Culture and Anarchy: Landmarks in the History of Education [Paperback]

Matthew Arnold (Author), J. Dover Wilson (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521091039 | ISBN-13: 978-0521091039 | Publication Date: January 2, 1932 | Edition: 1st Paperback Ed

Manifesting the special intelligence of a literary critic of original gifts, Culture and Anarchy is still a living classic. It is addressed to the flexible and the disinterested, to those who are not committed to the findings of their particular discipline, and it assumes in its reader a critical intelligence that will begin its work with the reader himself. Arnold employs a delicate and stringent irony in an examination of the society of his time: a rapidly expanding industrial society, just beginning to accustom itself to the changes in its institutions that the pace of its own development called for. Coming virtually at the end of the decade (1868) and immediately prior to W. E. Forster's Education Act, Culture and Anarchy phrases with a particular cogency the problems that find their centre in the questions: what kind of life do we think individuals in mass societies should be assisted to lead? How may we best ensure that the quality of their living is not impoverished? Arnold applies himself to the detail of his time: to the case of Mr Smith 'who feared he would come to poverty and be eternally lost', to the Reform agitation, to the commercial values that working people were encouraged to respect, and to the limitations of even the best Rationalist intelligence. The degree of local reference is therefore high, but John Dover Wilson's introduction and notes to this edition supply valuable assistance to a reader fresh to the period.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Major work of criticism by Matthew Arnold, published in 1869. In it Arnold contrasts culture, which he defines as "the study of perfection," with anarchy, the prevalent mood of England's then new democracy, which lacks standards and a sense of direction. Arnold classified English society into the Barbarians (with their lofty spirit, serenity, and distinguished manners and their inaccessibility to ideas), the Philistines (the stronghold of religious nonconformity, with plenty of energy and morality but insufficient "sweetness and light"), and the Populace (still raw and blind). He saw in the Philistines the key to culture; they were the most influential segment of society; their strength was the nation's strength, their crudeness its crudeness; it therefore was necessary to educate and humanize the Philistines. Arnold saw in the idea of "the State," and not in any one class of society, the true organ and repository of the nation's collective "best self." No summary can do justice to Culture and Anarchy, however; it is written with an inward poise, a serene detachment, and an infusion of subtle humor that make it a masterpiece of ridicule as well as a searching analysis of Victorian society. The same is true of its sequel, Friendship's Garland (1871). -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About the Author

Jane Garnett acted as Consultant Editor for Women on the ODNB from 1994 to 2004 and was also Associate Editor for Victorian Women Philanthropists. She is a founder member of the editorial board of the Journal of Victorian Culture. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1st Paperback Ed edition (January 2, 1932)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521091039
• ISBN-13: 978-0521091039
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,602,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For anyone hoping to grasp the roots of modern conservatism, May 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Culture and Anarchy (Rethinking the Western Tradition) (Paperback)

Matthew Arnold, a British poet and critic, wrote on the importance of culture in this work. He defined culture, famously, as "sweetness and light" - implying that culture represented everything good, everything not barbaric. The work is most important for the way it forwards the notion of an "organic" society - that is, a society that evolves slowly, that grows into maturity, that does not strive for sudden "advances" led by experts working all at once to implement great change. For anyone wondering about the relationship between modern conservatism and classical Liberalism, this is a decent place to start. "I am a Liberal," Arnold writes in the introduction, "yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in culture." If you wish to take an intellectual journey from Burke to Bork, Arnold must make up one leg of your trip.

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Breeze of Sanity, September 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Culture and Anarchy (Rethinking the Western Tradition) (Paperback)

So much of modern criticism has go so far afield, that the appellation has almost lost any sense to it. To recapture what criticism meant before the novel, but useless ideas of structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, post-modernism, et alia, Matthew Arnold is about as good a place to begin. His "Function of Criticism" and "Anarchy and Crticism" have become classics, even if they've been hidden from sight by academicians' self-serving agendas to bring nothing to light. This isn't a "conservative" vs. "liberal" thing, but an "intelligible and meaningful" vs. "labyrinthine and cockamamie" thing. Arnold is like encountering hermeneutics by having first visited Thomas Aquinas, or having studied democracy by having first studied Hobbes. Arnold is a seminal thinker, crtic, and student of the arts and society. He belongs in criticism's lexicon well before de Saussure, Derrida, Lacan, at alia.

10 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Note for the fashion con-science, February 2, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Culture and Anarchy: Landmarks in the History of Education (Paperback)

This edition is preferable to the gimmicky version published by Yale, where the original text is lost beneath the imposition of leftist ideologues.