Middlemarch

Middlemarch is a highly unusual novel. Although it is primarily a Victorian novels. Critical reaction to Eliot's masterpiece work was mixed. A common accusation leveled against it was its morbid, depressing tone. Many critics did not like Eliot's habit of scattering obscure literary and scientific allusions throughout the book. In their opinion a woman writer should not be so intellectual. Eliot hated the "silly", women novelists. In the Victorian era, women writers were generally confined to writing the stereotypical fantasies of the conventional romance fiction. Not only did Eliot dislike the constraints imposed on women's writing, she disliked the stories they were expected to produce. Her disdain for the tropes of conventional romance is apparent in her treatment of marriage between Rosamond and Lydgate think of courtship and romance in terms of ideals taken directly from conventional romance. Another problem with such fiction is that marriage marks the end of the novel. Eliot goes through great effort to depict the realistic of marriage.

Morover, Eliot's many critics found Middlemarch to be too depressing for a woman writer. Eliot refused to bow to the conventions of a happy ending. An ill - advised marriage between two people who are inherently incompatible never becomes completely harmonious. In fact, it becomes a yoke. Such us the case in the marriage of Lydgate and Dorothea.Dorothea was saved from living with her mistakes for her whole life because her elderly husband dies of a heart attack, Lydgate and Rosamond, on the other hand, married young.

Two major life choices govern the narrative of Middlemarch. One is marriage and the other is vocation. Eliot takes both choices very seriously. Short, romantic courtship lead to trouble, because both parties entertain unrealistic ideals of each other. They marry without getting to know one another. Marriage based on compatibility work better. Moreover, marriages in which women have a greater say also work better, such as the marriage between Fred and Mary. She tells him she will not marry if he becomes a clergyman. Her condition saves Fred from an unhappy entrapment in an occupation he doesn't like. Dorothea and Causabon struggle continually because Causabon attempts to make her submit to his control. The same applies in the marriage between Lydgate and Rosamond.

The choice of an occupation by which one earns a living is also an important element in the book. Eliot illustrates the consequences of making the wrong choice. she also details at great length the consequences of  confining women to the domestic sphere alone. Dorothea's passinate ambition for social reform is never realized. She ends with a happy marriage, but there is some sense that her end as merely a wife and mother is a waste. Rosamond's shrewd capabilitites degenerate into vanity and manipulation. She is restless within the domestic sphere, and her stifled ambitions only result in unhappiness for herself and her husband.

Eliot's refusal to conform to happy endings demonstrates the fact that Middlemarch is not meant to be entertainment. She wants to deal with real life issues, not the fantasy world to which women writers were often confined. Her ambition was to create a portrait of the complexity of ordinary human life: quiet tragedies, petty character failings, small triumphs, and quiet moments of dignity. The complexity of her portrait of provincial society is reflected in the complexity of individual characters. The contradictions in the character of the individual person are evident in the shifting sypathies of the reader. One moment, we pity Causabon, the next we judge him critically.

Middlemarch stubbornly refuses to behave like a typical novel. The novel is a collection of relationships between several major players in the drama, but no single one person occupies the center of the action. No one person can represent provincial life. It is necessary to include multiple people. Eliot's book is fairly experimental for its time in form and content, particularly because she was a woman writer.

In George Eliot's time women were thought to be physically as well as mentally inferior to men and intended by nature for child bearing and nurturing. Consequently they were denied opportunities for proper education and independent action outside the domestic sphere. But George Eliot regarded gender differences as complimentary and believed that male and female roles could be adjusted gradually overall to the mutual benefit of both sixes. She contended that the naturalistic demareation of women's function in society was fallacious because woman had a worse share in it's zoological evolution but she had an art which could mend nature in it moral evolution. She liberated herself from the restrictive conventions of her society not only by mastering the advanced thought of her age  but also by mastering the advanced thought of her age but also by writing novel after entering into a lifelong partnership with the versatile center of interest in her novels and dramatized their struggle for self fulfillment in man's world with understanding of sympathy.

