The Study of Poetry

by

Matthew Arnold

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Themes and Colors
Poetry and the Human Spirit Theme Icon
Excellence and Inferiority Theme Icon
Reason vs. Emotion Theme Icon
Elitism, Democracy, and Popular Culture Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Study of Poetry, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Poetry and the Human Spirit

“The Study of Poetry” was first published as Arnold’s introduction to an anthology of English poetry, and its primary purpose is to provide readers with a method for distinguishing what Arnold calls “classic” poetry from poetry that is merely good or—worse—inferior. Underlying Arnold’s project in this essay is the idea that poetry has something special to offer readers and a special role in human affairs, which Arnold describes as poetry’s high destiny.

Arnold’s…

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Excellence and Inferiority

“The Study of Poetry” is an old-fashioned essay in many ways, and Arnold might seem especially old-fashioned in his unwavering insistence that readers not only can distinguish excellent works from inferior ones but that they must do so. Indeed, “The Study of Poetry” is constructed around this principle, since it is primarily a guide to distinguishing “poetry of a high order of excellence” from other kinds of poetry, such as the merely good and the…

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Reason vs. Emotion

Alongside his distinction between truly “classic” poetry and poetry of a lesser rank, Arnold’s argument relies on another, subtler distinction between reason and emotion—which he equates in the essay with prose and poetry, respectively. Arnold begins his essay by declaring that, in a world increasingly devoted to “the fact,” poetry is destined to be the supreme source of comfort and culture for modern people. In this way, Arnold implies a dichotomy between reason and…

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