Talk:Matthew Arnold

message: Possible Future Sections:
* Arnoldian Phrases -- Arnold coined (or borrowed) so many unique phrases that a listing of them with their context in A's writings, his sources for them, and some comments from the scholars could be quite valuable  (need link to sweetness and light) Mddietz (talk)
* Critical Response -- this may come out sufficiently in the Writings sections not to need a separate section
* Legacy -- considering the exteremes of response to A's writings and the degree to which he has become a whipping boy for post-modernists, and been rather curiously misread by today's "culture critics" this seems a very necessary section
* A table of the major prose writings and the volume of CPW in which they occur.
* I have removed all but one of the trivia items, that item probably can be absorbed into Legacy once it is added.  I note that other pages have attempted to eliminate such sections.  Perhaps best we ultimately do away with it.  I should point out I did not remove the other trivia items, I absorbed them into the Career and Life section.
Mddietz 19:15, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Arnold frequently uses the definition of the State which he ascribes to Burke: "the community [the people] in its [their] collective and corporate character."  The conception is Burkean, but the precise definition apparently is not.
Mddietz 23:06, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Organization of Article

message: I have just completed a significant rewrite of the life and career section.  I have generally tried to stay very NPOV.  I included nothing on his children and would like to add in a few comments on them at some point.  Most of his major writings are noted, although a handful of his major poems, such as "Dover Beach," may need to be worked back in.  At least we now bring him up to his deathbed which the earlier version oddly left unmentioned -- perhaps with the idea that, like the scholar gypsy, he might yet be out there somewhere haunting wayside inns. Mddietz 18:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A familiar figure at the Athenaeum Club, a frequent diner-out and guest at great country houses, fond of fishing and shooting, a lively conversationalist, affecting a combination of foppishness and Olympian grandeur, he read constantly, widely, and deeply, and in the intervals of supporting himself and his family by the quiet drudgery of school inspecting, filled notebook after notebook with meditations of an almost monastic tone. In his writings, he often baffled and sometimes annoyed his contemporaries by the apparent contradiction between his urbane, even frivolous manner in controversy, and the "high seriousness" of his critical views and the melancholy, almost plaintive note of much of his poetry.
Mddietz 21:28, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

text: How about heading the marriage and career section: "Her majesty's inspector of schools"? Mddietz (talk) 20:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Life and career

message: I am thinking that we need to sub-divide Arnold's Writings under at least three heads in order to make sense out of this section.  The three heads should probably be: poetry, literary criticism, and social and religious criticism.  (The latter could include his writing on education, although that might stand under a separate head--it is significant but seldom attended to.)  Stefan Collini uses a similar organization for his book on Arnold. 
I also think at some point this article needs a section on critical response. Mddietz 22:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Retraité, thank you for your comments.  I have been a little inactive the last few weeks because I have another project (i.e. my doctoral dissertation on Arnold) that needs my urgent attention and from which I stole some time to work on this article.  Nonetheless, I hope to come back to this site eventually.  I fully agree with you on Arnold's importance to education. Having educational writing as a fourth prose category may really be the right thing to do.  Collini in his wonderful little book on Arnold has chapters on the other three (literature, social and religious), but not on education which has been very largely ignored by the critics, or simply subsumed into his social/political writings.  In addition to the continental studies (which I agree are of the utmost importance); Arnold's reports as a school inspector were published in the 1890s (I believe) and are quite interesting; he gave testimony before several commissions of parliament including testimony in opposition to the examination processes which were used to determine school funding (very much like NCLB in the US today); he wrote several significant periodical articles in addition to "French Eton" & "Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," notably "The Twice-Revised Code," and "Schools in the Reign of Queen Victoria," and, of course, "Culture and Ananrchy," amongst others, has a significant educational turn to it.  His relationship to education issues extended well beyond what he himself thought it would when early in life he wrote to his mother that he doubted he would follow in his father's footsteps.  The Nash article is a new one on me,-- I shall have to look it up.  Please do not dispare if nothing happens on your recommendation right away; I shall be a month or two finishing up my other project. Mddietz 23:02, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Writings: General

