Arnold’s Touchstone Method Essay

Arnolds beat method is a comparative method of criticism. According to this method, in order to judge a poets seduce properly, a critic should compare it to passages taken from works of swell cut acrosss of poetry, and that these passages should be applied as touchstones to other poetry. Even a single logical argument or selected quotation will serve the purpose. If the other work moves us in the same way as these lines and expressions do, then it is really a great work, otherwise non. This method was recommended by Arnold to overcome the shortcomings of the personal and historical estimates of a poem.Both historical and personal estimate goes in vain. In personal estimate, we send wordnot all leave out the personal and subjective factors. In historical estimate, historical importance often makes us rate a work as higher(prenominal) than it really deserves. In order to form a real estimate, one should have the ability to distinguish a real classic. At this point, Arnold offer s his theory of measure Method. A real classic, says Arnold, is a work, which belongs to the class of the very best. It can be recognized by placing it beside the known classics of the world.Those known classics can serve as the touchstone by which the merit of contemporary poetic work can be tested. This is the central idea of Arnolds Touchstone Method. Matthew Arnolds Touchstone Method of review was really a comparative system of criticism. Arnold was basically a classicist. He admired the ancient Greek, Roman and French authors as the models to be followed by the red-brick English authors. The old English like Shakespeare, Spenser or Milton were also to be taken as models. Arnold took selected passages from the modern authors and compared them with selected passages from the ancient authors and thus decided their merits.This method was called Arnolds Touchstone Method. However, this system of judgement has its own limitations. The method of comparing passage with a passage is n ot a sufficient test for determining the order of a work as a whole. Arnold himself insisted that we must judge a poem by the total impression and not by its fragments. But we can further extend this method of comparison from passages to the poems as whole units. The comparative method is an invaluable aid to appreciation of any kind of art.It is helpful not merely thus to compare the masterpiece and the lesser work, but the good with the not so good, the sincere with the not quite sincere, and so on. Those who do not agree with this theory of comparative criticism say that Arnold is too austere, too exacting in comparing a simple modern poet with the ancient master poet. It is not fair to expect that all hills may be Alps. The mass of current literature is much better disregarded. By this method we can cook apart the alive, the vital, the sincere from the shoddy, the showy and the insincere.