Celia is an interesting representative of the kind of women who entirely happy with the feminine, nursery world. Their uncle, as usual unconsciously expresses the conventional view with perfect exactness when he says to Casaubon, Dorothea's husband : "Get Dorothea to read few light things, Smollett; Roderick, Random, Humphrey Clinker; they are a little broad , but she may read anything now she's married you know." Woman's reading her public act deepens on the marital status. They are expected to obey and fall in line, as Mary Evans herself was expected the poor tenants raised their voice against their husband. They demanded better condition of life. Mr. Hawley regards Mr.Brook to be a "Damned bad landlord."Their feelings changed though the old order still continue.

Frankenstein

1) when did you have a dream ?

Ans :-

            Dream means :-

                                   

                                  " A series of thoughts, Images and sensations occurring in a person's mind                                               during sleep."

                                                            -Oxford Dictionaries

       

          This is simple bus tough question, according to me it's depend on situation. I mean what I'm thing about situation. situations likes... i"m worried about my future,about my family, about my friend & about my dreams. when I am alone at that time I saw my dream.

2) what did you see in your dream ?

Ans :- when I see the dream I saw that... I'm worried about my family & my future normally I see Badminton court, rackets, Lights, Shuttlecocks, Sound of shuttlecocks & Beautiful shoes in my dream.

3) Based on your dream if you are asked to crate something what type of creation would be there ?

Ans :- when I'm creator, I create Badminton Academy & me and my team give best couching to our players. we teach them Badminton skills, foot works, shots & steps.

4) The creation will be ugly or beautiful ?

Ans :- Of course mt creation was beautiful because I create Badminton academy. If i create a human being with help of science so I can't say that my creation will be ugly or beautiful based on face & human body. In this world everything was a beautiful but our society divided into two(2) parts 1) Ugly & 2) Beautiful

       

          Example :- Mind Of Our Society...

                            

                           Chris Gayle( West Indies Cricketer) we see that heavy and large body with big                                      muscles, long hair and black skin of him. 

                Bhakt of lord Mahadev he also have big  & large body, black skin & long hair.

                 

       Our society love Chris Gayle because he was famous & he play cricket very well and other side our society can't talk with Bhakt Of lord Mahadev and we say that look at his ugly look, cloths & long hair.

5) If ugly why ? If beautiful, why ?

And :-My creation was beautiful because I create sports Academy and me & my team teach our player how to play game. when our players play well in tournaments me & my team was happy.

6) What your Interpretations for the word 'Monster' ?

And :- According to me everything was beautiful but according to our society Monster means ugly face, heavy and large body, big muscles and black skin.

7) Have you ever visited such kind of place which has some connections with horror & terror ?

Ans :- Sorry but no.... i did't visited such kind of place which has some connections with horror & terror. 

What is Cultural Studies and its limitations?

Vishva Gajjar

Roll No. 33

Paper No. 8 – Cultural studies

Topic - What is Cultural Studies and its limitations?

S. B. Gardi Deperatment of English

Bhavnagar University.

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What is Cultural Studies?

‘Culture’ word itself is hard to define.

‘Cultural Studies’ is loosely a group of tendencies, issues and questions arising from a social turmoil of the 1960s.

It is composed of elements of:

Marxism,

Post-Structuralism,

Post-Modernism,

Feminism,

Gender studies,

Anthropology,

Race,

Sociology,

Ethnic Studies,

Film theory,

Urban Studies,

Public Policy,

Post-Colonial Studies,

Popular Cultural Studies

-and those fields which concentrates on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division or alienation.

Lateron discipline of Psychology has also arrived in Cultural Studies.

It is to erase boundaries between 1. High-Low, 2. Classic-Popular literary texts and 3. Literature-Other Cultural Discourses.

As we know that Cultural Study refers many of the disciplines, it is natural that it will have limitations. We know that if we concentrate on more than one work at a time, we could not give every work the same importance and attention. Here, it happens with Cultural Studies too.

To define cultural studies, we should have one glance upon that what is ‘Culture’?

According to Merriam Webster dictionary, Culture means, “the way of thinking, behaving, and living of people.”

                Another meaning of ‘Culture’ is ‘set of Standards’.

Moreover, the culture means, “the arts, and other manifestation of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” In other sense we can also say that, “ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people of society also known as ‘Culture’”.

