Mathew Arnold's The Study of Poetry

Victorian criticism is marked by two major critical fervors, i.e Art for Art's sake and Art for Life's sake. The former considers the aesthetic qualities as the primary parameter for the analysis of a literary work whereas the latter emphasized morality and philosophy for the same. Mathew Arnold's Study of Poetry, published in 1880, served as the Golden Mean between these two. Not only does the essay delineate the Romantic way of looking at poetry with its 'emotion attached to the idea' but also expostulates concepts like the Touchstone method for the comparative analysis of literary works. For Arnold manner and matter of poetry occupy equal important place. He considers poetry as a 'criticism of life' which constitutes both "poetic truth" (reason) as well as "poetic beauty" (emotion). Though modern literary criticism wouldn't agree completely with Arnold's views, his contribution remains notable.

In our times, Arnold's idea about disinterestedness and detachment on the part of the critic is still relevant. His argument about how our judgement about a literary work might get clouded by personal or historic fallacy, is still convincing and something to be taken note of whenever we try to evaluate a literary work. This is a practice which the New Critics follow when they try to establish the literary work as an individual self sufficient entity and discard all the other factors related to its writer or the time of its composition.

What, however, often feels unconvincing is Arnold's Touchstone method and his emphasis on the moral or classical sense while analyzing literature, No matter how much crucial it might seem to comparative study of literature, the Touchstone theory seems to neglect the individual beauty of a particular work. Every work has its own context in which it is written and analyzing it based on the assumption that it lacks the qualities of the other critically acclaimed work is something which, in my opinion, a critic must avoid. Secondly, in my opinion art has its own parameters of analysis and therefore Arnold's support of Art for Life's sake idea is not something relevant or rather convincing for our times.

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