A Theological Reading of Selected Works of Matthew
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THE POETICS OF LOSS: A THEOLOGICAL READING OF SELECTED WORKS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Arts in Theological Studies By Anthony Nicholas De Santis, B.A. Dayton, Ohio August 2020 THE POETICS OF LOSS: A THEOLOGICAL READING OF SELECTED WORKS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD Name: De Santis, Anthony Nicholas APPROVED BY: _____________________________________ William L. Portier, Ph.D. Committee Chair _____________________________________ Dennis M. Doyle, Ph.D. Faculty Reader _____________________________________ Mark Ryan, Ph.D. Faculty Reader _____________________________________ Daniel Speed Thompson, Ph.D. Department Chairperson ii © Copyright by Anthony Nicholas De Santis All rights reserved 2020 iii ABSTRACT THE POETICS OF LOSS: A THEOLOGICAL READING OF SELECTED WORKS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD Name: De Santis, Anthony Nicholas University of Dayton Advisor: Dr. William L. Portier The Poetics of Loss: A Theological Reading of Selected Works of Matthew Arnold is one Catholic theologian’s attempt to make sense of the mysterious, and possibly troubling, claim that Arnold is “a serious theological thinker.”1 If the author finds this claim mysterious, it is not least because Arnold’s poetry engages and relies on a ‘poetics of loss,’ which the author defines as Arnold’s felt sense of isolation, disintegration, and hopelessness as he observes the Sea of Faith retreating.2 Despite what must be to the Catholic theologian Arnold’s troubling and troubled existential, religious, and socio- historical commitments, however, the author argues that Arnold’s poetry is precisely where Arnold is most theologically significant, relevant, and compelling. This is in contradistinction to those critics who locate Arnold’s theological significance in his religious prose writings. The author’s theo-poetic retrieval of Arnold is aided by a close reading of Karl Rahner’s “Poetry and the Christian” and “Priest and Poet,” which he then applies to Matthew Arnold’s “The Buried Life.” 1 Nicholas Sagovsky, Between Two Worlds: George Tyrrell’s Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 4. 2 Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach,” lines 21-28. iv In Memory of my dad, Paul Richard De Santis (1945-2016) v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ iv DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………v INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I ORIGINS OF A LOSS .......................................................................................... 7 1.1 Biography the First Part........................................................................................ 9 1.2 Biography the Second Part ................................................................................. 13 1.3 Coda .................................................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER II LANGUAGE “FLUID” AND “PASSING” ............................................................. 19 2.1 Literature and Dogma ........................................................................................ 23 2.2 Literature and Dogma, continued ...................................................................... 28 2.3 Some Reasons for Suspicion............................................................................... 34 2.4 Coda .................................................................................................................... 38 CHAPTER III NOTES TOWARD A THEO-POETIC APPRECIATION AND RETRIEVAL OF ARNOLD’S ‘POETICS OF LOSS’ ........................................................................................... 40 3.1 Rahner on Poetry ............................................................................................... 44 3.2 Arnold, “The Buried Life,” and Rahner ............................................................... 47 3.3 Arnold, “The Buried Life,” and Rahner, continued ............................................ 51 3.4 Still More Connections ....................................................................................... 54 3.5 Coda .................................................................................................................... 59 CHAPTER IV ON THE EDGE OF DISASTER .......................................................................... 62 vi BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 68 APPENDIX A Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold ................................................................. 71 APPENDIX B The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold ............................................................. 73 APPENDIX C Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse by Matthew Arnold .......................... 76 vii INTRODUCTION In the article “After Dover Beach: Arnold’s Recast Religion,” published in 2001, Michael McGhee states that Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) “is now neglected as a religious thinker.”1 It is a peculiar fate for one whose religious writings function as the very ground from whence his better-known literary and social criticism proceed.2 As Basil Willey tells us in his masterful biographical-literary sketch of Arnold, “To [him] religion was always the thing that mattered most: all [Arnold’s] efforts – in criticism, in politics, in education – really led up to it.”3 While the substance of McGhee’s claim has much to recommend itself,4 it fails to account for those scholars who have managed, in recent years, to attend to the religious dimensions of Arnold’s thought. Linda Ray Pratt’s Matthew Arnold Revisited,5 James C. Livingston’s Matthew Arnold and Christianity: His Religious Prose Writings,6 and Nicholas Sagovsky’s Between Two Worlds: George Tyrrell’s Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold,7 to name but three examples, are all works which, according to their respective contextual needs, foreground Arnold’s theological contributions. 1 Michael McGhee (Dharmachari Vipassi), “After Dover Beach: Arnold’s Recast Religion,” Studies in World Christianity 4, no. 1 (1998): 84, accessed December 10, 2019, https://libproxy.udayton.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a6h&A N=ATLA0000917924&site=eds-live. 2 Basil Willey, Nineteenth Century Studies: Coleridge to Matthew Arnold (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1966), 253. 3 Willey, Nineteenth, 264. 4 Stefan Collini, e.g., takes it blithely for granted “that it is as a literary and social critic that [Arnold] chiefly commands attention today.” See, Stefan Collini, Arnold (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), vii. 5 Pratt, Linda Ray. Matthew Arnold Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000. 6 Livingston, James C. Matthew Arnold and Christianity: His Religious Prose Writings. Columbia, SC.: University of South Carolina Press, 1986. 7 Sagovsky, Nicholas. Between Two Worlds: George Tyrrell’s Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 1 But while Pratt, Livingston, and Sagovksy inevitably differ in terms of narrative emphasis, their point of reference for illuminating something of the why and wherefore of Arnold’s theological significance is almost always the same; namely, Arnold’s religious prose writings. As if by unspoken agreement, all three scholars identify Arnold’s religious criticism – particularly Literature and Dogma (1873)8 – as the locus of Arnold’s theological stature and relevance. Writing as a Catholic theologian with an eye to the dynamic exchange that occurs between theology and poetry, however, I am convinced that this interpretive framework, which privileges Arnold’s prose writings, is incapable of revealing what is of true and lasting value in Arnold’s religious oeuvre. Indeed, for reasons that will be set forth and developed at length in Chapter II, I will set this interpretive tradition – or at least, precedent – aside and will instead approach the question of Arnold’s theological significance by way of an examination of his verse. In short, I will argue that it is to Arnold’s poetry that the Catholic theologian must betake him- or herself if s/he is to appreciate something of why Arnold is, indeed, theologically compelling. To put the matter in slightly different terms, whereas Sagovsky claims that Arnold is “a serious theological thinker”9 - a claim that is finally grounded in a fine elucidation of Arnold’s prose writings - the claim of this present study is that Arnold is a serious theological artist. The two claims need not be mutually exclusive. But they differ significantly in point of methodology and perspective. 8 Arnold, Matthew. Literature and Dogma. New York: AMS Press, 1970. 9 Sagovsky, Two Worlds, 4. 2 In practical terms, this means among other things that the bulk of this study will be devoted to performing close readings of select poems by Arnold. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Arnold’s poetic output was vast; his scope both broad and deep. I will therefore focus and filter this study through the lens of what I am calling Arnold’s poetics of loss; which is to say, the haunted sense of isolation, disintegration, and hopelessness that pervades, and is embodied in, Arnold’s poetry, as he observes the Sea of Faith retreating.10 In other words, this study will seek to uncover