Now, the question is what ‘Cultural Studies’ is?

“Cultural Studies are innovative interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigates the way in which culture creates and transforms individual experiences everyday life, social relations and power”.

Now the prime concern is that where it (culture) can be studied? Or In which departments it has studied?

  Also in other departments like,

·       Archeology

·       Botany

·       Agriculture

·       Philosophy

·       Geography

What Cultural Studies doing in English Department or in Literature Class?

A collage class on the American novel is reading Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple (1982).’ The professor identifies African American literary and cultural sources and describes the book’s multilayered narrative structure, moving on a brief review of its feminist critique of American gender and racial attitudes. Students and professor discuss these various approaches, analyzing key passages in the novel. Class members respond to these points, examining interrelationships among race, gender, popular culture, the media, and literature.

This class is practicing Cultural Studies. But, the word ‘Culture’ itself is so difficult to pin down; “Cultural Studies” is hard to define.

As Pratick Brantlinger has pointed out, culture studies is not “a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda,” but a “loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and questions.”

Arising from the social turmoil of the 1960s, cultural studies is composed of elements of, Marxism, post- structuralism, and post- modernism, feminism, gender studies, anthropology, sociology, race and ethnic studies, film theory, urban studies, public policy, popular culture studies, and postcolonial studies. The discipline of psychology has also entered the field of cultural studies.

·                Cultural Studies approaches generally share four goals.

1)    First, cultural studies transcend the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history.

Cultural studies are not necessarily about literature in the traditional sense or even about ‘art’. Intellectual works are not limited by their own “borders” as single texts, historical problems, or disciplines, and the critic’s own personal connections to what is being analyzed may also be described. For students, this sometimes means that a professor might make his or her own political views part of the instruction, which, of course, can lead to problems. But, this kind of criticism, like feminism is an engaged rather than a detached activity.

  2) Cultural studies is politically engaged.

Cultural critics see themselves as “oppositional”, not only within their own disciplines but to many of the power structures of society at large. They question inequalities within power structures and seek to discover models for restructuring relationship among dominant and “minority” or “subaltern” discourses. Because meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally constructed, they can thus be reconstructed. Such a notion, taken to philosophical extreme, denies the autonomy of the individual, weather an actual person or a character in literature, a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic “great man” or “great book” theory, and relocation of aesthetics and culture from the ideal realms of test and sensibility, into the arena of a whole society’s everyday life as it is constructed. 

3) Cultural studies deny the separation of “high” and “low” or “elite” and “popular culture”.

You might hear someone remark at the symphony or at end art museum: “I came here to get a little culture”. Being a “cultured” person used to mean being acquainted with “highbrow” art and intellectual pursuits. But isn’t culture also to be found with a pair of tickets to a rock concert? Cultural critic’s today work to transform the term culture to include mass culture, weather popular, folk, or urban. Following theorists Jean Baudrillard and Andreas Huyssen, cultural critics argues that after world war 2 the distinction among high, low and mass culture collapsed, and they site other theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Dick Hebdige on how “good test” often only reflects prevailing social, economic, and the political power basis. For example, the images of India that were circulated during the colonial rule of the British raj by writers like Rudyard Kipling seem innocent, but reveal an entrenched imperialist argument for white superiority and worldwide domination of other races, especially Asians. But, race alone was not the issue for British Raj: money was also deciding factors. Thus drawing also upon the ideas of French historian Michel de Certeau, cultural critic examine “the practice of everyday life”, studying literature as an anthropologist as a phenomenon of culture, including culture’s economy.

4) Finally, cultural studies analyze not only the cultural work, but also the means of production;

Marxist critics have long recognized the importance of such peraliterary questions as these; who supports a given artist? Who publishes his or her books, and how are these books distributed? Who buys these books? For that matter, who is literate or who is not? A well- known literary production is Janice Radway’s study of the American romance novel and its readers. Cultural studies thus join subjectivity- that is, culture and relation to individual lives- with engagement, a direct approach to attacking social ills. Though cultural studies practitioners deny “humanism” or “humanities” as universal categories, they strive for what they might call “social reason”, which often resembles the goals and values of humanistic and democratic ideals.

