The Poetical Works Of Matthew Arnold by C.B. Tinker, H.F. Lowry, ed.

by Matthew Arnold

1897. Complete edition with biographical introduction. 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. Arnold's works are divided into the following Early Poems; Narrative Poems; Sonnets; Lyric and Dramatic Poems; Elegiac Poems; Later Poems; and Additional Early Poems. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Genres: Poetry, Victorian, British Literature, 19th Century

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1867

About the author

Poems, such as "Dover Beach" (1867), of British critic Matthew Arnold express moral and religious doubts alongside his Culture and Anarchy , a polemic of 1869 against Victorian materialism.

Matthew Arnold, an English sage writer, worked as an inspector of schools. Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of rugby school, fathered him and and Tom Arnold, his brother and literary professor, alongside William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew...

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someone (I think it may have been Harold Bloom) referred to Matthew Arnold as the great amateur of Victorian poetry. Whoever said it, it fits. Arnold's verse is simple, unadorned and straightforward. This isn't a bad thing (far too many poets are pretentious and melodramatic), but the poetry never truly hits the high notes. Arnold's poetry also lives entirely in a single, melancholic key, which makes the whole of the works sort of blur together.

There are some good poems in here, though. I would especially point to the narrative poems, like "Balder Dead" and "The Church of Brou", as places where the plain style works with the conceit of the work.

The works that are set as meditations in a natural surrounding, like those about the author of Obermann, are much too reminiscent of a poor-man's Wordsworth.

[Sema Dural]

“Ne bir huzur, ne bir kesinlik, ne acıya çare var
Ne neşesi, ne sevgisi, ne ışığı gerçek”

[Bryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I am not mistaken, this is all the poetry that Arnold wrote in his lifetime, and thus it has gems such as the ever-famous "Dover Beach" and the new (to me) "Tristan and Isolde" and also a great many pieces which are, to my mind, what Orwell called "good bad poetry." These pieces function as poems, they have metre and rhyme and imagery, they are (Orwell again) "a graceful monument to the obvious" -- but they do not surprise, ever, they do not do that thing which I look for poetry to do, that translation of experience into words which, reading, recreates the experience. Nor do I think Arnold is trying to do that; in most of these poems he is trying to paint pictures (old-fashioned pictures full of incident and exciting scenery and stirring passions) with his words, to let his readers imagine themselves into other times and places. Or he is exploring an idea, something important to himself (and often very much of the time he lives in) about human destiny and personhood and individuality and the role of religion and public life in all of these things, and he is doing it in verse because he chooses to, not because verse is the only medium in which to think these thoughts; he could (and did) explore all kinds of ideas in prose. There is nothing wrong with this, but it does not hold up, for me, as poetry; I can no more compare his work to Jane Hirshfield's than I can compare either of them to, oh, Maggie Stiefvater's YA novels or Hilary Mantel's historical fiction. They are not trying to do the same thing, at all.

So why the three stars? On average, the thing Arnold is trying to do, he does well enough, and I enjoy it for what it is; I like his imagery and metaphors and he has turns of phrase which charm me. And, very occasionally, one of his poems rises to that real poetry for me -- I love "Dover Beach" too much to view it clearly or critically, if I came upon it for the first time now perhaps I would consign it to the 'not really poetry' bin with much of the rest, but for me it still resonates, it creates a moment of concrete experience in my mind that I believe in, whatever the circumstances of its composition or the message Arnold was trying to get across.