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Matthew Arnold's famous series of essays, which were first published in book form under the title Culture and Anarchy in 1869, debate important questions about the nature of culture and society.Arnold seeks to find out what culture really is, what good it can do, and if it is really necessary.He contrasts culture, which he calls the study of perfection, with anarchy, the mood of unrest and uncertainty that pervaded mid-Victorian England.
This edition reproduces the original book version, revealing the immediate historical context and controversy of the piece.The introduction and notes broaden out the interpretative approach to Arnold's text, elaborating on the complexities of the religious context.The book also reinforces the continued importance of Arnold's ideas its influences in the face of the challenges of multi-culturalism and post-modernism.
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Witty, ironic, and irrepressible classic
This was probably Arnold's greatest work, and it can still be read with profit today. Mainly a reaction to the social and cultural uncertainties of mid-Victorian England, Arnold attempted to analyze and solve the problem of anarchy and cultural uncertainty as he saw it in this witty and articulate collection of essays. The U.S. is in a similar uncertain state today, but unfortunately we're more likely to see more false pundits pandering nonsense rather than another Matthew Arnold, whose intelligence, wit, and uncommon sense seem to be all too rare today in this country. As the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it, "Arnold saw in the idea of "the State," and not in any one class of society, the true organ and repository of the nation's collective "best self." No summary can do justice to this extraordinary book; it can still be read with pure enjoyment, for it is written with an inward poise, a serene detachment, and an infusion of mental laughter, which make it a masterpiece of ridicule as well as a searching analysis of Victorian society. The same is true of its unduly neglected sequel, Friendship's Garland (1871)." ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Volume 2 of this six volume set covers the years 1860-65, when Arnold emerged as a critic and went on to consolidate his reputation. His letters record his impressions of Europe on an official school study, with observations of nature within and nature without. ... Read more

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A Worthy Successor to Trilling
Matthew Arnold was a man who valued his privacy so much that he often wrote and acted as if his well-known persona of pessimism were a wall behind which he could safely contemplate society.Thus, it may not be overly surprising that until recently the only competent biography of Arnold was by Lionel Trilling.In his preface to MATTHEW ARNOLD, Trilling bluntly states that he is more interested in the growth of Arnold the ideologist rather than Arnold the man.In 1981, Park Honan came along to provide a much needed corrective with his MATTHEW ARNOLD: A LIFE.This latter work is a massive yet highly readable text made possible only because Honan had access to numerous sources denied to Trilling.What emerges to the patient reader is a glimpse of the accretion of ideas that were influenced by the very few individuals who shaped his perception of society. Honan has much to say of these who include Arnold's father, Dr. Thomas Arnold; his wife, Fanny Wightman; the mysterious "Marguerite" of the Switzerland poems; and a protracted hot and cold male bonding relationship with Arthur Clough.

Arnold's popularity with his reading public was not very high, at least during his early career.Honan skillfully portrays a man who is at distinct odds with his predecessors and contemporaries. It is easy to see why a public, spoiled on the humanistic and optimistic Romantic spirit, would have much trouble warming up to a writer who forced the Victorians from their smug sense of complacency. And it is this preoccupation of Arnold, his insistence on "wandering between two worlds," that stamps him as one of the most atypical thinkers of the day. Honan indicates that it was not enough for Arnold to be merely different from the classicism of Tennyson or the unbridled optimism of Browning.Rather Arnold saw his life in stages--the subdued melancholy of "Alaric at Rome" was to deepen into an all consuming world weariness that was to encompass "Empedocles on Etna."

It would be too glib, implies Honan, to insinuate that The Sorrows of Young Arnold sprang full blown from nowhere.Honan's early chapters chronicle the training in classics that the child Arnold was expected to master.And master them he did.Arnold was writing poetry in Latin at an age in which other boys barely knew the rudiments of English.Behind this forced fed education lay the impetus that put Arnold on a track from he could never quite get derailed: the imposing presence of his father.Trilling and Honan are not the only ones who have wondered just how far Thomas Arnold's influence pervades the canon of his son's thoughts.It is difficult not to read autobiography into the death of Sohrab at the hands of his father Rustum.Honan seems determined to show that the relationship of the father to the son's writings is not a mere casual link--rather he posits it as one of the central links.

Possibly the most interesting part of the book is Honan's appraisal of Arnold's oft overlooked "true" career, that of a school inspector.Low pay and prodigious hours combined to limit his output.Honan clearly shows the link between this diminution and those factors which contributed to it: job fatigue, the death of Clough, and perhaps most significantly his increasing preoccupation with social and literary criticism.

There are no major flaws to Honan's book and very few minor ones either.It seems almost nitpicking to wish that Honan had spent less time and fewer pages on the childish pranks of a seven year old Matthew and more time on a closer reading of his essays.What emerges by the end is the realization that Trilling's decision some decades earlier to focus on Arnold the ideologist rather than on Arnold the man is nicely counterbalanced by Honan's eminently successful attempt at the reverse.
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Contains essays on poetry and English rule of Ireland
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Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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A selection from Arnold's writing on education, other than Culture and Anarchy. All the pieces stem from his work as Inspector of Schools: they illustrate his concern both with the principles that must be established as a basis for the education of an industrial democracy and his practical concern with the day-to-day running of schools. 'Democracy' was first published as the introduction to The Popular Education of France. It faces the fundamental political problems and outlines the general objectives of a state educational system. 'A French Eton' was the result of the same examination of French education to see what the British could learn from it; here he considers private education for the middle-classes. 'The twice-revised code' criticises the national Revised Code of 1862: a system founded on gross utilitarianism. Extracts from Arnold's reports as an inspector show the man of principle at work in particular circumstances and relating what he sees to what he would wish to see. The speech on his retirement comments on his lifetime of active involvement in education. ... Read more

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A volume in Research in Curriculum and InstructionSeries Editor: O. L. Davis, Jr. The University of Texas at AustinMatthew Arnold, 19th century English poet, literary critic and school inspector, felt that each agehad to determine that philosophy that was most adequate to its own concerns and contexts. Thisstudy looks at the influence that Matthew Arnold had on John Dewey and attempts to fashion aphilosophy of education that is adequate for our own peculiarly awkward age. Today, Arnold andDewey are embraced by opposing political positions. Arnold, as the apostle of culture, is oftenadvocated by conservative educators who see in him a support for an education founded on greatbooks and Victorian values, while Dewey still has a notably liberal coloring and is not too infrequentlytarred for the excesses of progressive education, even those for which he bears no responsibilityat all. Both, no doubt, are misread by those who rather carelessly use them as idols for theirown politics of education.This study proposes a pluralistic approach to education in which pluralism means not only plurality of voices, but also plurality of processes.Using a model built out of a study of rhetoric and hermeneutics, four aspects of mind are indentified that draw Arnold andDewey into close correspondence. These aspects are the tentacle mind (using Dewey's favorite metaphor for breaking down the barrierbetween mind and body), the critical mind (which builds on the concepts of criticism that animated both Arnold and Dewey's approachto experience), the intentional mind (which attempts a long overdue rehabilitation of the concept of authority and an expansion upon theincreasingly apparent limitations of reader-response theory) and the reflective-response mind (in which the contemplative mind istreated to that active quality that makes it more a true instrumentality and less an obscuring mechanism of isolation).Dewey echoed Matthew Arnold who himself echoed so many of the voices that preceded andwere contemporary with his own. Theirs were awkward echoes, as all such echoes invariablyare. They caught at the intentionality of those voices they echoed, trying for nearness, buthoping, at least, for adequacy. Awkward, but adequate, is what this study offers, but it maywell be what we most need right now. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more