Matthew Arnold versus Aristotles Poetics Essay examples

The value of imitation: a vision of Aristotles Poetics Aristotle wrote his Poetics thousands of years before Matthew Arnolds birth. His reasons for composing it were different from Arnolds reasons for using it as an element of his own poetic criticism. We can safely say that Arnold was inclined to use the Poetics as an inspiration for his own poetry, and as a cultural weapon in the fight for artistic and social renewal. Aristotle, by contrast, was more concerned with discovering general truths, and with formalising truths already known intuitively within his own society. I wish, in this article, to make some observations about the way in which some of the seminal ideas in the Poetics affected one key writer within the English†¦show more content†¦as Arnolds first public engagement in those critical controversies that were to be the stimulus to his best work (p. 48). Two points follow from this statement. Firstly it suggests that Arnold saw literature, philosophy and criticism, as of vital public importance, and secondly it says that the his engagement in public debate tended to have a positive effect on his creative work. This makes his approach similar to that of Aristotle who also saw theory as intimately linked to public practice. Aristotles Poetics, and his writing in general, have a profoundly social and moral dimension. I would argue then that Arnold attempts to import a moral ideal into England from Greece, and argue even further that his greatest ambition was not just the restoration of national literature to England, but finally a g reat society. In the realm of ideas Arnold does manage to show the desireability, for England, of Aristotelian ideas and Greek ideas in general. Arnolds famous phrase, from Culture and Anarchy, about the need in the English mind for sweetness and light sound very un-Aristotelian. It also sounds hopelessly idealistic in a bad sense. If we read the rest of the book however and see the various examples which he gives of English intransigence, and heavy inaccessibility to ideas, we can see what ArnoldShow MoreRelatedCleanth Brookss Essay Irony as a Principle of Structure9125 Words   |  37 PagesAnalysis | Resources Introduction | Back to Top of Page | â€Å"Ars Poetica† (â€Å"The Art of Poetry† or â€Å"On the Nature of Poetry†), sometimes known under its original title, â€Å"Epistula Ad Pisones† (â€Å"Letters to the Pisos†), is a treatise or literary essay on poetics by the Roman poet Horace, published around 18 or 19 BCE. Synopsis | Back to Top of Page | The poem takes the form of a letter of advice on the pursuit of literature, addressed to a father and two sons, known only as the Pisos, whose identity is uncertain