240 MATTHEW ARNOLD POET AND CRITIC INAUGURAL-DISSERTATION DER HOHEN PHILOSOPHISCHEN FAKULTÄT DER UNIVERSITÄT BERN ZUR ERLANGUNG DER DOKTORWÜRDE VORGELEGT VON ARNOLD SCHRAG Von der philosophischen Fakultät auf Antrag des Herrn Prof. Dr. Müller angenommen. BERN, den 12. Dezember 1903. Der Dekan: PROF. DR. HAAG, Basel 1904 FRIEDRICH REINHARDT, UNIVERSITÄTSBUCHDRUCKEREI St. Albanvorstadt 15 1. Indirect influences on Matthew Arnold. Evolution of thought in England during the first four decades of the nineteenth century: The Oxford Movement. - Dr. Thomas Arnold opposed to it. Some of his most prominent qualities that Matthew Arnold Dr. Arnold's teachers: Coleridge, Carlyle, Wordsworth. M. Arnold at Rugby: Liberal spirit of the school. - Intro- Page 1-16 Matthew Arnold the poet of 1. Ceased to write poetry. Pessimism overthrown. Works for the propagation of Culture: the social classes criticised. Criticism. The new terms not over-felicitous. time, his preaching was necessary. Examples of Philistinism. Too hard on the Aristocracy. Always called for too radical changes. - Showed little historic sense. -- 2. Strict Science and Religion: Prof. Huxley. Fundamentally, St. Paul, Criticism. Too individual, want of a general scientific basis. Summing up: Ethical idealism IV. The Literary Critic. The French critics his models. The new method: milieu, individual. Biography. Literary criticism in England before Matthew Arnold. Dr. Johnson. Carlyle did not take the final step. Proof. The Reviews; too personal After 1840, low standard of literary and too abstract. Page 56-69 Subjects A first-rate stylist. Little practices. 69-88 Bibliography 89-94 In the closing pages of his Histoire de la littérature anglaise M. Taine calls our attention to a great change actually at work in England, a revolution entering, not by sudden inundation, but by slow infiltration. He is thinking of the growing influence of those ideas which have been collected under the much abused term: the Spirit of the Age. If by Spirit of the Age we understand the fresh current of ideas brought about by that marvellous development of scientific method and research in all the domains of knowledge during the nineteenth century, then surely we must accord a prominent position in the history of English thought to Matthew Arnold. Numerous are the passages in the works of this modern writer in which allusion is made to the Zeitgeist. Whatever verdict may be given on Matthew Arnold's application of modern thought to new rules of social and religious life, it remains certain that he sincerely endeavoured to grasp the leading ideas of his time and that he undertook the by no means enviable part of an apostle of these very ideas. In order to arrive at an impartial and in some measure decisive criticism of Matthew Arnold's work, we must first trace out the evolution of the spirit of the age and thus try to discover the sources of original currents in Arnold's teaching. In so far as these currents also reflect the author's individuality, they can only be explained by our applying the laws of heredity and utilising biography. Thomas Arnold, the father of Matthew Arnold, was born on June 13th 1795, at West Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. As a child he was early imbued with a love of Nature. The stirring events of the French Revolution probably left a lasting impression on his mind. His father was collector of customs. In 1807 Thomas was sent to Winchester, where he remained till 1811. In this year he was elected as a scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1815 he was elected Fellow of Oriel and was thus admitted into a circle of men whose names will for ever be Schrag, Matthew Arnold. 1 |