Matthew Arnold

124 Pages·1998·5.47 MB·English

"But Clear As Words Can Make Revealing?
Arnold's Language and the Struggle for Transparency
Dan S. Kline
Department of English
Submitted in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Faculty of Graduate Studies
The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
August 1997
@ Dan S. Kline 1997
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Abstract
In the 1853 "PrefaceN to the Poems, Matthew Arnold argues
that the poet should adopt the "grand style" to assist in the
production of a type of poetry that is content-driven. The
precise nature and meaning of the "grand style" remains one of
the more elusive problems in Arnold scholarship. Despite
Arnold's conviction that the idea escapes definition, 1 argue,
in this thesis, that the ambiguous and unstable concept of the
"grand style" is involved with Arnold's belief in an ideal
language characterized by transparency. The poetry of Matthew
Arnold is, in many ways, a record of his struggle with this
transparent linguistic ideal.
Arnold's realization of the need for greater transparency
in language and his attempts to achieve it are inf ormed by the
work of John Locke in An Essay concerning Human Understanding
and Of the Conduct of the Understanding respectively. Locke's
sceptical attitude towards language as an effective medium of
communication parallels Arnold's discovery of the human,
arbitrary, and opaque nature of language in his first volume
of poetry, The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems. However,
Arnold's later exposure to Locke's heavily qualified
endorsement of particular tropes in Of the Conduct of the
Understanding has important implications and consequences for
an understanding of the varied use of the simile in Arnold's
poetry from the 1850s and 1860s.
key words: Matthew Arnold, language, John Locke, simile
iii
Acknow ledgements
I wish to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation
to my supervisor, Professor Donald S. Hair. Dr. Hair's
patience, erudition, and guidance provided continual
assistance and consLant reassurance at every stage of this
thesis. It has been a privilege to study with such a mode1
teacher-scholar. Also, 1 am deeply indebted to Professor J.
Douglas Kneale, the second reader of this thesis, for his
remarkably efficient and helpful editorial advice, as well as
his thought provoking questions and suggestions.
Finally, 1 am immeasurably grateful to my family for
their love and unflagging support and encouragement.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Certificate of Examination
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One: Arnold, Locke, and Language
Chapter Two: Fragments
Cnapter Three: Tensions
Chapter Four: Strategies
Chapter Five: '1Thyrsis19
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Vita
Introduction
The year 1850 is the annus mirabilis for nineteenth-
century literature. The appearance of The Prelude and In
Memoriam offers readers the seminal poems of the Romantic and
Victorian periods respectively. In June of that same year
Fraser's Magazine printed a poem entitled t'Mernorial Verses:
April 1850t1 by the author of a small, largely unnoticed,
volume of poetry published the previous year. The volume was
The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems and its author, the
semi-anonymous of the title page, was in the midst of
V I t
consolidating an embryonic collection of ideas into a coherent
and controversial poetics. 1850 is also a critical year for
Matthew Arnold in ways 1 shall demonstrate in the next
chapter.
tlMemor~aVle rsest'd oes not share the reputation of poems
such as IfThe Forsaken Merman," l'The Scholar Gip~y,~or' ItDover
Beach,ttb ut it is an important text nevertheless because of
Arnold's own comments about it. In a letter to Clough prior
to the poem'ç appearance, Arnold mentions that frustratingly
elusive and unstable concept which lies at the very centre of
his theories of poetry and language: "1 have at Quillinants
sollicitation [sic] dirged W. W. in the grand style & need thy
rapture therewithu (Lang 172). The "grand style'' remains one
of the more ambiguous of Arnold's ideas, a fact which Arnold
hirnself acknowledges in On Translating Homer:
2
Alas! the grand style is the last matter in the
world for verbal definitionto deal with adequately.
One may Say of it as is said of faith: 'One must
feel it in ordex to kriow what it is. ' (Super 1:
188)'
David Riede has noted the rhetorical inqenuity with which
Arnold shifts his own feelings of guiit and responsibility
ont0 the reader (22), and even when Arnold does resort to
definition the result is unsatisfactory: "1 think it will be
found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble
nature, poetically gifted treats with simplicity or with
.
severity a serious subject'l (Super 1: 188) 1 would suggest
that the most effective way of approaching the "grand style"
is through the alembic of Arncld's interest in lanquage.
Arnold s connection with some of the leading linguistic
l
theorists and philoloqists of the day is amply demonstrated by
his letters which refer to figures such as F.D. Maurice and
Trench and indicate a persona1 acquaintance with Furnivall.
