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Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy (1869), is one of the most celebrated works of social criticism ever written. It has become a reference point for all subsequent discussion of the relations between politics and culture.This edition establishes the authoritative text of this much-revised work, and places it alongside Arnold's three most important essays on political subjects.The introduction sets these works in the context of nineteenth-century intellectual and political history.This edition also contains a chronology of Arnold's life, a bibliographical guide and full notes on the names and historical events mentioned in the texts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Culture and Anarchy: the Collini Edition
Stefan Collini is surely foremost among today's Arnold scholars; his introduction to this volume earns the five stars along with the Arnold texts he has selected. While Collini does not think much of Arnold as a poet (which is probably not entirely fair), he is, no doubt, right in saying that as an essayist and social critic Arnold is most important to us today, and, quite possibly, was most important in his own time.

This volume contains more than just that seminal work, "Culture and Anarchy"; Collini has included two other essays of a clearly political character: "Democracy" (the introduction to one of Arnold's studies of continental education, "The Popular Education of France") and "Equality." In these essays we have a relatively clear statement that democracy was not only inevitable, but necessary,-- or, let us say, that as statements in support of democracy they are as clear as Arnold was capable of making.Arnold was a deft ironist, but like many ironists, his meaning is often obscure and all too frequently misread.As a result, Arnold is often placed among those Victorian intellectuals (Ruskin and Carlyle most notably) who are classed today as anti-democrats.These essays (certainly in the context given them by Collini's wonderful introduction) go a long way to establishing the incongruity of that assessment.Arnold did, however, foresee that the tension between equality and liberty would become a difficult point for democracy to navigate.His comments on these issues, no doubt, have made him sound to modern ears somewhat undemocratic; Collini is, I believe, right in recognizing that this is not the case.

A fourth essay in this edition comes as more than a small surprise; most critics would overlook "The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism" when searching for political or social texts in Arnold's collected works. Collini shows great insight in putting it, along with the central "Culture and Anarchy," in the political context of this volume. Arnold drew some censure in his own time for crossing the boundaries between literary and social criticism.No proper understanding of Arnold can be made without noting the degree to which he treated criticism as a generalizable quality to be applied freely to literature, politics, education and religion.

Arnold could be his own worst enemy, and his thinking can at times be a little too facile, a little too flippant, but he is never not engaging, not fascinating, not approachable. "Culture and Anarchy" is a collection of journal articles printed over a period of time. As Collini points out, Arnold, in the later chapters of "Culture and Anarchy", is responding to the critics of his earlier chapters; the "Preface" is best read where Collini puts it, at the end of the series, because it was written last, continuing the argument and the dialog of earlier chapters. The result of all this back and forth debate did not have the effect it might have had,-- that of losing Arnold in out-of-date and very local arguments. Instead, Arnold's discursiveness, his irony, his playful mind, keep his text engaging and lively.

As Collini points out elsewhere (in the wonderful little volume, now back in print, entitled simply "Arnold"), the quibbles that many post-modernists have had with Arnold today seem to be largely based on misreading or over-reading,-- in many respects Arnold was a notable precursor to post-modernism: his abundant use of irony, his urge for a free play of mind, his desire to see a text from multiple points of view, his comfortable explorations of his own subjective response to literature, his casual attachment to historicism, and his blurring of the line between politics and literature,-- all of these have their corollaries amongst today's literary critics.

At the same time, modern Arnoldians tend to overly simplify Arnold as much as do his detractors. Arnold's culture, when Arnold's discussion of it is at its best, was not a thing, not a collection of the best books, but a way of thinking about the world,-- "the best that has been thought and said" was not an end, but a tool to be used in critical and moral thinking; perfection not a thing to be attained, but an impetus to progressive thought; culture not an isolated, static monument, but a dynamic way of interacting with the modern world,-- it could, Arnold notably pointed out, be found in reading the daily newspaper, just as it could be found in the "modern" writings of ancient authors. Admittedly, at times, Arnold reduced culture to an end in itself,-- only to step back, and with his ever resourceful irony, put himself back upon the track of (to use his language from "Literature and Dogma") the method, having been too free with the secret. (I think Arnold was inclined to want to have it both ways,-- to let culture be both the thing to be attained and the means by which it was to be attained. The result is that he was not always consistent in his discussions of culture.)

