Study of poetry (original) (raw)
Abstract Mathew Arnold is an important critic of English Literature. Before him, English criticism was in fog, and whatever criticism we find, is more based on personal notions than on any consistent methods. Dryden is regarded as the first critic of English, but his criticism is based on personal notion- sympathy and knowledge rather than on any formula. It is the reason that even in his age, the authority of Aristotle remained unquestioned. The romantic critics besides their rich criticism were more lost in their theory of imagination and lo e for metaphysis. It is in Arnold that English literature could have a critic of real nature, who laid down certain principles following which poetry could be criticized. Herbert Paul very pertinently remarks, “Mr. Arnold did not merely criticize books himself. He taught others how to criticize. He laid down principles; if he did not always keep the principles he laid down. Nobody, after reading “Essays in Criticism” has any excuse for not being a critic.” Key Words: Mathew Arnold, Critic, Functions of Poetry
In Search of the Golden Light: The Classicism of Matthew Arnold in his Essay “The Study of Poetry”
Journal of Literature Languages and Linguistics, 2015
Poetry is one of the genres of literature that has been given considerable critical attention it so deserves from the classical time to our modern era. It has found expressions and critical commentaries in the works of both poets and non-poets alike. Poetry as a branch of literature has its antecedent in the early Greek practices with which they sought to project their worldview and understand themselves better. From study, poetry originated among the early Greek classical writers. It originated from two major essence, one being man's love for imitation, the other from man's love for music and harmony. Overtime, poetry has survived from the early practices, in the praise singing poise and worship of their gods to find better expression in several issues as it relates and affects life. Poetry as we see today across cultures, countries and continents has undergone several linguistic influences and cultural readjustment in its bid to satisfy the yearning taste of the given society and for its fuller understanding and appreciation. This could account for the varieties of forms, components and manner of poetic composition evident in the poetry of many poets that exist in a homogenous society. More than any other poet, Matthew Arnold was bothered about the true nature of poetry and what from his perspective poetry ought to take. This paper studied Matthew Arnold's concept of poetry and the classical qualities he outlined in his Study of Poetry which he believes is the real grandeur and ingredient that makes poetry great, unique and been sought after over and over again. CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
Three Critical Approaches in Literary Criticism: An Example Analysis on Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach
ANAPHORA: Journal of Language, Literary and Cultural Studies, 2020
To approach a work of literature can be done in different ways. Some approaches can be used to analyze a literary work, such as psychological, historical, sociological, etc. To analyze one literary work, more than one approach can be applied. This article is an example of analyzing a poem, Mattew Arnold's Dover Beach from three different critical positions, the formalist, the sociological, and psychoanalytical. The formalist critics view work as a timeless aesthetic object. We may find whatever we wish in the work as long as what we find is in the work itself The sociological critic views that to understand Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’, we must know something about the major intellectual social current of Victorian England and how Arnold responded to them. All psychoanalytic critics assume that the development of the psyche in humans is analogous to the development of the physique. ‘Dover Beach’ is richly suggestive of the fundamental psychic dilemma of man in civilization.
