Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

19th Century British Literature
University of Calcutta
ENG-A-CC-4-10-TH/TU
Poetry: Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’
Dover Beach as Representative of Victorian Unrest (Essay)
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold reflects the intellectual and spiritual distress
of the 19th century
...
” Between the two worlds Arnold finds a
wasteland which is blinkered, blind and ultimately dying no longer capable of giving
direction
...
As
Lionel Trilling observes, “The world of bourgeois enterprise which arranged its own
self-glorification in the Great Exhibition of 1851 could find little charm for Arnold
...
Breakthrough discoveries made by
Charles Darwin and geologists undermined the very grounds of Christian faith
...
However, the overriding sense of doubt psychologically
dented the spirit of the age more than anything else
...
The sons of
democracy and industrial revolution are isolated men
...
Science creates a cosmos without a soul and the subsequent loss
of belief in cosmic order requires men to selfishly retreat into their individual selves
...
The individual found himself marooned psychologically in an
island
...
It has become scattered
...
The most obvious one of these is “the sea” with its nostalgic nature and ability
to represent time and timelessness simultaneously
...
The melancholic note in the poet’s mind gets reflected in the landscape
described in the poem
...
The first section in each of these stanzas deals with
that which is promising, hopeful; the second undercuts the cheer allowed by the first
section and replaces the illusory optimism with a reality which is indeed barren,
hopeless
...

There is a sense of satisfaction, of utter completeness about the scene
described in the first eight lines of the poem
...
The word
“only” in line seven has been introduced as a transition- one which serves to awaken
us to the gloomy tone that is to follow
...
As the more
intimate, more aware, and more concerned faculty of hearing is introduced, the
turmoil of sea meeting land becomes sensible- the “grating roar” becomes more
pervasive
...
In all probability the
reference is to the Greek dramatist’s use of the sea-wave metaphor in ‘Antigone’ to
express a fatal sense of the regular return of woe to the house of ‘Oedipus’
...
The
inevitable cycle must continue and every resurgence be followed by the equally
necessary retreat
...
In ‘The Buried Life’, Arnold expresses the belief that in a successful
love relationship he may discover certain values which are not readily to be found in
“modern life”
...
He found in the elegy the outlet of his native
melancholy of the “Virgilian cry” over the mourning of mortal destiny
...
Other great poets like Milton, Shelley, Tennyson have
given grand expression of their sorrow and melancholy in single elegies
...


References

John, William, Draper
...
History of the Conflict between Religion and Science
...

Charles, Darwin
...
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
...




---