Culture and Anarchy
Culture and Anarchy is a series of essays by Matthew Arnold. This is generally celebrated as Arnold's most famous essay. It might not be inaccurate to suggest that the goal or ambition of this essay is outlined in its first chapter. Arnold attempts to categorize the various elements of society and determine whether any of them represent a culture. He suggests that most elements of society are either mechanical or organic. Only the aristocracy – or what we would call today the intelligentsia or symbolic analysts – can provide culture. Arnold argues that only a society that already has a culture can encourage the development and enrichment of intelligence. A culture, then, enables people to use their intelligence and develops it in conjunction with a free play of civilized societies and a right living with oneself, the effective knowledge of the relative importance and rejection of the infinite multitude of phenomena that make up our complex providential order.
An intelligent individual has an interest in accessing, enjoying, and using these various intellectual faculties to make society more intelligent in general. When society does not have an intelligence for discussion of issues, it moves from ignorance to prejudice and, eventually, towards stupidity. It has only a scattered film of action. In its conversation, liberalism considers that every aspect of enlightened knowledge, including the classical ideal of the common intelligent heritage, helps in some measure, not just to a few corresponding individuals, but to the many. A culture rooted in an enduring, classically inspired intelligence and rich in knowledge can provide a foundation for the common pursuit of intelligence. Without such roots, intelligence becomes a kind of elevated self-awareness. Such a restricted intelligence becomes worse than intelligence guided by general ignorance. Liberals invoke general ignorance to justify their goals, even though once society has sufficient common intelligence, the central concern for intelligence leads towards the rejection of central liberalism.
The Role of the Critic
Let us consider the function of the critic, which is specified as "a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." Now, it is obvious here how difficult it is to distinguish the particular function of criticism from the role of literature in general. Both serve as transmitters of culture. The critic is himself really an author; for by the time the public begins to need or to appreciate a critical interpretation of the world, it is not a simple subject but the confusion of many simple entities with which it is presented. Into the books it reads and the society in which it moves, criticism educates by supplying its backdrop. Like the author, the critic creates an imaginary meaning complex from available meaning structures and superimposes it upon reality, thus making visible what would not be seen and understood otherwise.
Nevertheless, the main difference either between the author and the critic or the two functions seems to be the distance at which the examined object is contemplated. Insisting that at the first stage the examination of the environment needs to be disinterested, it implies the necessity of looking at the field from some vantage point. The role of judgment, which defines criticism and distinguishes it from making an impression on an individual audience, serves as the fixed point thanks to which the distance becomes possible to measure and in relation to which the examined object can be looked at without the bias of any particular art production.
If we identify the primary function of the critic in such a process of exemplification and extrapolation, we should be able to provide an accurate answer to another question, "What teachers of humanity, what expounders of the best that is known and thought in the world, does literature give us?" Indeed, although exaggeration and flattery about the unique quality of literature's benefit might annoy us, it seems to me perfectly natural that such an eloquent poet would stress poetry as the best tool of learning about the world and hence that he would esteem the literary critic's qualification highly. When at that time the majority could not read and when fewer and fewer educated individuals inhabited the halls, a Homer was one of the few instructors drawing the moral picture of Greece. And when around the middle of the 19th century there was a period of unrest and insecurity in all areas of society, it explained the narrow-mindedness of the aristocrat and the relation of master and servant.
Relevance and Validity in Modern Contexts
In modern times, the battle against the philistine and the anti-intellectual has been carried forward as ever, yet free criticism or the freedom to pursue moral perfection still remains under attack. Modern critics battle it to preserve criticism as an independent domain and an emblem of the disinterested pursuit of perfection, as well they might. In an era when the enemy is not the political and economic organization of the state, which causes it to be the instrument of the rich, but technology, which exercises power globally over individuals, criticism that fails to consider its role has lost touch with its roots. When most cultural activities, literature, art, classical music, etc., are financially unviable and dependent on privatized patronage, and the source of their social value and significance, but not the activities themselves, is under attack, a discussion of the role of the state in defining and protecting social values seems more than relevant.
Not only does Arnold connect literature with criticism and morality in the abstract, he also prescribes a literary canon and will return to restrict criticism by linguistic usage. This seems unattractive. First, I am not following him. I intend to judge his work critically. Second, the principle of criticism should not be power, whether of the corner shopkeeper or the market. When a linguistic system seems unjust and a source of violence and distress, criticism, insofar as it is a guide to moral perfection, for subversion and near-critical analysis, should have the power to destroy the system in so far as the system controls.
Key Theories and Concepts Derived from Arnold's Work
The Function of Criticism is one of Matthew Arnold's most popular essays, where Arnold illustrates the realistic role of literary critics in being objective and sober. He contributes to criticism in a way that can give value to literature. Although writers achieve creativity out of emotion, critics give importance to the arts based on their rational feelings. I would like to do a critical analysis of Arnold in order to find out the major points that recognize how criticism is related when literature is assessed. The essay answers the following questions that were relevant in the Victorian era: "Is literary criticism worth anything?" and "What is the relation of criticism to society?"
Arnold's response to the first question is: "In the study and in the judicious appreciation of imaginative literature, exclusively through the operation of our natural faculties and emotions, we have a constantly available help to intellectual and moral progress." Arnold recommended books that integrate emotion and reason and express the best that is known and thought in the world. To answer the second question, he created the concept of organic support, which sets criticism against the major activities of society: religion, politics, and science. Arnold believed that literary criticism could be a major contributor to the scientific spirit, which values objectivity and truth. The way to integrate the disciplines was through a disinterested, objective, and empathetic interpretation. Literary criticism is a study of excellent works, but it also helps with understanding and appreciation.
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