Literary Criticism and the Poet's Autonomy
Destrée/A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics, 2015
The fact that the term "aesthetics" was only introduced into philosophic discourse by Alexander Baumgarten in 1735 is regarded by some historians of the subject as a sign that the ancient Greeks were not much interested in questions about the nature of beauty and the arts. (For them, ta aisthêtika would have suggested sense perception in general.) Other historians treat this fact as a factoid, a historical curiosity that need not stand in the way of assuming that the ancients responded to works of art in ways much like ourselves and confronted the same problems as we do when we try to think about beauty and art. The problem with this reasonable assumption is that it is hard to amass many actual texts that deal directly with the subject: most ancient discussions of issues we would define as aesthetic are embedded in works devoted to quite other topics, especially politics, ethics, or metaphysics. Thus Kristeller's much-quoted denial that the ancients had anything comparable to modern aesthetics remains a challenge: "ancient writers and thinkers, though confronted with excellent works of art and quite susceptible to their charm, were neither able nor eager to detach the aesthetic quality of these works of art." 1 The present chapter hopes to throw light on this question by turning from the Greeks' philosophies of art to their literary criticism. The daily, practical business of commenting on poems, interpreting them, and evaluating them implied the existence of standards for evaluating literature. This was especially so in the "agonistic" musical culture of the Greeks, which regularly set one poem against another in a competition to see which was the "finest" ( kallistos: Ford 2002, 272-293). Already in the Archaic period, the most prestigious performances of Homeric epic took the form of competitions among professional reciters (rhapsôidoi), and the Athenian contests in tragic, comic, and dithyrambic poetry are well known; amateurs exchanging songs at drinking parties often turned to singing games. All such events raised the question, whether explicitly or implicitly, of what criteria to use when declaring one poem " finest" of all. I propose to study closely two texts from Classical Athens in which the question of standards is discussed. The pair is notable for suggesting that works of verbal art ought to be judged on their own terms. Taken together and set in context, the texts suggest that, in practice if not always in theory, the ancients recognized an aesthetic dimension to literature to a far greater extent than is sometimes allowed. In criticism, the possibility of a literary aesthetics emerges most clearly in the question of whether poets have any autonomy in the sense of immunity to certain kinds of objections
CLASSICAL CRITICISM: A CRITICAL ENQUIRY
Abstract Literary creation and criticism are two significant facets of human life. Creation is almost as old as human history and criticism is nearly as old as literature. The study of literature requires the knowledge of contexts as well as texts. What kind of person wrote the poem, the play, the fiction and the essay? What forces acted upon them as they wrote? What was the historical, the political, the economic and the cultural background? Was the writer accepting or rejecting the literary convention of time, or developing them, or creating entirely new kinds of literary expression? Are there interactions between literature and art, music or architecture of its periods? Was the writer affected by contemporaries or isolated? The present paper is an attempt to interpret the answers by the critical enquiry of classical criticism. The classicists form the foundations of contemporary theories of criticism. Key Words: I
The History, Nature, and Functions of Literary Criticism -A Brief Survey
Literary Herald, 2023
This study purports to enquire into the history, nature, and function of literary criticism. The function of criticism and the role of the critics change from time to time. This study also explores Aristotle"s conception of tragedy as the perfect form of art. Aristotle"s Poetics (1961) offers an account of what he calls poetry, which is a synthesis of a poet, author, comedy, tragedy, lyric poetry, epic poetry and that they are all imitations but in different ways. It is through imitation that man acquires knowledge, and the end of knowledge is pleasure. Aristotle"s Poetics defines poetry from the point of view of aesthetics and poetry is primarily a structure. This insistence on structure is the central point of Aristotle"s Poetics. Plato, who was endowed with literary gifts, looked at all the problems with a lofty mind. He believed that all earthly things are mere copies of the ideal which exists only in heaven.
Matthew_Arnolds_Epics_Dissertation.pdf
Matthew Arnold’s Epics: Towards a Communicative Approach, 2019
This thesis is, on the one hand, an investigation into Matthew Arnold’s (1822-1888) literary communications and, on the other hand, an attempt to mediate between his writings and a twenty-first century readership. Arnold’s oeuvre is substantial and varied, but this study focuses on his epic poetry, which has remained a neglected part of his body of work despite its significance both to the author himself and to developing an understanding of Arnold’s development as a poet, cultural critic, and iconic ‘Victorian sage’. Furthermore, it is his epic poetry that seems to most fully address the theme of communication, and thus these longer poems function as points of orientation for a broader inquiry into Arnold’s communications. Arnold himself was keenly aware of the complicated status of communicative acts, but these complications have not always been acknowledged by the generations of criticism that have emerged since his death. Critics have thus produced images of Arnold which have not always done justice to the complexity of his communications. Based on an understanding of ‘communicative’ as a position of mediation between writers and readers, this thesis addresses the need for a more balanced communicative framework for mediating between Arnold’s writings in general – and his epic poetry in particular – his critics, and present audiences.