message: I should like to rework this section as a series of comments on Arnold's major poems, although my list is clearly too long at this point and will need to be pared down.  Some of these poems are sufficiently significant that they could be treated to their own listing, as is Dover Beach already. If they have their own page, they should need only a brief statement and a link.
Dramatic
* Empedocles on Etna (really deserves its own page)
* Merope (even A. knew it was not that good)
Narrative
* Forsaken Merman (highly appreciated when it first appeared, gets much less attention now)
* Mycerinus 
* Sohrab and Rustum (high priority, could perhaps qualify for its own page; it is generally regarded as A's most successful venture in an epic mode, as A. intended it to be; the battle between father and son has led to much pseudo-Freudian readings)
* Sick King in Bokhara (a lot of commentary on it)
* Balder Dead (another attempt at an epic poem, it fails but has its moments)
* Tristram and Iseult (another that is generally held to be failure, but it, too, has its moments)
Sonnet
* Shakespeare (often anthologized, but not so highly thought of by the critics)
* To a Republican Friend & Continued (to Clough; interesting poems, worth including if only for their links to Clough and Arnold's politics)
Lyric
* In Utrumque Paratus
* The New Sirens (got a positive review from Michael Rossetti in the Germ)
* Fausta: Resignation (contains some of A's most important thoughts on poetry)
* Switzerland (the Marguerite poems; absolutely essential, the absence of any mention of them in the current article considerably lessens the authority of the article)
* Strayed Reveller (high priority, an important poem that needs to be discussed)
* Calais Sands
* Faded Leaves (another series)
* Dover Beach (has a page of its own already, but that page needs more discussion of the allusions, the dating problems etc. and the nonsense statement in it that the Greek connection is largely irrelevant must be removed)
* The Buried Life (one of A's most admired poems)
* Lines Written In Kensington Garden
Elegy
* The Scholar Gypsy (highly anthologized and still a much admired poem, should have its own page)
* Thyrsis (highly anthologized memorial for Clough, perhaps should have its own page)
* Memorial Verses (already mentioned in Life and Career)
* A Southern Night and Stanzas from Carnac (both written for his brother William, could be added to the Life and Career)
* Haworth Churchyard (a not entirely failed experiement in meter; built off of his brief meeting with C. Bronte)
* Rugby Chapel (high priority; written in response to a crticism of his father)
* Heine's Grave
* Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (quite important, "between two worlds", etc.)
* Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann" and Obermann Once More (the Senacour connection)
Bolded titles = candidates for their own page -- I should say that I have tried to select poems that I think have a sufficient "back story."  Several of these poems are significant as "meeting grounds" for nineteenth century and even twentieth century dialogs on poetry.  Dover Beach is an example of this, although one would not know this by the current article.  See, however, Collini's comment I have appended to the beginning of the poetry section here.
I'm sure I've left some out that may need to be considered, but as is I don't think all of these can be done justice here, I'm not sure we need any more.  However, if someone reads this and has a strong feeling for an unmentioned poem... Mddietz 18:45, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I absolutely agree that Sohrab and Rustum should have its own page and that the Dover Beach article needs a little reworking. I don't have time to look at it until I get back home in mid-August, but would be happy to collaborate after that. Dover Beach is one of my all-time favourite poems.--Guinevere50 07:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Writings: Poetry

message: This is the infamous final version of the caveat from the Dover Beach page.  I nominate it for inclusion on this page.  I myself feel it needs much editing before it will fit comfortably on the page, so I vote nay on its inclusion.  But so as not to be unilateral in my actions I will place it here and await the verdict of the masses who attend to this page daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, millenially...Mddietz 23:35, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Arnold's thoughts on the analysis of poetry

