Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy is a series of periodical essays by Matthew Arnold, first published in Cornhill Magazine 1867-68 and collected as a book in 1869. The preface was added in 1875.^[1]

Arnold's famous piece of writing on culture established his High Victorian cultural agenda which remained dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s.

According to his view advanced in the book, "Culture [...] is a study of perfection". He further wrote that: "[Culture] seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light [...]".

His often quoted phrase "[culture is] the best which has been thought and said" comes from the Preface to Culture and Anarchy:

The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our 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, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically.

Notes

1. ^ Robert H. Super, Culture and Anarchy with Friendship's Garland and Some Literary Essays, Volume V of The Complete Works of Matthew Arnold, The University of Michigan Press, 1965.

References

• Robert H. Super (editor), The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold in eleven volumes (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1960-1977)

Volume V: Culture and Anarchy with Friendship's Garland and Some Literary Essays (1965).

• Stefan Collini (editor), Culture and Anarchy and other writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) part of the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series.

Collini's introduction to this edition attempts to show that "Culture and Anarchy ... has left a lasting impress upon subsequent debate about the relation between politics and culture" —Introduction, pg ix.

• Lionel Trilling, Matthew Arnold (New York: Norton, 1939)
• Park Honan, Matthew Arnold, a life (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1981) ISBN 0070296979
• Stefan Collini, Arnold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)
• Robert J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Culture, Theory and Race (Routledge: London and New York, 1995) ISBN 0-415-05374-9

Young demonstrates the extent to which Arnold's ideas about culture in Culture and Anarchy are adapted from contemporary ethnography (i.e. racial theory).

External links

• Culture and Anarchy at Project Gutenberg

This article about an essay or essay collection is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v · Categories: 1869 books Cultural studies books Works by Matthew Arnold Works originally published in Cornhill Magazine Essay stubs Wikimedia Foundation. 2010. Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР? Industrial disasters Bopal Look at other dictionaries: Culture and Imperialism — is the 1993 sequel to Edward Said s highly influential book Orientalism from 1978. Subject In a series of essays, Said argues the impact of mainstream culture (mainly British writers from the 19th and early 20th century, like Jane Austen and… …   Wikipedia Art and Anarchy — is a collection of essays by Edgar Wind, a distinguished twentieth century iconologist, historian, and art theorist. In 1960, Wind gave several lectures for the BBC as part of the Reith Lectures series; these lectures were collected, revised, and …   Wikipedia Culture — For other uses, see Culture (disambiguation). Petroglyphs in modern day Gobustan, Azerbaijan, dating back to 10 000 BCE indicating a thriving culture …   Wikipedia Anarchy — (from el. αναρχία anarchía , without ruler ) may refer to any of the following: * Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder. [ anarchy. Oxford English Dictionary.… …   Wikipedia Culture Crash Comics — This unique cover was the alternate/flip cover of Issue 14 what would be the last issue of Culture Crash Comics. It also features the first magazine cover appearance of Alodia Gosiengfiao, at the point where she and her sister Ashley first came… …   Wikipedia High culture — is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture, or denoting the culture of ruling social groups.… …   Wikipedia Sweetness and light — is an English idiom that indicates a person’s friendliness and ease. Today, it is generally used ironically to describe insincere courtesy. For example: The two had been fighting for a month, but around others it was all sweetness and light.… …   Wikipedia sweetness and light — noun a mild reasonableness when he learned who I was he became all sweetness and light • Hypernyms: ↑affability, ↑affableness, ↑amiability, ↑amiableness, ↑bonhomie, ↑geniality * * * noun …   Useful english dictionary sweetness and light — good natured benevolence or harmony. [taken from Jonathan Swift and used by Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy (1869).] → sweetness …   English new terms dictionary culture jamming — (KUL.chur jam.ing) pp. To manipulate existing cultural images particularly those found in advertising to mock, refute, or subvert those images. Also: culture jamming. culture jammer n. culture jam v. Example Citation: The hactivists who hijack… …   New words 18+ © Academic, 2000-2024 Contact us: Technical Support, Advertising Dictionaries export, created on PHP, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, MODx. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet Share the article and excerpts Direct link … Do a right-click on the link above and select “Copy Link”