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Matthew Arnold
Arnolds Poetry
roots in the classical writings of the Greeks
neoclassical influences by the Romantics such as Wordsworth late Romantic his poems are melancholic, deeply personal (intimate), introspective, full of sentimental pessimism and nostalgia cultivates the soliloquy / intimate confession his poems are solitary meditations in evocative surroundings
Dover Beach
meditation on the loss of public values,
the great ages are gone, faith is lost
poets of the age (Poet Laureate) melancholic figure tendency to withdraw in the past and far-off lands loyal subject occasional poetry lines which resound with music and harmony creator of remarkable verse technique:
the dramatic monologue the English idyll
Work
direct prolongation of Romanticism
discipline of form elaborate ornamental effects
intellectual refinement
condemned to live in solitary confinement from everyday world the Lady is an artist, a weaver her real world is a mirror above her loom her attempt to escape into the real world ends tragically
completes The Lady of Shalott imprisonment in the world of spirituality and pleasure, symbolised by the Palace of Art the message is that life in such a world is impossible life has to be lived directly
The Lotos-Eaters
explores the theme of withdrawal
the sailors express the will to escape into an euphoric
and hedonistic world of sensations and pleasures the land of the Lotos-Eaters is depicted as a terrestrial paradise
Ulysses
a dramatic monologue
Ulysses is Dantes Ulysses as he appears in his Inferno. he is not willing to abandon active life even at old age
In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850)
series of elegiac poems of 131 sections with a Prologue
and an Epilogue caused by the death of Arthur Hallam self-therapy the meaning of life and death moves from the shadow cast by death to the light of hope psychological recovery from despair to optimistic expectation reflects the ages crisis of belief and marks the poets coming to terms with God
Maud (1855)
a monodrama a study of gruesome psychology that
provoked a storm of protest for its morbidity and violence the exploitation of the theme of madness reality is distorted by subjectivity lyric passages and violent rhetorics
Arthur 12 interconnected poems: 10 central poems flanked by The Coming of Arthur and The Passing of Arthur the legends are wrapped in a poetical and hued veil the theme is heroism, its dissolution and ruin after the introduction of evil to Camelot (adulterous love)
the form is not always appropriate: Tennyson cast romantic material into a Victorian moral mould
highly stylized and idealised dignified attitude
remarkable is the musicality of the language and the images like coloured miniatures bathed in gentle light
published volumes
Assessment
continuator of Romanticism of Wordsworth, Byron
and Keats he is a master of creating a mood, communicating a state of feeling lines of exquisite variety and melody readership is educated middle-classes his themes turn round the doubts and difficulties of an age when Christian Faith was questioned by science and modern progress