message: I recently was searching through ABE books for books on or by Arnold when I was a little shocked to see the first paragraph of wikipedia used to describe Arnold.  Well, not so much shocked at this particular usage which I know is fairly common practice,-- what really shocked me was that the final sentence of that opening paragraph was that which I had written to try to explain sage writer:
:Matthew Arnold has also been characterized as a sage writer, a type of writer who speaks from a presumed position of moral authority, chastising and instructing the reader on contemporary social issues.
Out of context this sentence sounds very peculiar and oddly abusive.  It reads more like a critique of Arnold than a neutral positioning.  This has been my problem all along with this term (sage writer).  I felt it might be best for now to move this sentence to a new section entitled critical response.  As a genre, sage writing, really feels rather all too heavy-handed.  I am currently reading Landow's book, perhaps that will help me understand this genre better and provide a less judgmental definition of it.  
Two words here which I took from the sage writing article in Wikipedia are, to my mind, very loaded: "presumed" and "chastising"; another term, "moral authority" can be neutral, but has grown increasingly to suggest a suspect position.  Moreover, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the definition here seems to suggest that sage writing is NOT sagacious, but, rather, desirous of being perceived as sagacious; the term itself seems to demand an ironic reading; it almost seems to be closer to "writing that is presumed by its author to be sagely, but that is of questionable sagacity."  It is almost as if we were to suggest two types of satirical genres: satire and satyr, the latter being that which wishes to be perceived as satirical, but fails to achieve its satirical end.  Such a judgment is best left ot the critic, not to the genre.  Mddietz (talk) 19:36, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sagacity 

message: Andycjp, thank you for your editing of the religious criticism section.  However, the result is not, I believe, consistent with Arnold's writings on the subject.  Arnold did not reject religion, he rejected that in religion which he regarded as superstitious (maybe that is the way the article should be phrased).  He uses the word "superstition" in much of his writing on religion, see particularly "Culture and Anarchy" and "Literature and Dogma."  Can you explain the change you have made in light of Arnold's writings or an accepted commentator on Arnold?  Did you think this with an insertion of the wiki editor's own feelings about religion?  (I can assure you it was not.)  Did you think it could be written better?  (I would agree with that whole-heartedly; I don't think this paragraph is well written at all, and I had a hand in writing it.) I have reverted your change, but I would agree some change in the article may be needed.  Regards, Mark Dietz Mddietz (talk) 18:49, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Superstition 

message: Dear, 24.177.123.144, thank you for the new additions.  However, They do not read quite right to me.  Arnold delivered three lectures during his first visit to America.  One on Emerson, one on education (particularly on what C. P. Snow would call the Two Cultures: Science and Literature; it was a response to an essay by Arnold's friend, T H Huxley), and one entitled "The Remnant" on how the few must be responsible for helping the many (a paper which has gained him a healthy portion of his reputation as an elitist).  Your summary does not quite fit these papers.
On his death, he was running to catch a street tram that would take him to the Liverpool landing stage where he would meet his daughter who had just come from Liverpool.  (See Honan's excellent narrative of this event in his now standard biography.) Mddietz (talk) 15:22, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent additions 

message: Johnbod has just removed two categories form this page: Theologian and Radical Theologian.  I almost did the same myself.  Arnold did not regard himself as a theologian, but rather as a literary critic, when he wrote Literature and Dogma and his many other essays focused on religious issues.  Of course, this raises the question of what does it mean to be a theologian, but I fully support Johnbod's decision. Mddietz (talk) 20:05, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theologian 

message: While the film, The Buried Life, is interesting (at least as a concept, I have not seen it), I am not sure that it is that relevant to Arnold.  He has had far more significant impact on culture than this.  Perhaps as part of a listing for the poem The Buried Life (which is not on Wikipedia yet), a mention of the film would be more appropriate. Mddietz (talk) 14:20, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  This Buried Life 

message: I am pretty sure it was Matthew Arnold who described religion as " morality plus"; this definition could go in the section headed "Religious criticism". ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:46, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Arnold's thoughts on religion

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