Mathew Arnold-Study of Poetry

Mathew Arnold 

        Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was born at Laleham on the  hames, the eldest son of Thomas Arnold, historian and great headmaster of Rugby, and of  ary (Penrose) Arnold. He was educated at Winchester; Rugby, where he won a prize for a poem on "Alaric at Rome"; and Oxford, to which he went as a Scholar of Balliol College in 1841, and where he won the Newdigate Prize for "Cromwell, A Prize Poem," and received a Second Class in litterae humaniores, to the regret though hardly to the surprise of his friends. Always outwardly a worldling, he had not yet revealed the "hidden ground of thought and of austerity within" which was to appear in his poetry. "During these years," writes Thomas Arnold the younger in Passages in a Wandering Life, "my brother was cultivating his poetic gift carefully, but his exuberant, versatile nature claimed other satisfactions. His keen bantering talk made him something of a social lion among Oxford men, he even began to dress fashionably."

Study of Poetry

1. Write about the one idea of Mathew Arnold which you find interesting and relevant in our time. 

Ans.  'A study of poetry ' is a critical essay by Mathew Arnold. He gives definition of poetry that " Poetry is the criticism of life " .   It is true that poet is critic of life and this definition is a very relevant in our time.

He also  discussed the idea of disinterested or detachment.  .He says that the critic must be absolutely impartial without any prejudice or bias against or in favor of any particular author. Disinterested on the part of the critic implies freedom from all the prejudice,  personal and historical . 

2. Write about one idea of Mathew Arnold which you find out of date and irrelevant in our time. 

Ans.  Mathew Arnold 's idea about " Touch - Stone  Method "  is out of date and irrelevant in our time because Arnold's touchstone method is a comparative method of criticism.  This method is comparison and analysis as two primary tools for judging individual poet. Even a single  line or selected quotation will serve the purpose, if the other works moves us in the same way as these lines and expression do, then it is a great work otherwise not. so it is not appropriate in present time and it is not appropriate way to passing judgement on the bases of comparison with others because time and situation always changing...