The River of Poetry
Matthew Arnold uses the “the world-river of poetry” to refer to the Western tradition of poetry, dating back to the time of Homer and spanning all national traditions. In Arnold’s telling, this great tradition is…
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The Touchstone
Matthew Arnold uses the term “touchstone” to symbolically represent lines of truly good poetry by poets like Homer or Dante Alighieri. Historically speaking, a “touchstone” was a piece of jasper that was used to…
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