Matthew Arnold : The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

Matthew Arnold's essay, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" was
published in his first collection of critical writings, Essays in Criticism, in 1865.
Prior to the publication of these essays, Arnold had just completed some lectures
on the translation of Homer-works which bear, in a less developed form, some of
Arnold's ideas on the need for new, intelligent criticism in England.
"The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" thus seems a bit of a turning point
in Arnold's career; by the time Arnold began writing Culture and Anarchy, he had
turned away from his career as a poet to focus on social and theological writings.
The project which Arnold began with this essay-to make the reading, middle-class
public of England understand the need for a critical spirit in order to provide
society with fresh, intelligent ideas-would occupy him fully and it is for this new
direction which Arnold takes that would make Arnold interesting to generations
after him.
The central argument of the essay responds to what Arnold felt to be the prevailing
attitude that the constructive, creative capacity was much more important than
the critical faculty. Arnold's expanded definition of criticism, however "the
endeavour, in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art,
science, to see the object as in itself it really is" renders criticism a necessary
prerequisite for truly valuable creation. Specifically, criticism is what generates
"fresh" and "intelligent" ideas during a specific time and place in history, and
Arnold claim that since literature works with current ideas (literature is "synthesis
and exposition"), great works can only be generated in a climate of great ideas.
Thus, Arnold argues that criticism prepares the way for creation.

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Arnold pegs the work of the romantic poets after the French Revolutionand in the
earlier part of the century as creative, but without the quality of ideas necessary for
truly great work. This is because, Arnold explains, the French Revolution devolved
into an obsession with the political and practical, "quitting the intellectual sphere
and rushing furiously into the political sphere." While Arnold praises the
intellectual quality of the initial ideas, particularly Burke's, coming out of this
"epoch of concentration," Arnold disparages the devolution of these ideas too
manically into the political and practical.
In the present time, Arnold argues, criticism must maintain a position of
"disinterestedness," keeping aloof from "the practical view of things" in order to
"know the best that is known and thought in the world, and in its turn making this
known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas." Its logic runs counter to that of
self-satisfaction (what Arnold felt to be the problematic attitude of middle-class
reformers) and thus leads men to desire greater perfection.
Arnold concedes, finally, that the work of the critic is "slow and obscure" and
doesn't quite give an answer as to how the critic can make his work known to the
so-called "practical" men. Arnold holds that the critic will be misunderstood, and
English society is likely to be on the side of the likes of Bishop Colenso and Miss
Cobbe, who offer "constructive" suggestions for living. Nevertheless, Arnold
seems deeply hopeful that the recent commentary on the youth of today having less
"zeal" means that they are in fact thinking more, and cultivating a more
disinterested, critical life and in doing so, coming up with fresh, intelligent ideas.
One of the most interesting aspects of Arnold's ideas on criticism for me is his
direct association between the need for criticism and what he perceived to be an
increasingly complex, modern, world. As abstract as many of Arnold's phrases
seem, and given the absence of any sense of specific historicity in terms like
"epoch of concentration" or "epoch of expansion," somehow, Arnold yet maintains
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that he means criticism for the present time, which, as it turns out, means
"modernity." In his own words, "the life and world being in modern times very
complex things," it becomes necessary that an intellectual elite (transcending
above all "practical" things later, in Culture and Anarchy, "ordinary selves"
including class status, but problematically so as Hadley points out in her critique of
Victorian liberalism) maintain clarity through determining what is true and what
is socially constructed.
The emphasis in this essay on "modernity" in all its hefty, complex associations
with industrialization, capitalism, secularization, institutional organization, and
relatedly, the destruction of the so-called "individual" makes it a particularly
interesting one to look at if one is to offer students of Victorian literature a
framework for understanding the major clash between humanity and
"modernity" perceived by so many. Arnold's sweeping generalizations of the
French Revolution and romanticism in this essay also offers an easy way into
pointing out two rather different waves of historical anxiety: the first related to the
violence of establishing new political orders, the second related to the mechanical
complacency of the middle-class individual in the face of improved living
conditions and general acceptance of "liberal" ideas.