What forces in current British life, according to Arnold, are getting in the way of intellectual progress? (1523-25)?
Answers
Explanation:
"Dover Beach"
1. Describe “Dover Beach” as a Greater Romantic Lyric -- characterize the three stages as they occur specifically in Arnold's poem. Do you find the affective resolution convincing? Why or why not?
2. Explore Arnold's treatment of religion: What is the "Sea of Faith"? How does the phrase “bright girdle furled” involve Carlyle's metaphor of clothes? What “social prophecy” does Arnold make about the consequences of Europe's loss of Christian faith?
3. How does the speaker's lament that “the world . . . / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain” amount to a rejection of Wordsworth's “religion of nature”?
4. At what point does Arnold's mimetic description of nature turn into an investigation of emotional and spiritual matters? Why does he enlist the classical Greek tragedian Sophocles -- not the Romantic Wordsworth -- as his authority for doing so? How does Arnold reject Wordsworthian individualism?