The Study of Poetry Study Guide

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Matthew Arnold was an influential English poet, cultural critic, and educator, who played a significant role in Victorian literature. Born in Laleham, Middlesex, Arnold was the son of the renowned headmaster Thomas Arnold of Rugby School. Educated at Rugby and later Balliol College, Oxford, Arnold became deeply immersed in classical studies, which profoundly influenced his literary and critical works.

Arnold's career was multifaceted; he served as a school inspector for over three decades, which provided him with a broad perspective on education and society. As a poet, Arnold is celebrated for works such as "Dover Beach," "The Scholar-Gipsy," and "Thyrsis," which reflect his preoccupation with the themes of faith, doubt, and the search for meaning in a rapidly changing world. His poetic style is marked by its lyrical quality, introspection, and classical restraint.

In addition to his poetry, Arnold is well-known for his critical essays, where he championed the importance of culture and the role of literature in society. His most famous prose work, "Culture and Anarchy" (1869), argues for the necessity of a cultured elite to guide societal progress.

Historical and Literary Context for "The Study of Poetry"

"The Study of Poetry" is an essay by Matthew Arnold, first published in 1880 as the introduction to T.H. Ward's anthology "The English Poets." The essay is a cornerstone of Arnold's literary criticism and reflects his belief in the moral and societal function of poetry.

The late 19th century, when Arnold wrote "The Study of Poetry," was a period of intense change and development. The Victorian era was characterized by industrial advancement, scientific discoveries, and expanding British imperialism. These changes brought about significant cultural and intellectual shifts, including challenges to traditional religious beliefs and the rise of secularism.

Arnold's essay emerged as a response to these transformations. He argued that poetry should be an essential means of preserving cultural values and fostering human understanding in an age of uncertainty. Arnold famously stated, "the future of poetry is immense," suggesting that poetry would replace religion as a source of solace and guidance.

In "The Study of Poetry," Arnold also introduced the concept of "the touchstone method," where he advocated judging the quality of poetry by comparing it to the greatest works of the past. He believed that by measuring contemporary poetry against the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and others, one could maintain high literary standards.

Arnold's critical approach emphasized the importance of disinterestedness, urging critics to set aside personal biases and evaluate literature based on its intrinsic merits. His ideas laid the groundwork for modern literary criticism and continue to influence the field today.

In summary, Matthew Arnold's contributions to poetry and criticism were deeply rooted in the cultural and intellectual currents of his time. "The Study of Poetry" remains a seminal work that underscores the enduring value of poetry in human life and culture.

Want to generate unlimited academic essays?

Unlock endless possibilities for your academic writing!
Our tool helps you craft high-quality, original essays in no time. Whether you're tackling complex topics or need help structuring your thoughts, we've got you covered. Start creating with ease and elevate your academic performance today!

About Rephrasely

Getting your wording just right

Paraphrasing is a natural part of the writing process as it helps you clarify your thinking and suit your words to your audience. Using a Rephrasely helps structure and streamline this work, and our paraphrase tool offers 20 modes, many of them free, for accomplishing just this. The 20 modes we offer are diverse, including a summarize tool, a free grammar checker, a mode to simplify text, and a sentence shortener. There are sentence rephrasers and paraphrase rephrase tools, and we pride ourselves on having both, since our reword generator accounts for context at both the sentence and paragraph levels.

When you google paraphrase you will get a variety of results, from a free Rephrasely, to an article spinner, to a general phrase tool, and it can be hard to determine which of these rephrase tools will best help you complete your work. If you simply need to get a word rephrase, that is, reword only small elements within the sentence, many tools will suffice, but there is the risk that you end up with a tool that does not consider context and produces very awkward and ungrammatical sentences. Rephrasing is very much an art, and we’ve built our paraphrase bot to produce the most correct results in 20 modes in over 100 languages, making it the best paraphrasing tool at an exceptionally low cost. So whether you need to paraphrase deutsch, paraphrase greek, or paraphrase bahasa melayu, the next time you think, I need something to paraphrase this for me, you’ll know where to turn.

From keywords to paragraphs

Generating paragraphs with unique ideas can be challenging, and too often writers get stuck at this stage of the writing process. With our paragraph tool, you can enter keywords and let our AI generate paragraphs for you, so that you can have something to work with, refine the output, and become more engaged in your writing.

A paragraph generator creates links between your ideas, such that the output is sensible, unique, and stimulating, very close to what you would expect a thoughtful human paragraph writer to produce.

Paragraph makers are nice, but what about a short story generator? Because our AI is generalized, it serves a story generator, an essay generator, a poem generator, and much more. To generate compelling stories, you should provide the story generator with useful keywords from which it can develop plot elements, including characters, setting details, and any situational information. To generate reasonably good essays, you should likewise provide the essay maker with details around argumentative positions and any other pertinent ideas. If you more specifically want an introduction paragraph generator or conclusion paragraph generator, you can provide starter text and keywords that will best enable our essay creator to produce them.

You may well ask, “is this essay generator free?” Everything on this site is free within a 3-day trial, so you can test and develop confidence in our products. You may also be wondering where this is an essay automatic writer or if it will take a while to get results. All results appear within a matter of seconds, so you can move through your work as quickly as possible.

You may have professional needs for creating paragraphs as well, such as those needed for cover letter. Most of the time a cover letter template includes information that is not relevant to you; by using your own keywords, we can produce cover letter examples that are relevant to your use case and often require very little editing. By using this service, you can also learn how to write a cover letter and achieve the cover letter format you need.

Plagiarism checker free

Like everything else on our site, you can check plagiarism free within a trial, which is a great opportunity for those who want to check a paper for plagiarism without committing to paying before they see results. This free plagiarism checker is great for students and clearly indicates how to check for plagiarism by highlighting areas of similarity between the two texts. Just to be sure you are not accidentally plagiarizing, be sure to check all of your paraphrases as well.