Limitations of Cultural Studies:-

Cultural studies though have few limitations like,

1. Diversity of approach and subject-matter:

          The weakness of Cultural Studies lies in its strengths, particularly its emphasis upon diversity of approach and subject matter. Cultural Studies can at times seem merely an intellectual smorgasbord in which the critic blithely combines artful helping of texts and objects and then “finds” deep connections between them, without adequately researching what a culture means or how cultures have interacted.

2. Not fuelled by hard research:

          Cultural Studies are not always fuelled by hard researches.

i.e., Historians have traditionally practiced to analyse ‘culture’. Which includes scientifically collected data.

3. Lack of Knowledge:

Cultural Study practitioners often know a lot of interesting things and possess the intellectual ability to play them off interestingly against each other, but they sometimes lack adequate knowledge of “deep play” of meanings or “thick description” of a culture that ethnographer Clifford Geertz identified in his studies of the Balinese.

In the essay of Geertz uses “deep play” word for the ‘cockfight’ which is illegal in his society. He explains as a context of British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), who defines “deep play” as a game with risks high that no rational person would engage in it. The amounts of money involved in the cockfight makes Balinese cockfight “deep play”.

And another words “thick description” is used in the field of anthropology, sociology, religious studies and human and organizational development. The “thick description” of culture means it’s not just explaining what culture is but also refers that in which context the meaning is developed.

4. Necessity of reading the classics:

                Sometimes students complain that professors who overemphasize cultural studies tend to downplay the necessity of reading the classics, and that they sometimes coerce students into “politically correct” views.

5. Whatever is happening at the moment:

                David Richterdescribes culture as

          “-about whatever is happening at the moment, rather than about a body of texts created in the past.

                 ‘Happening’ topics, generally speaking, are the mass media themselves, which, in a postmodern culture, dominate the culture lives on its inhabitants, or topics that have been valorises by the mass media.”

                 But he goes on to observe that if this seems trivial, the strength of cultural studies its “relentlessly critical attitude toward journalism, publishing, cinema, television, and other forms of mass media, whose seemingly transparent windows through which we view ‘reality’ probably constitute the most blatant and pervasive mode of false consciousness of our era” (Richter 1218).

                                                                                                                                             

6. Tempted to dismiss popular culture:

                If we are tempted to dismiss popular culture, it is also worth remembering that when the works like Hamlet or Huckleberry Finn were written, they were not intended for elite discussions in English classrooms, but exactly for popular consumption.

7. ‘Culture Wars’ of academia:

                 Defenders of tradition and advocates of cultural studies are waging what is sometimes called the “culture wars “of academia.

On the one hand are offered impassioned defences of humanism as the foundation, since the time of the ancient Greeks, of Western civilization and modern democracy.

On the other hand, as Marxist theorist Terry Eagleton has written, the current “crises” in the humanities can be seen as failure of the humanities; this “body of discourses” about “imperishable” values has demonstrably negated(cancelled) those very values in its practices.

   Conclusion: -

Thus, cultural studies work in different terms and it also having its limitations.  Whatever the emphasis, cultural studies make available one more approach-and several methodologies-to address these questions.

Critique on ‘Eliot as a Critic’

Vishva Gajjar

Roll No. 33

Paper No. 7 – Literary Theory and Criticism

Topic – Critique on ‘Eliot as a Critic’

S. B. Gardi Deperatment of English

Bhavnagar University.

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“TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT”

T.S.Eliot’s “tradition and individual talent” was published in 1919 in the egoist – the times literary supplement. Later, the essay was published in the sacred wood: essays on poetry and criticism in 1920/2. This essay is described by David lodge as the most celebrated critical essay in the English of the 20^thcentury. The essay is divided into three main sections:

 (1) The first gives us Eliot’s concept of tradition.

(2) The second exemplifies his theory of depersonalization and poetry.

(3) The third part he concludes the debate by saying that the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary thing.

