The Function of Criticism

From the Introduction

“art is never for art’s sake: Literature is of interest to [Arnold] primarily as an index to and a banner of the society that produced it” (379-80).

“art for Arnold is one way of increasing the accuracy of one’s spiritual vision—and a corrective for the illusions of political propaganda” (380).

“With science beginning to undermine the tenets of revealed religion, with philosophy becoming either too abstruse or too pragmatic to provide consolation and solace, Arnold felt that poetry could provide the new Word for which humanity was listening” (381).

From The Function of Criticism

“the elements with which the creative power works are ideas; the best ideas, one every matter which literature touches, current at the time. At any rate we may lay it down as certain that in modern literature no manifestation of the creative power not working with these can be very important or fruitful […] the grand work of literary genius is a work of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery” (383).

“But criticism, real criticism, is essentially the exercise of this very quality [curiosity]; it obeys an instinct prompting it to know the best that is known and thought in the world, irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of the kind; and to value knowledge and thought as they approach thus best, without the intrusion of any other considerations whatever” (387).

“It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure intellectual she, has so little detached itself from practice, has been so directly polemical and controversial, that it has so ill accomplished, in this country, its best spiritual work; which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him toward perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things” (389).

“Then comes the question as to the subject-matter which criticism should most seek. Here, in general, its course is determined for it by the idea which is the law of its being; the idea of a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and true ideas” (395).

From The Study of Poetry

“More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us” (396-97).