the Romantic Wordsworth\u2014as his authority for doing so? How does Arnold reject Wordsworthian individualism? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStanzas from the Grande Chartreuse\u201d (1369-74)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. To what extent does this poem follow the pattern of a Greater Romantic Lyric? If it doesn\u2019t follow out all three stages, what stage does it partly or entirely lack? (Note: Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cTintern Abbey\u201d is a good example of the type of lyric referenced: such poems follow a meditative scheme: a) description of a natural scene, b) analysis of the spiritual problem the scene brings to mind, and c) emotion-based resolution of the problem.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. What does Arnold\u2019s speaker go to the Grande Chartreuse to find or recover? What problem does the poem articulate? Is the problem solely a matter of the speaker having lost religious faith, or something in addition to that? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 11. Matthew Arnold\u2019s speaker describes himself as \u201cWandering between two worlds, one dead, \/ The other powerless to be born\u201d (85-86). What might Carlyle offer as the antidote to this feeling of paralysis? What attitudes does this poem\u2019s speaker share with Carlyle? Still, why wouldn\u2019t a Carlyle-type solution be acceptable to Arnold? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPreface to 1853 Poems<\/em>\u201d (1374-84)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 12. What two standards must be met for a poetic representation to be considered \u201cinteresting\u201d or worthwhile (1505)? When is a representation not interesting? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 13. What are the \u201cexternal objects of poetry\u201d? How does a poet recognize an \u201cexcellent action\u201d (1506)? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 14. What, according to Arnold, is the \u201cradical difference\u201d between the poetical theory of the Greeks and the poetical theory of the modern age? (1507) Why is poetry based on Aristotelian poetic theory superior to modern poetry even in the subordinate area of rendering thought and character? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 15. What is the false aim for poetry that the \u201cmodern critic,\u201d according to Arnold, \u201cabsolutely prescribes\u201d (1509)? In explaining why he disagrees with modern critics, how does Arnold reject romantic self-consciousness and romantic poetics, at least insofar as he might describe them? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 16. A \u201cyoung writer having recourse to Shakespeare as his model\u201d runs what \u201cgreat risk\u201d (1509-10)? Why exactly, according to Arnold, is Shakespeare the great poet he is, and why is he nonetheless not a good model of excellence for young Victorian writers? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 17. What moral and intellectual effects does the study of the ancient writers have upon \u201cthose who constantly practice it\u201d (1512)? Why are those effects important both to individual students\/writers and the societies within which they live? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 18. General question: What threat, implied or directly stated, has Arnold written his \u201cPreface\u201d to counteract? In other words, what is driving him to promote Classical poetics and the values he attaches to those poetics? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Function of Criticism at the Present Time\u201d (1384-97)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 19. What is the nature of the \u201ccritical effort\u201d (1384), and what, according to Arnold, is the \u201chighest function of man\u201d (1385)? How do we know this to be so? Can criticism fulfill this highest function, or is it the case that only art can do so? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 20. On 1386, what are the elements with which literary genius works? What precisely is the \u201cgrand work\u201d of literary genius? What is it not? To what extent is literary genius therefore dependent upon the age in which it works?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 21. On 1386, what is the relationship between the \u201ccritical power\u201d and the \u201ccreative power\u201d? Why can\u2019t there be a truly great period of literary creation without criticism? What, for instance, was the problem with the romantics\u2019 exercise of their creative genius?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 22. How does Arnold analyze the French Revolution from pages 1387-88? What was the Revolution\u2019s greatest strength, and what was its \u201cgreatest error\u201d? How does this analysis of the Revolution relate to Arnold\u2019s claims about \u201cthe function of criticism at the present time\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 23. How is Edmund Burke\u2019s career, which Arnold refers to from 1389-90, an example of \u201cliving by ideas\u201d and therefore a counterbalance to the errors of the French Revolutionaries? How does Arnold explain his phrase \u201cliving by ideas\u201d (1390)? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 24. What notion \u201chardly enters into an Englishman\u2019s thoughts\u201d (1391)? How is this missing notion essential to criticism? How does Arnold define criticism and its goals on 1391-92? For example, what one word sums up the rule criticism ought to follow? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 25. What forces in current British life, according to Arnold, are getting in the way of intellectual progress? (1593-95)? What is his complaint about the newspaper headline \u201cWragg is in custody\u201d (1394)? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 26. What objections does Arnold anticipate from 1395 onwards against his view of British society\u2019s need for critical activity? What social vision is he offering\u2014who or what will be the agent of change, and when will that change come about? How does Arnold finally define criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 27. General question: how does Arnold compare to John Stuart Mill in the objects of his criticism? In what does he differ from Mill? <\/p>\n\n\n\n 28. Towards the end of \u201cThe Function of Criticism,\u201d Arnold describes his notions of the modern nation and the individual\u2019s place within it. How might those notions, for those who have read T. S. Eliot\u2019s claims about poetry and criticism in \u201cTradition and the Individual Talent,\u201d be a source for the later author\u2019s ideas? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Edition: <\/strong>Abrams, M. H. et al, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. <\/em>8th ed. Vol. E. New York: Norton, 2006. ISBN Package 2 (Vols. DEF) 0-393-92834-9. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MATTHEW ARNOLD QUESTIONS Assigned: \u201cThe Buried Life\u201d (1356-58), \u201cDover Beach\u201d (1368-69), \u201cStanzas from the Grande Chartreuse\u201d (1369-74), \u201cPreface to Poems\u201d (1374-84), Optional: \u201cThe Function of Criticism at the Present Time\u201d (1384-97). \u201cThe Buried Life\u201d (1356-58) 1. How can this poem be compared to Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cIntimations of Immortality\u201d? What is the speaker searching for that might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"wf_page_folders":[43],"class_list":["post-506","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4670,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/506\/revisions\/4670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}