Matthew Arnold

Over the past two years I have reported on recent articles by James Walter Caufield in which he discusses Arnold’s “touchstone method”— whereby intuition and concrete examples of poetry are more important than theoretical abstractions—and analyzes hostile critical assessments of Arnold’s “anti-systematic empiricism.” Now Caufield has published a monograph in which he deals with these and other aspects of Arnold’s critical reputation. As I keep reminding readers of this annual essay, scholarly monographs on Matthew Arnold have not been numerous in recent years, though Arnold is still generally considered to be an eminent poet and the preeminent critic of the British Victorian period. In Overcoming Matthew Arnold: Ethics in Culture and Criticism (Ashgate, 2012), Caufield opens the way for a re-examination of Arnold’s contributions to literary criticism, and in the process he deals with the crucial issue of Arnold’s development from poet to critic. His survey of misunderstandings and “caricatures” of Arnold emphasizes the past three decades in which his reputation has declined and prepares the way for a new method of interpreting Arnold’s work, but he traces the dominant views of Arnold among his contemporary Victorians and then interwar critics such as T. S. Eliot, before moving forward to the critics associated with the British New Left, and, finally, more recent theorists associated with postcolonialism and cultural studies. Caufield’s emphasis on the philosophy of pessimism and the key concepts of “conduct” and “renouncement” in Arnold’s work helps the reader to better understand important issues related to intuition, subjectivity, “human nature,” and moral judgment, and he expresses a new appreciation for Arnold’s religious essays, largely ignored by critics today.

Caufield’s coverage of recent “caricatures” of Arnold —especially in Chapter 2, “The Buried Life: Cultural Politics and the Renunciation of Arnold,” and Chapter 4, “Culture Hates Hatred: Critical Anti-Humanism and the Fate of Arnold”—could have been extended. He does a good job in covering some important critics, such as the “postcolonial” Edward Said, but though he emphasizes the culture versus politics debate, some varieties of recent postmodernism and “cultural studies” are not adequately addressed. At any rate, in spite of his awareness that the book will be controversial, his rhetoric is primarily focused not on a negative correction of prior misreadings of Arnold but rather on a positive opening up of new readings that emphasize an appreciation for Arnold’s ethical and philosophical positions in his prose.

The organization of the book is a bit unusual. Some readers may think that the author is too repetitive, restating his thesis about Arnold’s renunciation and philosophical pessimism, again and again. However, given the fact that his work really does point to a new direction in Arnold studies, this kind of repetition makes sense. His thesis is that “pessimistic renouncement is the key to Arnold’s entire oeuvre, both poetry and prose” (p. 200). This claim runs counter to the common generalization that Arnold is a pessimist in his poetry but much more optimistic as he turns to prose. Caufield is careful not to offer a reductive argument, acknowledging Arnold’s flexibility and openness to new ideas, but his careful readings of Arnold’s prose through the years support his claims and help to explain the sometimes strongly negative reactions invoked in readers who reject Arnold’s thought. Of course he draws on the work of some previous critics, extending, for example, the insights of Alan Grob who in A Longing Like Despair (2002) focused on philosophical pessimism in Arnold’s poetry, and those of earlier Arnold scholars like James C. Livingston, who analyzed the orthodox Christian attributes of “Arnoldian necrosis” in Matthew Arnold and Christianity: His Religious Prose Writings (1986). In a general way, he is also following up on the work of critics since the mid-twentieth century who at least acknowledged the significance of Arnold’s religious writings: this would include Basil Willey, William Robbins, A. O. J. Cockshut, David J. DeLaura, Douglas Bush, Ruth apRoberts, Maurice Cowling, and Joe Phelan.

Perhaps the most interesting critical influence reflected in Caufield’s work, however, is that of Stephan...