SOURCE: Perkins, David. “Arnold and the Function of Literature.” ELH 18 (1951): 287-309.

In the following essay, Perkins asserts that Arnold's value as a literary and cultural critic lies in his revitalization of essentially classical notions at a time when modern society was most in need of them.

I

Culture as Process and Ideal

It is perhaps a platitude that man's study both of himself and of the world he lives in has become increasingly compartmentalized; and that diverse, specialized studies have each tended to exercise and develop one particular facet of the mind, often at the expense of others. On the other hand, the general development of man's mind and emotional character—the development, to use the classical term, of the “total man”—has traditionally stood out as the most challenging and fundamental aim of human culture; and it is this aim that inspired the ancient classical belief in...