Julius Hare was a frequent visitor to Dr. Arnold's widow at
Fox How, and Arnold himself cultivated a friendship and
correspondence with the German Sanskrit scholar Max Mueller.
There are many places in the Arnoldian canon where one
might initiate an investiqation into Arnold's language and its
relationship to his poetics and the "grand style." David
Riede, for example, begins his study of Arnold's language with
a close, but not exclusive, analysis of the later religious
3
prose pieces as qlArnold'sm ost rigorous, rational, systematic
.
thought about languagel' (21 ) Riede argues, parsuasively,
that Arnold's wdeconstruction of Biblical language makes
explicit a distrust of his medium that had undermined his
poetry even early in his career" (12). As an alternative to
Riede's retrospective approach, 1 prefer to begin in medias
res, as it were, throuqh an examination of Arnold's letters
and early critical prose. The key texts are the I1Preface1't o
the 1853 edition of the Poems, the often passionate polemic
about poetry and language he carried on with Clough through
their correspondence, and On Translating Honier. 1 think that
initiating an investigation of Arnold's lancjuage frorn the
early 1850s is im2ortant for many reasons. In the remaininy
pages of this Introduction and the chapter that follows 1 hope
to demonstrate that the ideas of the 1853 "Preface" and the
somewhat later advice of the Homer lectures assume an
important place within a particular contour of Arnold's
eclectic thought, namely British empiricism and, particularly,
the philosophy of John Locke. Additionally, 1 want to
emphasize that this particular contour was by no means stable
and was itself underqoing a major shift in these years. The
usefulness of beginning at precisely the moment of this shift
in Arnold's thinking is that it encourages us to look, with a
degrce of flexibility, back to the earlier poetry of the 1840s
and forward to some of Arnold's greatest poetic triumphs and
failures in the next two decades. This particular shift is
4
itself part of a larger turn in both Arnold's poetics (which
is inaugurated by the "Preface'?) and biography.'
On the eve of the publication of Culture and Anarchy
(1869) Arnold wrote to his mother:
My poems represent the main movement of mind of the
last quarter century, and thus they will probably
have their day as people become conscious of what
that movement of mind is, and interested in the
literary productions which reflect it (Russell
2: 9).
It is certainly possible to reduce this "rnovement of mindl to
Arnold's career itself by dividing it into periods of poetry
and various types of prose. We can even chart certain
movements within Arnold's poetry. The publication of The
Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems in 1349 primarily collected
Arnold's lyrics from the previous decade while the next ten
years would witness al1 of his major works in dramatic and
narrative poetry, including Empedocles on Etna, Tristram and
Iseult, Sohrab and Rustum, Balder Dead, and Merope. In the
1860s Arnold would again concentrate on the lyric mode. These
generic and chronological divisions are noteworthy but far
from absolute. Indeed, the transitions within this tripartite
structure are often characterized by a nebulosity, and some of
Arnold's greatest lyric accomplishments, such as "Stanzas from
the Grande Chartreuse, "Dover Beach, and IlThe Scholar
Gipsy," appear concurrently with the longer works in other
genres.
The llPrefaceMt o the Poems and On Translating Homer are
situated in the midst of Arnold's Ifmovement of mind, and it
l1
is dif f icult to know how to read them. Should they be read as
apologias or manifestos or both?' The ftPrefacelofp ens with an
indication that Arnold is moving in a different direction as
a poet, as he defends his decision to exclude Empedocles on
Etna from the 1853 edition. For Arnold, as the "Prefaceft
elucidates, poetry is driven, primarily but not solely, by its
contents--ideas and actions that 'lare the eternal objects of
poetryf' (Super 1: 3). As Edward Alexander has argued, Arnold
sought to avoid the excesses of romantic expressionism and
vulgar utilitarian didacticism (153). The contents of poetry
are historically determined and are something not completely
under the poetfs control. Arnold once remarked to Clough:
'The what you have to Say depends on your age" (Lang 78). The
attempt by a poet, when confronted with the multitudinousness
of Victorian life, to resort (like Arnold) to ancient subjects
alleviates but does not completely solve this dilemma. What
the poet did have control over was the Ifway" in which the
contents were organized in language. Arnold's theory of the
poet is predicated on the assumption that he/she must perform
multiple functions: "It is not enough that the poet should add
to the knowledge of men, it is required of him also that he
should add to their happinessw (Super 1: 2). This idea
appears in the letter to Clough four years earlier which