Matthew Arnold, Religious Critic

In his Introduction to The Portable Matthew Arnold, Lionel Trilling observed that Arnold's writings on religion were "central" to his life from 1870 to 1877 and bear "an intimate connection with his other work. They are frequently marked by verve and wit. And what they say is in a great tradition, for the theory that the Bible is essentially poetry, so to be read and understood, and that the utterances of the great poets are essentially religious, was stated first by Spinoza and subsequently by Coleridge" (TPMA, 29).

Once again, eurocentrism undermines the work of an otherwise capable critic: Spinoza's notion of the prophetic imagination as a form of "poetic" genius comes straight from Alfarabi.

Trilling continues: "In Arnold's day it was a theory of great importance to those who wished to keep religion in what they thought to be its naturalistic essentials, purging it of all that was dogmatic, supernatural, or in conflict with science. To Tolstoy, for example, Arnold meant much..." (ibid).

The line of religious criticism from Alfarabi to Tolstoy runs through Matthew Arnold.