The fact that the term " aesthetics " was only introduced into philosophic discourse by Alexander Baumgarten in 1735 is regarded by some historians of the subject as a sign that the ancient Greeks were not much interested in questions about the nature of beauty and the arts. (For them, ta aisthêtika would have suggested sense perception in general.) Other historians treat this fact as a factoid, a historical curiosity that need not stand in the way of assuming that the ancients responded to works of art in ways much like ourselves and confronted the same problems as we do when we try to think about beauty and art. The problem with this reasonable assumption is that it is hard to amass many actual texts that deal directly with the subject: most ancient discussions of issues we would define as aesthetic are embedded in works devoted to quite other topics, especially politics, ethics, or metaphysics. Thus Kristeller's much‐quoted denial that the ancients had anything comparable to modern aesthetics remains a challenge: " ancient writers and thinkers, though confronted with excellent works of art and quite susceptible to their charm, were neither able nor eager to detach the aesthetic quality of these works of art. " 1 The present chapter hopes to throw light on this question by turning from the Greeks' philosophies of art to their literary criticism. The daily, practical business of commenting on poems, interpreting them, and evaluating them implied the existence of standards for evaluating literature. This was especially so in the " agonistic " musical culture of the Greeks, which regularly set one poem against another in a competition to see which was the " finest " (kallistos: Ford 2002, 272–293). Already in the Archaic period, the most prestigious performances of Homeric epic took the form of competitions among professional reciters (rhapsôidoi), and the Athenian contests in tragic, comic, and dithyrambic poetry are well known; amateurs exchanging songs at drinking parties often turned to singing games. All such events raised the question, whether explicitly or implicitly, of what criteria to use when declaring one poem " finest " of all. I propose to study closely two texts from Classical Athens in which the question of standards is discussed. The pair is notable for suggesting that works of verbal art ought to be judged on their own terms. Taken together and set in context, the texts suggest that, in practice if not always in theory, the ancients recognized an aesthetic dimension to literature to a far greater extent than is sometimes allowed. In criticism, the possibility of a literary aesthetics emerges most clearly in the question of whether poets have any autonomy in the sense of immunity to certain kinds of objections
GCE (O-Level) English Literature - Critical Reading of Poetry
Critical Reading of Poetry, 2015
This publication of Critical Reading of Poetry has been designed in such a way, that the reader can read the poems and carry out the comprehension and compositional exercises that follow them, making use of the critiques provided in a separate section as and when it is necessary. This design facilitates the reader in maintaining independence while dealing with the poems. First, the reader reads the introduction and develops her own approach to poetry analysis covering the features which require special attention. Discussions of characterisation, diction, imagery, symbolism, rhythm, sound, and structure that occupy a large part of the critiques are meant to help the reader in being consistent in her approach. Once she has developed an approach, she can study the poems and carry out the exercises independently. These exercises help her penetrate the semantic, semiotic, syntactic, and pragmatic aspects of poetic language, the understanding of which helps her to develop a fund of critical abilities as a student of literature. The comments are presented in order to assist her in checking her views and in picking up suitable meta-language needed in literary criticism. Thus, the book aims at serving the reader in a variety of ways in her pursuit of poetry for academic purposes as well as for intellectual recreation.
In the following pages my aim has been to sketch the development of criticism, and particularly of critical method, in England; and to illustrate each phase of its growth by one or two samples taken from the most typical writers. I have in no way attempted to make a full collection of what might be thought the most striking pieces of criticism to be found in our literature.
Recurrence of Romantic Aesthetics in Classicist Writings : A Survey of British Classical Poetry
2016
Traditionally, classicism and romanticism are conceived as peculiar and mutually exclusive literary movements with distinct literary styles and stylistic characteristics. This paper aims to trace some prominent writing traits of the Romantic era like spontaneity, preoccupation with imagination and subjectivity and focus on highlighting emotions and feelings in poetry as evident in the works of poets writing before the Romantic era. A close examination and in-depth reading of selected works showed that romantic traits are not confined to the Romantic era only but also appear to be recurring in the writings of Chaucer, Spenser and other poets who were writing much before Wordsworth proposed the characteristics of romantic poetry in The Prelude. This study, therefore, traces romantic traits in the works that do not fall into romantic era