| This thesis will examine the relationships between Matthew Arnold's choice of audience and his rhetoric (meaning both the substance of his writings and the shaping of them) in various of his writings on education, social obligation, literature and culture. In effect, I wish to consider how Arnold's choice of the middle class affected the presentation of his ideas and his spectrum of arguments. With his elegance and ease, he could have written for the "unworking aristocracy" (Carlyle's phrase) yet chose not to do so: my object is to deal with his decision and its effects. |
