So why would you want to read a poem about how life can be hard? Well, we think most people figure out that life isn't all good stuff about the time they find out Santa Claus isn't real yeah, we're still kind of bummed about that one, too. So why should we save the beauty and power of a great poem for just the bright side of life?
We feel like being able to talk about lurking darkness and fear makes it all a little less scary. Sure, "Dover Beach" is about loneliness, but when we read it, we somehow feel less alone—and we bet you will, too. Overview of Arnold's Life and Work If you want to know more about Arnold's life and his other poems, this essay is a great place to start. Victorian Web Check out this super handy site, jam-packed with good information on Arnold, who was one of the major writers of the Victorian age.
Creepy Animated Matthew Arnold Some computer genius has made a bunch of these videos, turning a still photo into a kind of talking picture. We sort of can't get enough of them, even though they totally weird us out, too. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex A full video of one of Sophocles' great plays. Epic masks, right? The effect is a little strange, but it makes a fun change. A Reading of "Dover Beach" It's always a good idea to listen to a poem read out loud.
We always feel like we understand a poem better when it's well read, as it is here. We think it captures his bummer essence. Parents Home Homeschool College Resources. Stanza two, with its reference to Sophocles, brings home a sense of tragic fatedness. The following lines from Antigone may be relevant: "Blest are they whose days have not tasted of evil. For when a house hath once been shaken from heaven, there the curse fails nevermore, passing from life to life of the race; even as, when the surge is driven over the darkness of the deep by the fierce breath of Thracian sea-winds, it rolls up the black sands front the depths, and there is sullen roar from wind-vexed headlands that from the blows of the storm.
While Sophocles can invoke the Greek ideal of the 'thinking Warrior', Arnold sees order and sanity destroyed in the antithesis of "ignorant armies".
Religion "The Sea of Faith" might have once provided protection to the Christian world, but is now feared to be in recession. Though, for the ancient Greeks, Desire "sits enthroned among the mighty laws", romantic love has no supreme virtue.
Arnold, on the other hand, seems to suggest that the lovers' vow is the only value left with which to counter history. The speaker realises that, out there in the world, there is "neither joy, nor love, nor light…". The two newlyweds, standing at the window looking across the moonlit sea, have become, in a sense, the whole of love.
It's quite a jolt to contrast the modernity of this view with the poem's actual date. Arnold was not wholly comfortable with the idea of himself as a poet. He wrote: " It is not so light a matter, when you have other grave claims on your powers, to submit voluntarily to the exhaustion of the best poetical production in a time like this It is only in the best poetical epochs His most anthologised poem is, formally, his most radical.
The final stanza begins with an appeal to love, then moves on to the famous ending metaphor. Critics have varied on their interpretation of the first two lines of this stanza; one calls them a "perfunctory gesture Thucydides describes an ancient battle which occurred on a similar beach during the invasion of Sicily by the Athenians.
The battle took place at night; the attacking army became disoriented while fighting in the darkness and many of their soldiers inadvertently killed each other. The "darkling plain" of the final line has been described as Arnold's "central statement" of the human condition [22] A more recent critic has seen the final line as "only metaphor" and, thus, susceptible to the "uncertainty" of poetic language.
Exploring the dark terror that lies beneath his happiness in love, the speaker resolves to love - and exigencies of history and the nexus between lovers are the poem's real issues. Devoid of love and light the world is a maze of confusion left by 'retreating' faith.
Critics have questioned the unity of the poem, noting that the sea of the opening stanza does not appear in the final stanza, while the "darkling plain" of the final line is not apparent in the opening. One critic saw the "darkling plain" with which the poem ends as comparable to the "naked shingles of the world.
Beginning in the present it shifts to the classical age of Greece, then with its concerns for the sea of faith it turns to Medieval Europe, before finally returning to the present. Critics have noted the careful diction in the opening description, [7] the overall, spell-binding rhythm and cadence of the poem [30] and the dramatic character of the poem.
The anonymous figure to whom Arnold addresses his poem becomes the subject of Hecht's poem. Kenneth and Miriam Allott, referring to "Dover Beach" as "an irreverent jeu d'esprit ," nonetheless see, particularly in the line "a sort of mournful cosmic last resort," an extension of the original's poem main theme.
Even in the U. Marathon Pipe Line Co. For a more thorough bibliography see Matthew Arnold. Penny's poetry pages Wiki Explore. Recent blog posts Forum. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account?
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