Arnold in (and out of) Style

Abstract

Reviews the critical reception of Arnold’s style up to the present. Conceives three movements in the critical reception of Arnold’s style. From an early formalism that divided Arnold’s style from his subject, viewing his “expository prose as something that could be appreciated as an independent aesthetic merit,” there emerged in the early twentieth century “stylistic monism (which denotes the conflation of content and form).” This worked for and against Arnold, “in Arnold’s favor so long as the reader approves” of both content and form, but against him if “recognizable features of his style” revealed “less savory aspects of his underlying character.” In roughly the last quarter of the twentieth century, an “ethical formalist” approach to Arnold’s style treated “ethos as argument” and countered the Arnoldian temper’s aesthetics “against the growing ranks who subjected it to ideological critique.” In the twenty-first century, this has given rise to a vision of Arnold’s style almost as performative, creating a space for liberal ideas to emerge.