(Part-1)

IN ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM “TRADITION” IS USED AS A PHRASE OF CENSURE:-

               

In English literature and criticism we rarely come across passages illustrative of the right use due emphasis on the term “tradition”, from time to time we apply the word in expressing our grief for its absence. We cannot make a reference to “the tradition” or to “a tradition”; at most, we use the adjective in saying that the poetry of so and so is “tradition” or even “too tradition”. The word appears rarely and when it does appear, it is used as a phrase of censure.

In English criticism, according to Eliot, we have a deplorable lack of that critical insight which views a particular literary work or a writer in the context of a wider literary tradition. The English literary critic does not give due weight and consideration to tradition in evaluating the writers of the past and in appreciating the poets of the present. He uses “tradition” in a derogatory sense.

CRITICISM IS INDISPENSABLE FOR CREATIVE ACTIVITY:

The critical activity paves the way for, sustains and guides the creative activity. Just as the creative genius of each nation possesses some distinguishing. Traits, certain aptitudes and inclinations, being the expression of that nation’s life: in the same way each nation, each race has certain distinguishing habits of mind reflected in critical activity. And just as it is not easy for a nation to acquire a self-awareness of the defects and limitations of its creative habits of mind, in the same way it is difficult for a nation to cultivate a consciousness of the shortcomings of its critical habits of mind. English nation in Eliot’s opinion suffers from a similar unawareness of the short coming and limitation of its critical genius. The English are familiar with the critical writing in French often leads an Englishman to believe that the French people are more critical, and consequently less spontaneous. Eliot strives to dispel this fallacy by emphasizing the importance of criticism which, according to him, is as indispensable to creative activity as breathing is to life. Criticism expresses our responses to a particular work of art: it expresses the feelings and emotions and intellectual reaction of a reader in relation to the book he reads.  

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRADITION TO INDIVIDUAL TALENT:

Eliot says that the Englishmen have a tendency to insist, when they praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects of his work they try to find out what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of that man. They try to find out the difference of the port with his contemporaries and predecessors, especially with his immediate predecessors. They try to find out something that can be separated in order to be enjoyed. But if we study the poet without bias or prejudice, we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead ports, his ancestors, asserts their immortality forcefully and vigorously. We find the dead notes in the present poets not in their impressionable period of adolescence. But in the period of their full maturity. According to Eliot tradition and individual talent go together.

“TRADITION” DEFINED:

Tradition is not the handling down .or following the ways of the ancients blindly. It cannot be inherited. It can only be obtained with great labor. It involves a historical sense. Which enables a poet to perceive not only the pastness of the past but of its presentness. A creative artist, though he lives in a particular milieu, does not work merely with his own generation in view.

He does not take his own age, or the literature of that period only as a separate identity. But acts with the conviction that in general the whole literature of the continent from the classical age of the Greeks onwards and in particular the literature of his own country. Is to be taken as a harmonious whole. His own creative efforts are not    apart from it. But a part of it.

 THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIPAND INTERDEPENDENCE OF THE PAST AND PRESENT:

No poet or artist of any kind has his full meaning and significance alone. His importance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his kinship with the poets and artists of the past generations, you cannot value him alone; you must set him for contrast and comparison, among the poets and writers of the past. This, to Eliot, is a principle of aesthetic, and not merely of historical criticism. The necessity for the individual talent to conform to the tradition is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. “The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives for order to persist after the supervention  of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order of the form of European of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present it directed by the past.”

THE RELATIONSHIP OF A POET’S WORK TO THE GREAT WORKS OF THE PAST:

The poet, who understands the presentness of the past, also understands his responsibilities and difficulties as an artist. Such an artist will fully realize that he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. In saying that an artist is finally to be judged by the standards of the past. Eliot does not imply that he is to be pronounced better or worse than the previous poets or that the standards prescribed by the previous critics are to be applied in judging their works.

 LITERATURE AS A CONTINUITY:

Eliot points out a significant difference between the past and the present. The difference is that “the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show” Eliot covers the possible objection that his doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition and that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. He says that there is a distinction between knowledge and pedantry. “Some can absorb knowledge; the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from the Plutarch than most men could from the whole British museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career”. He believes that it is the awareness of tradition that sharpens the sensibility. Which has a vital part to play in the process of poetic creation.

