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Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"
BIOGRAPHY
Reading » Re-Reading » Explorations
Arnold and Religion
As the reference to the "Sea of Faith" in the poem makes clear, it is important to understand Matthew Arnold's religious beliefs and the conflicts between science and religion in his age. See both Professor George Landow's essay on Arnold's Religious Beliefs and the section on Arnold's rejection of religion in Professor E. D. H. Johnson's essay "The Dialogue of the Mind with Itself."
Exploring with Comparisons
One useful approach to a poem is to compare its ideas and style to others by the poet or by other poets who share the same literary and cultural context. Arnold wrote other poems with themes and images which bear similarities to "Dover Beach," primarily "Philomela," "Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse," and "The Buried Life." Choose one or more of these poems and write a comparison. How do these poems "talk" to each other?
"Dover Beach" is sometimes considered as blending themes and conflicts from Romanticism as well as other Victorian poems. Consider this possibility by exploring two poems in the anthology, "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798" (LIT8 1318, LIT Shorter 1002) by the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and "The Darkling Thrush" (LIT8 1274) by the Victorian poet Thomas Hardy.
"Dover Beach" also has appeared in more modern contexts. "The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life" by Anthony Hecht is not only a modern parody, but an interpretive commentary on the poem. Critics who point to the poem as modernistic sometimes compare it to T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (LIT8 1263). Samuel Barber was inspired by the poem to compose a work for voice and string quartet in 1931; you can hear the poem and a performance by Thomas Allen, baritone, and the Endellion Quartet.
"Dover Beach" and Its Readers
Before you start reading this criticism or any from the library, it would be best to have already worked through the reading questions and have written an interpretation of your own. Now you are ready to go to these essays and see what else you can learn or which interpretations you would like to debate as you continue your paper.
A Global Campus lecture on "Dover Beach" and "The Buried Life" which stresses Arnold's inner conflicts.
Comments on Form and Structure of the poem by Julia Touche, from the Victorian Web.
A close reading of the poem by Michael McGhee, from Western Buddhist Review.
Excerpt from J. H. Buckley's The Triumph of Time on the metaphor of ebb and flow in the poem, from the Victorian Web.
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