The “historic estimate” is Arnold’s term for an evaluation of a poem that is based not on the poem’s timeless features or its presence or lack of high seriousness, but instead on its place in linguistic, artistic, or cultural history. According to Arnold, readers who are dealing with texts of distant eras or places are especially prone to falling into the fallacy of relying on a historical estimate. Arnold concedes that the Song of Roland is important for historical reasons, for example, but denies that it is worthy of the status of epic poetry, a status reserved for a poet like Homer. Thus, it is important not to let the historic estimate of the Song of Roland overshadow the real estimate, which shows that it is not of the first rank.
Historic Estimate Quotes in The Study of Poetry
The The Study of Poetry quotes below are all either spoken by Historic Estimate or refer to Historic Estimate. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Study of Poetry
Quotes
The course of development of a nation’s language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a poet’s work as a stage in this course of development we may easily bring ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise in criticizing it; in short, to over-rate it.
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Historic Estimate Term Timeline in The Study of Poetry
The timeline below shows where the term Historic Estimate appears in The Study of Poetry. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Study of Poetry
...false standards of judgment. The two false estimates readers must avoid, Arnold notes, are the historic estimate and the personal estimate.
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The historic estimate may seem appealing because, as Matthew Arnold admits, the historical development of a language (such...
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...the format of an anthology creates temptations for readers and critics to fall into the historic estimate and the personal estimate, since anthologies present poets in their historical context and the critics...
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Adding to his previous explanation of the two fallacies (the historic estimate and the personal estimate), Arnold explains that the historical estimate is especially likely to be...
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...a judgment that had some currency even until Arnold’s day. But, Arnold asks, is this historic estimate of Dryden’s work in line with the real estimate? Arnold acknowledges that it takes a...
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