(Part-2)

He starts the second part of his essay with: “honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry”.

The artist or the poet adopts the process of depersonalization, which is “a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality,” there still remain to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to sense of tradition.

·        THE PROCESS OF DEPERSONALISATION:

Eliot explains this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition by comparing it to a chemical process – the action which takes place when a bit of finely foliated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and Sulphur dioxide. The analogy is that of the catalyst. He says: “when the two gases previously mentioned (oxygen and Sulphur dioxide) are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum they form Sulphuric acid if the platinum is present: nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum. And the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.

·         EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS:-

The elements of the experience of the poet are of two kinds-emotions and feeling. They are the element which entering the presence of the poet’s mind and acting as a catalyst, go to the making of a work of art, the final effect produced by a work of art may be formed out of several emotions into one, it may be formed out of a singly emotion or out of the feeling invoked in the poet by various words and images. It is also possible that it may be composed of feeling alone, without using any emotions. Thus the poet’s mind is a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feeling, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

“……as one of those

Who o’er Verona’s champion try their speed?

For the green mantle; and of them he seemed,

Not he who loses, but who gains the prize.”

It is in this image, according to Eliot, that Dante gives the feeling attached to it. It cannot be said that the poet arrived at it all of a sudden. No can it be regarded as simply developing out of the preceding lines. This “feeling” remained in suspension in Dante’s mind till the preceding complex details of the canto prepared an apt combination for this feeling to appear.

·         THE INTENSITY OF THE ARTISTIC PROCESS:

Eliot believes that the greatness of a poem does not depend on the greatness or the intensity of the emotions but on the intensity of the artistic process e.g. in Agamemnon the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist himself. “But the difference between art and the event is always absolute”, “the ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly perhaps because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring together.”

Eliot says that “the poet has not a “personality” to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.”

(PART – 3)

In the last section of “tradition and the individual talent” Eliot says that the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things. He tries to divert the interest from the poet to the poetry for it would conduce to a jester estimation of actual poetry, good or bad. He says that “very few know when there is an expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. and he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living” a constant and continual awareness of tradition is very necessary for the port.

·         ELIOT AND NEW CRITICISM:

Eliot inspired and informed the movement of new criticism. This is somewhat ironic, since he later criticized their excruciatingly detailed analysis of texts. Yet, he does share with them the same focus on the aesthetic and stylistic qualities of poetry, rather than on its ideological content. The new critics resemble Eliot in their close analysis of particular passages and poems.

·         CRITICISM OF ELIOT:

Eliot’s theory of literary tradition has been criticized for its limited definition of what constitutes the canon of that tradition. He assumes the authority to choose what represents great poetry, and his choices have been criticized on several fronts, for examples, Harold bloom disagrees with Eliot’s condescension of romantic poetry, which, in the metaphysical poets (1921) he criticized for its “dissociation of sensibility.” Moreover, many believe Eliot’s discussion of the literary tradition as the “mind of Europe” reeks of euro-centrism. He does not account for a non-masculine tradition. As such, his notion of tradition stands at odds with feminist, post-colonial and minority theories. Kenyan author James Ngugi advocated a commitment to nation works. Which speak to one’s own culture, as compared to deferring to an arbitrary notion of literary excellence. As such, he implicitly attacks Eliot’s subjective criterion in choosing an elite body of literary works. Post-colonial critic Chinua Achebe also challenges Eliot, since he argues against deferring to those writers, including Conrad, whom have been deemed great, but only represent a specific cultural perspective.

Harold bloom presents a conception of tradition that differs from that, of Eliot. Whereas Eliot believes that the great poet is faithful to his predecessors and evolves in a concordant manner, bloom envisions the “strong port “to engage in a much more aggressive and tumultuous rebellion against tradition.

In 1964, his last year, Eliot published in a reprint of the use of poetry and use of criticism, a series of lectures he gave at Harvard university in 1932 and 1933, a new preface in which he called “tradition and the individual talent” the most juvenile of his essays.

Culture and Anarchy – An Essay in Political and Social

Vishva Gajjar

Roll No. 33

Paper No. 6 – The Victorian Literature

Topic – Culture and Anarchy – An Essay in Political and Social Critisim – Metthew Arnold

S. B. Gardi Deperatment of English

Bhavnagar University.

