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Book Description
'The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.' Matthew Arnold's famous series of essays, which were first published in book form under the title Culture and Anarchy in 1869, debate important questions about the nature of culture and society that are as relevant now as they have ever been. Arnold seeks to find out 'what culture really is, what good it can do, what is our own special need of it' in an age of rapid social change and increasing mechanization. He contrasts culture, 'the study of perfection', with anarchy, the mood of unrest and uncertainty that pervaded mid-Victorian England. How can individuals be educated, not indoctrinated, and what is the role of the state in disseminating 'sweetness and light'? This edition reproduces the original book version and enables readers to appreciate its immediate historical context as well as the reasons for its continued importance today, in the face of the challenges of multi-culturalism and post-modernism.
About the Author
Jane Garnett acted as Consultant Editor for Women on the ODNB from 1994 to 2004 and was also Associate Editor for Victorian Women Philanthropists. She is a founder member of the editorial board of the Journal of Victorian Culture.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
In one of his speeches a year or two ago,* that fine speaker and famous Liberal, Mr Bright, took occasion to have a fling at the friends and preachers of culture. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
In one of his speeches a year or two ago,* that fine speaker and famous Liberal, Mr Bright, took occasion to have a fling at the friends and preachers of culture. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.0 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
For anyone hoping to grasp the roots of modern conservatism, May 1 1999
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Culture and Anarchy (Paperback)
Matthew Arnold, a British poet and critic, wrote on the importance of culture in this work. He defined culture, famously, as "sweetness and light" - implying that culture represented everything good, everything not barbaric. The work is most important for the way it forwards the notion of an "organic" society - that is, a society that evolves slowly, that grows into maturity, that does not strive for sudden "advances" led by experts working all at once to implement great change. For anyone wondering about the relationship between modern conservatism and classical Liberalism, this is a decent place to start. "I am a Liberal," Arnold writes in the introduction, "yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in culture." If you wish to take an intellectual journey from Burke to Bork, Arnold must make up one leg of your trip.
23 of 32 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Breeze of Sanity, Sep 7 1999
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Culture and Anarchy (Paperback)
So much of modern criticism has go so far afield, that the appellation has almost lost any sense to it. To recapture what criticism meant before the novel, but useless ideas of structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, post-modernism, et alia, Matthew Arnold is about as good a place to begin. His "Function of Criticism" and "Anarchy and Crticism" have become classics, even if they've been hidden from sight by academicians' self-serving agendas to bring nothing to light. This isn't a "conservative" vs. "liberal" thing, but an "intelligible and meaningful" vs. "labyrinthine and cockamamie" thing. Arnold is like encountering hermeneutics by having first visited Thomas Aquinas, or having studied democracy by having first studied Hobbes. Arnold is a seminal thinker, crtic, and student of the arts and society. He belongs in criticism's lexicon well before de Saussure, Derrida, Lacan, at alia.
11 of 23 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Note for the fashion con-science, Feb 2 2001
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Culture and Anarchy: Landmarks in the History of Education (Paperback)
This edition is preferable to the gimmicky version published by Yale, where the original text is lost beneath the imposition of leftist ideologues.
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