9. Culture and Anarchy
Culture and Anarchy - Matthew Arnold
The dreaded, dreaded book. A 150 page-long Victorian treastise on the ills of society and what can be done to resolve it. This was never something I would read for enjoyment, but more out of interest: we were told just to read Chapter 5 but I really wanted to hear the whole of Arnold's arguement. Which, essentially, seems to be that culture (the study of perfection) would have been the cure for all of societies ills. Of course, this is just the core idea, and you'd hope so considering the length of the book.
I found it interesting, but completely unenjoyable. I thought that the arguement might be too seeped in context, but in actuality, Arnold's main example of the distestablishment of the Irish Church is something I already looked into a lot, so it wasn't completely alien. Sadly, the writing is dry, and overlong (I recall in one chapter it takes the man 4 pages to outline the three classes of society as Barbarians, Philistines and Populace.) I can understand his argument, but I cannot at all how he thinks like this: he is aware of the poverty then rampant in London's East End, yet looks down with disdain at ecenomic development as a means of aiding this. It might well be a good point, but that his other option is to teach culture (of course, with the higher classes teaching the lower classes to raise their views) in the hopes that in 20 years, someone might come up with an idea.
Good plan.
The dreaded, dreaded book. A 150 page-long Victorian treastise on the ills of society and what can be done to resolve it. This was never something I would read for enjoyment, but more out of interest: we were told just to read Chapter 5 but I really wanted to hear the whole of Arnold's arguement. Which, essentially, seems to be that culture (the study of perfection) would have been the cure for all of societies ills. Of course, this is just the core idea, and you'd hope so considering the length of the book.
I found it interesting, but completely unenjoyable. I thought that the arguement might be too seeped in context, but in actuality, Arnold's main example of the distestablishment of the Irish Church is something I already looked into a lot, so it wasn't completely alien. Sadly, the writing is dry, and overlong (I recall in one chapter it takes the man 4 pages to outline the three classes of society as Barbarians, Philistines and Populace.) I can understand his argument, but I cannot at all how he thinks like this: he is aware of the poverty then rampant in London's East End, yet looks down with disdain at ecenomic development as a means of aiding this. It might well be a good point, but that his other option is to teach culture (of course, with the higher classes teaching the lower classes to raise their views) in the hopes that in 20 years, someone might come up with an idea.
Good plan.