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Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism    -Matthew Arnold

INTRODUCTION:

Matthew Arnold (1822–88) was one of 19th-century England’s most prominent poets and social commentators. He was for many years an inspector of schools, later becoming professor of poetry at Oxford University. Amongst his books, perhaps the best known is Culture and Anarchy (1869), in which he argues for the role of reading ‘the best that has been thought and said’ as an antidote to the anarchy of materialism, industrialism and individualistic self-interest.

Culture and Anarchy is a controversial philosophical work by Arnold. And it composed during a time of unprecedented social and political change, the essay argues for a restructuring of England's social ideology. It reflects Arnold's passionate conviction that the uneducated English masses could be molded into conscientious individuals who strive for human perfection through the harmonious cultivation of all of their skills and talents. A crucial condition of Arnold's thesis is that a state-administered system of education must replace the ecclesiastical program which emphasized rigid individual moral conduct at the expense of free thinking and devotion to community. Much more than a mere treatise on the state of education in England, Culture and Anarchy is, in the words of J. Dover Wilson, “at once a masterpiece of vivacious prose, a great poet's great defense of poetry, a profoundly religious book, and the finest apology for education in the English language.”

Arnold divides the society of England into three classes - The Aristocratic Class, the Middle Class and the Working Class. He finds Anarchy very common in these classes and analyses them with their virtues and defects. He designates the Aristocratic class of his time as the Barbarians, the Middle class as the Philistines and the Working class as the Populace.

We normally find three classes in Ships which also indicates exact social hierarchy in world. As elite class people enjoy seating idly on deck of the ship, Middle class people enjoying dance and food at the medieval floor, whereas, working class people hardily works for whole day at the rest floor of the ship. Their constant attempt makes ship floating upon ocean.    

His scrutiny of three classes of his time proves him a good experienced critic. For Aristocratic class, he views that this class lacks adequate courage for resistance. He calls this class the Barbarians because they believe in their personal individualism, liberty and doing as one likes; they had great passion for field sports. Their manly exercise, their strength and their good looks are definitely found in the Aristocratic class of his time. Their politeness resembles the Chivalry Barbarians, and their external styles in manners, accomplishments and powers are inherited from the Barbarians.

The other class is the middle class or the Philistines, known by its mundane wisdom, expert of industry and found busy in industrialization and commerce. Their eternal inclination is to the progress and prosperity of the country by building cities, railroads and running the great wheels of industry. They have produced the greatest mercantile navy. So, they are the Empire builders. In this material progress, the working class is with them. All the keys of progress are in their hands.

The other class is the working class or the populace. This class is known raw and half-developed because of poverty and other related diseases. This class is mostly exploited by the Barbarians and Philistines. The author finds democratic arousing in this class because they are getting political consciousness and are coming out from their hiding places to assert an English man's heaven- born privilege of doing as he likes, meeting where he likes, bawling what he likes, and breaking what he likes.

Despite such class system, Arnold finds a common basis of human nature in all. So, the spirit of sweetness and light can be founded. Even Arnold calls himself philistine and rises above his level of birth and social status in his pursuit of perfection, sweetness and light and culture. He further says that all three classes find happiness in what they like. For example, the Barbarians like honor and consideration, field sports and pleasure. The Philistines like fanaticism, business and money making and comfort and tea meeting, but the Populace class, hated by the both classes, likes shouting, hustling and smashing and beer. They all keep different activities by their social status. However, there are a few souls in these classes who hope for culture with a desire to know about their best or to see things as they are. They have desire to pursue reason and to make the will of God to prevail.

