Arnold's Epochs of Expansion and Epochs of Concentration

"I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world;" (Leitch 824) said the Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold. Matthew Arnold, an English poet and critic whose work was both a representative of the Romantic ideas and of the Victorian intellectual concerns later on was the primary literary critic of his age. Arnold's critical theories is highlighted mainly through …

…presents the interdependent relationship of both the critic and poet. This concept later on influenced a number of writers and critics and their works and contributed highly to the modern critical theory. I believe that throughout this research paper, I benefited a lot from the information researched and presented and understand Arnold's perspective and theory to an extent that I can agree to his theory of the critic and poet being codependent on each others.