Culture and Anarchy (Rethinking the Western Tradition) [Paperback]

Matthew Arnold (Author), Mr. Samuel Lipman (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300058675 | ISBN-13: 978-0300058673 | Publication Date: April 27, 1994

Culture and Anarchy is one of the central texts of the western intellectual tradition and has helped to shape thinking about the tasks and requirements of culture and civil society. The book is particularly relevant now, however, because it articulates many issues about culture and cultural politics that are being intensely debated today. In the past decade, Culture and Anarchy has been the subject of discussion by both the cultural right and the cultural left, beloved by the one because it asserts the primacy of reason over the anarchy of doing as one likes, and despised by the other because it champions what many liberals consider an elitist model of culture. This new edition of Culture and Anarchy addresses this debate by including specially commissioned essays by Maurice Cowling, Gerald Graff, Samuel Lipman, and Steven Marcus that analyze Arnold's ideas from divergent political and literary perspectives and link them to contemporary concerns over the health of western culture in an increasingly multicultural society. The edition reprints for the first time in unaltered form the original 1869 text of Culture and Anarchy, providing valuable insight into Arnold's authorial intent; it is supplemented by a useful glossary of names, terms, and events and an introduction by Lipman that places Arnold in his time and discusses his initial reception and continuing importance today.

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 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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: 256 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (April 27, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300058675
• ISBN-13: 978-0300058673
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 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: #683,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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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.