The Best Self or the Right Reason & the Ordinary Self:

Here he discusses the best self or the right reason and the ordinary self that can be felt in the pursuit of perfection only. In this regard, he talks about the bathos (excessive pathos, insincere sentimental pathos), surrounded by nature itself in the soul of man, is presented in literary judgment of some critics of literature and in some religious organizations of America. He further says that the idea of high best self is very hard for the pursuit of perfection in literature, religion and even in politics. The political system, prevalent in his time, was of the Barbarians. The leaders and the statesmen sang the praises of the Barbarians for winning the favor of the Aristocrats. Tennyson celebrates in his poems the glory of the great broad-shouldered genial Englishmen with his sense of duty and reverence for the laws. Arnold asserts that Tennyson is singing the praise of the philistines because this middle class is the backbone of the country in progress. The politicians sing the praise of the populace for carrying their favors. Indeed, they play with their feelings, having showed the brightest powers of sympathy and the readiest power of actions. All these praises are mere clap-trap and trick to gain applause. It is the taste of bathos surrounded by nature itself in the soul of man and comes into ordinary self. The ordinary self-enforces the readers to misguide the nation. It is more admirable, but its benefits are entertained by the representatives and ruling men.

Arnold wants to bring reform in education by shifting the management of public schools from their old board of trustees to the state. Like politics, in education the danger lies in unchecked and unguided individual action. All the actions must be checked by the real reason or the best self of the individual. It is the opinion of some people that the state may not interfere into affairs of education. The liberal party men believe in liberty, the individual liberty of doing as one likes and assert that interference of the state in education is a violation of personal liberty. Arnold says that such ideal personal liberty has still indefinite distance.

Moreover, he has the experience of twenty- four years as the inspector of schools. It provided him so much time to meet the different classes and examine their behaviors and habits. This experience pursued him to write 'Culture & Anarchy'. In his book, he has also discussed various topics about true culture. In this book, he has discussed Hebraism and Hellenism.

In the inception of the topic, he discusses doing and thinking. His general view about human beings is that they prefer to act rather than to think. He rejects it because mankind is to err and he cannot always think right, but it comes seldom in the process of reasoning and meditation, or he is not rightly guided by the light of true reason. The nation follows the voice of its conscience and its best light, but it is not the light of true reason except darkness.

He talks about the great idea to know and the great energy to act. Both are the most potent forces, and they should be in harmony by the light of reason. So, they are Hebraism and Hellenism. He insists on the balance of the both thought and action (Hellenism and Hebraism). The final aim of Hellenism and Hebraism is the same as man's perfection and salvation. He further discusses that the supreme idea with Hellenism or the Greek Spirit is to see things as they really are, and the supreme idea of Hebraism or the Spirit of Bible is conduct and obedience. He points out that the Greek philosophy considers that the body and its desires are an impediment to right thinking, whereas Hebraism considers that the body and its desires are an obstacle to right action.

Hebraism studies the universal order and observes the magnificence of God apparent in the order, whereas Hellenism follows with flexible activity. Thus, Hellenism acquires spontaneity of consciousness with a clearness of mind, and Hebraism achieves a strictness of conscience with its clarity of thought. In brief, Hebraism shows stress on doing rather than knowing, and follows the will of God. Its primary idea is absolute obedience to the will of God.

Hellenism and Hebraism both are directly connected to the life of human beings. Hellenism keeps emphasis on knowing or knowledge, whereas Hebraism fastens its faith in doing. He describes that the Bible reveals the truth which awards the peace of God and liberty. The simple idea of Hellenism is to get rid of ignorance, to see things as they are, and to search beauty from them. Socrates, as Hellenic, states that the best man is he who tries to make himself perfect, and the happiest man is he who feels that he is perfecting himself.

In this treatise, Arnold asserts that there is enough of Hellenism in the English nation, and he emphasizes on Hebraism, because it is based on conduct and self- control. He admits that the age is incapable of governing itself in the pursuit of perfection, and the bright promise of Greek ideal is faded. Now the obedience or submission must be to the rules of conduct, as expressed by the Holy Scripture (Bible). Hellenism lays its main stress on clear intelligence, whereas Hebraism keeps main stress on firm obedience, moral power and character.

 Conclusion:

Thus, the mission of Arnold's culture is that each individual must act for himself and must be perfect himself. The chosen people or classes must dedicate themselves to the pursuit of perfection, and he seems to be agreed with Humboldt, the German Philosopher, in case of the pursuit of perfection. So, it is essential that man must try to seek human perfection by instituting his best self or real reason; culture, in the end, would find its public reason.