A rnold, M atthew

Matthew Arnold (1822–88) was one of the most influential literary critics and cultural theorists in the nineteenth century. In the 1860s and early 1870s, he was a much admired poet, and he encouraged his contemporaries to practice the “grand style” in poetry and to aim, as he said the classical poets had, at “unity and profoundness of moral impression” (Arnold 1960–77, II:5, I:12). In Arnold's view, “poetry is at bottom a criticism of life,” and “the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life” (IX:46). He began his career as a school inspector, in part so that he could marry Frances Wightman, and by the 1860s had turned from poetry to literary and cultural criticism. Though his poetry is still widely anthologized, his criticism had become, by the late twentieth century, less a source of inspiration and insight than an object of controversy. As a literary critic, he focused on the ameliorative quality of literature and engaged in a vigorous debate with Thomas Huxley on the role literature should play in education. Arnold's provocative claim that great literature could fill the void created by the diminishing role of the Church of England, and thus serve as a source of social and moral guidance, influenced criticism well into the twentieth century, particularly the work of T. S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis. Despite the obscurity into which his criticism fell after the 1960s, Arnold's conception of culture had a profound effect on late twentieth‐century cultural studies (Young 1990; Said 1993; Pecora 1998).