| This dissertation, in contrast to most studies of Matthew Arnold's poetry, considers the poems of the first three volumes--The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849), Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems (1852), and Poems by Matthew Arnold. A New Edition (1853)--in the context of their original book placement. My attention to the arrangement of the poems in these volumes has yielded many new readings. Most significantly, these new readings (particularly of the "Faded Leaves" series and "The Buried Life") elucidates the development of a response to the question that Arnold, in his 1879 essay on Wordsworth, identified as the most important question with which poetry should be concerned, the question of how to live. My discussion of this response brings out new ways of looking at Arnold's idea of inwardness, seeing it as intimately associated with outwardness and the development of hope.Much of modern criticism, like much of the criticism of Arnold's contemporaries, however, sees his early poetry as a poetry of despair, as a record of a failed struggle, or, at most, as a precursor to the literary, cultural, and religious prose of his later career. This dissertation argues, by contrast, that while the early poetry does not attempt to formulate a systematic guide to life, that while it may seem at times enigmatic and contradictory, it nevertheless offers more than a mere description or diagnosis of the spiritual crisis in Victorian England: it offers an answer to the question of how to live in very uncertain, troubled times. One purpose of this dissertation, then, is to correct an imbalance in the criticism. That is, when the question of Arnold's success or failure in meeting the emotional and religious needs of his time arises, this imbalance often leads critics to view his poetry as somehow secondary to his prose. My study demonstrates that the answer the poetry provides is as interesting and as important as the answer the prose writings offer. |