Read him for how he thinks; read him as a precursor of and a counterpoint to today's critical meanderings; but do not read him as the apostle of culture, or as an exemplar of high seriousness, or as the quintessence of authority and elitism. Read him toward your own desire to become more perfect, but do not expect him to be perfect, and, certainly, do not expect that through him or through culture perfection is achievable (he knew it was not). Read him as he read the ancient Greeks, as a fellow citizen of the modern world.

His writing deserves this current excellent edition. Indeed, one cannot but reflect what a terrible shame it is that more of Arnold's writing is not available at the present time.

Matthew Arnold was one Cool Cat who knew where it was at (And he had the Coolest sideburns...)
Matthew Arnold is right up there with Tennyson and Browning as the most caracatured of the Victorian writers. He was a very wise and cool cat. He had the coolest sideburns since the likes of another boss cat, Aleksandr Pushkin, the founder of modern Russian Literature.

Arnold's social commentary is among the best prose of the Victorian age...and there's a lot to comment against in that era. Just read the beginning of Charles Dickens' Bleak House to know what I'm talking about.

Semi-sweetness and Light
This is probably the most important work of an important English social critic. Cambridge University does an admirable job with the text. Arnold lives today as a grotesque caricature. He is the bone-headed Neanderthal Terry Eagleton digs up just to bury again for a generation of English majors. This image could not possibly be more wrong. In his day, Arnold was known almost as well for his good-humor as for the critical phrases he coined. Arnold was a three dimensional human being, deeply afraid that materialism was breeding crassness, and that crassness would destroy the best in everything worth being and knowing in every culture in the world. Unlike Ruskin and Morris and Swinburne and others of the Victorian world, Arnold worked hard for a living, and yet still cared deeply for things beyond his daily bread. Students assigned this text shouldn't grumble. They might learn something very close to their own hearts. ... Read more

Product Description
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.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Politically Correct Yalies
Trendy revisionist garbage as to be expected from the Yale imprimature. This edition is strictly for collegial faculty club bores. Get the edition edited by Stefan Collini instead he's less interested in himself.

"...in praise of Culture..."
[From the Plains of Troy...
awakened from the dream]

[in his own words...]

"The whole scope of the essay is to recommend
culture as the great help out of our present
difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our
total perfection by means of getting to know,
on all matters which most concern us, the best
which has been thought and said in the world,
and, through this knowledge, turning a stream
of fresh and free thought upon our stock
notions and habits, which we now follow

staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining
that there is a virtue in following them
staunchly which makes up for the mischief
of following them mechanically."
* * * * * * * * *

"Culture, which is the study of perfection,
leads us, as we in the following pages have
shown, to conceive of true human perfection
as a HARMONIOUS perfection, developing all
sides of our humanity; and as a GENERAL
perfection, developing all parts of our
society.For if one member suffer, the
other members must suffer with it; and
the fewer there are that follow the true
way of salvation, the harder that way is
to find."
* * * * * * * * *

"Now, and for us, it is a time to Hellenise,
and to praise KNOWING; for we have Hebraised
too much, and have over-valued DOING.But the
habits and discipline received from Hebraism
remain for our race an eternal possession;
and, as humanity is constituted, one must never
assign them the second rank to-day, without
being ready to restore them to the first rank
to-morrow.To walk staunchly by the best
light one has, to be strict and sincere
with oneself, not to be of the number of
those who say -- and do not; to be in
earnest, -- this is the discipline by which
alone man is enabled to rescue his life
from thraldom to the passing moment and
to his bodily senses, to ennoble it, and
to make it eternal."
* * * * * * * * *

Note for the fashion con-science
This edition is preferable to the gimmicky version published by Yale, where the original text is lost beneath the imposition of leftist ideologues.

A Breeze of Sanity
So much of modern criticism has go so far afield, that the appellation has almost lost any sense to it. To recapture what criticism meant before the novel, but useless ideas of structuralism, post-structuralism,deconstruction, post-modernism, et alia, Matthew Arnold is about as good aplace to begin. His "Function of Criticism" and "Anarchy andCrticism" have become classics, even if they've been hidden from sightby academicians' self-serving agendas to bring nothing to light. This isn'ta "conservative" vs. "liberal" thing, but an"intelligible and meaningful" vs. "labyrinthine andcockamamie" thing. Arnold is like encountering hermeneutics by havingfirst visited Thomas Aquinas, or having studied democracy by having firststudied Hobbes. Arnold is a seminal thinker, crtic, and student of the artsand society. He belongs in criticism's lexicon well before de Saussure,Derrida, Lacan, at alia.

