ARNOLD’S CONCEPT OF CULTURE

Ajit A KaliyaM.A. Semester 2Paper No 6 Victorian LiteratureRoll No 1Enrolment No 2069108420170013Batch 2016-18Department of English, MKBU

INTRODUCTION Full Title: Culture and Anarchy: An essay in political and

social criticism Written by Victorian writer Matthew Arnold in 1869. Composed during unexampled social and political change. It is believed that the essay is written for restructuring of

England’s social ideology.

ACCORDING TO ARNOLD Culture is, “Culture can be recommend as the great help

out of present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, “the best which has been thought and said in the world” and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically.”

By culture present difficulties can be remove. Getting the best in everything is culture. Remove old ideas which we have been following

mechanically and getting new and fresh thoughts which can lead us toward perfection.

CULTURE AS A STUDY IN PERFECTION A harmonious perfection. - Developing all sides of our humanity. - Developing all parts of our society. - If one suffers, other must suffer too. - Moral, social, and beneficent character of culture becomes manifest.

Endless additions in human perfection. Endless expansion of powers. Endless growth in wisdom and beauty. Not having and resting, but growing and becoming. Inward condition of mind and spirit, not an outward set of

circumstances. The formation of the spirit and character must be real

concern.

SWEETNESS & LIGHT Beauty and intelligence. Arnold believed that in harmonious perfection beauty and

intelligence both require. Uses Greek words aphuia or euphuia (which means well grown,

goodly, graceful, clever, witty, of good disposition) and says, “the notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive it: a harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites the two noblest of things, as Swift most happily calls them in his ‘Battle of the books’ ‘sweetness and light.”

The pursuit of perfection is the pursuit of sweetness and light.

Who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason. Who works for machinery, who works for hatred, works for confusion.

Culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.

CONCEPT OF GREATNESS Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite

love, interest, and admiration. Who possess more love, interest and admiration

are greater.

CONCLUSION In conclusion we can say that culture is a continuous

process which includes all people who search for best things. Power, wisdom, beauty, intelligence, mind and spirit. Which is more intellectual thing than material things. And by it find out the best way of life. It is Achieve perfection but an infinite run towards perfection that is the culture.

Thank You