For anyone hoping to grasp the roots of modern conservatism
Matthew Arnold, a British poet and critic, wrote on the importance of culture in this work.He defined culture, famously, as "sweetness and light" - implying that culture represented everything good, everythingnot barbaric.The work is most important for the way it forwards thenotion of an "organic" society - that is, a society that evolvesslowly, that grows into maturity, that does not strive for sudden"advances" led by experts working all at once to implement greatchange.For anyone wondering about the relationship between modernconservatism and classical Liberalism, this is a decent place to start. "I am a Liberal," Arnold writes in the introduction, "yet Iam a Liberal tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement, and Iam, above all, a believer in culture."If you wish to take anintellectual journey from Burke to Bork, Arnold must make up one leg ofyour trip. ... Read more

Product Description
Matthew Arnold (1822-88), the leading man-of-letters of the Victorian age, has been the decisive influence on modern thinking about literature and criticism and his work has become an inescapable cultural reference point today.

In this stylish and entertaining book Stefan Collini examines the whole range of Arnold's literary, social, and religious criticism as well as his poetry, placing them in the context of the major intellectual controversies of the nineteenth century. By attending to the distinctive power of Arnold's writing to charm, tease, persuade, and irritate, the book provides a brilliant characterization of the tone and temper of his mind.

This edition includes a substantial Afterword which reflects on Arnold's continuing polemical significance and his role in contemporary cultural debate. ... Read more

Product Description
This selection of poems and prose is invaluable in showing the "unity in diversity" of Arnold's creative intelligence, which probed in powerful lyrics the maladies of the modern condition. These poems join here with provocative essays on education, society, and religion, including his major central work, "The Study of Poetry," to provide a unique introduction to one of the major critics of the eighteenth century. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1906 edition by Henry Frowde, London, New York and Toronto. The World's Classics. LXXXV ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Culture; Great Britain; History / Europe / Great Britain; History / Civilization; Literary Collections / Essays; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural; Social Science / Sociology / General; ... Read more

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Originally published in 1905. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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"In two small volumes of Poems, published anonymously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the Poems which compose the present volume have already appeared. The rest are now published for the first time.I have, in the present collection, omitted the poem[2] from which the volume published in 1852 took its title. I have done so, not because the subject of it was a Sicilian Greek born between two and three thousand years ago, although many persons would think this a sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists[3] to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there are entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient at least to indicate. What those who are familiar only with the great monuments of early Greek genius suppose to be its exclusive characteristics, have disappeared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared; the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet and of Faust." ... Read more

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Work from the well known English poet and literary critic. ... Read more

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INTRODUCTIONA Short Life of ArnoldArnold the PoetArnold the CriticChronological List of Arnold's WorksContemporary AuthorsBibliographySELECTIONS FROM ARNOLD'S POETICAL WORKSNARRATIVE POEMSSohrab and RustumSaint BrandanThe Forsaken MermanTristram and IseultLYRICAL POEMSThe Church of BrouRequiescatConsolationA DreamLines written in Kensington GardensThe Strayed RevellerMoralityDover BeachPhilomelaHuman LifeIsolation--To MargueriteKaiser DeadThe Last Word... ... Read more

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Originally published in ca. 1900.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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1909. Although remembered now for his elegantly argued critical essays, Arnold was a Victorian-era poet. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the legendary headmaster of Rugby School who was celebrated in the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays. His poem, Dover Beach, (contained in this volume) with its depiction of a nightmarish world from which the old religious verities have receded, is sometimes held up as an early, if not the first, example of the modern sensibility. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. ... Read more

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Designed for the pastor and Bible teacher, the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament examines the biblical text in its originalenvironment. Notable evangelical scholars carefully attend to grammatical detail, literary context, rhetorical flow, theological nuance, and historical setting in their interpretation. Critical scholarship informs each step, but does not dominate the commentary, allowing readers to concentrate on the biblical author's message as it unfolds. While primarily designed for those witha basic knowledge of biblical Greek, all who strive to understand and teach the New Testament will find this series beneficial. The general editor for this enterprising series is Clinton E. Arnold The following focused sections help readers understandthe text:Literary Context: Explains how each passage functions within the bookMain Idea: Summarizes the central message of the passageTranslation in Graphic Layout: Presents a translation through a diagram that helps readers visualize the flow of thought within the textExegetical Outline: Gives the overall structure of the passageExplanation of the Text: Provides interpretive insights into the background and meaning of the textTheology in Application: Discusses how the message of the text fits within the book itself and in a broader biblical-theological context, suggesting applicationsfor the church today ... Read more