Talk:Dover Beach

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Minor comments from an unregistered person:

- I disagree that DB is an 'un-Victorian' poem. Whilst structurally you may be correct, thematically it is a classic piece of late nineteenth centry melancholic doubt. Possibly worth making this distinction.

- The phrase 'apostle of high seriousness' is only partly a C20 invention. Arnold himself used the words as a criticism of Chaucer, saying that the poet, lacked 'high seriousness.' So in a way Arnold is responsible for his own epithet. Anyway, shouldn't that be on the poet's page, rather than that of this individual poem?

This entire paragraph has to go, and the article needs to have the praise removed:

Arnold's economy is extraordinary, in this most un-Victorian Victorian poem: not a single purely decorative image, not an adjective that distracts from the cumulative thought and effect. Arnold in the 20th century has been mocked as the "Apostle of High Seriousness."

User:Zoe|^(talk) 04:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree. -pd

I think that this poem was hard to say if it was victorian or not, because the use of "the sea of faith" in the third stanza makes it sound like having faith is the only way to peace, but during the Victorian Era, religion was leaving and science was taking its place. So, if poets were focusing more on science during this time, why does Matthew Arnold focus more on religion?

-- Comment from another unregistered person (12/06/06):

The paragraph describing the poem as it travels through the lines is incorrect. The "tremulous cadence" seems to more accurately refer to the slow, shaky movements of the pebbles (people) down the shore towards the bay (dreams). Also, the "eternal note of sadness" seems to refer to the "grating roar" of the pebbles thrown up the shore, not the waves themselves. At least, that's how I interpreted those passages after closely analyzing the poem. Although it may seem a minor difference in focus, I believe that shift is critical to the central theme of the human condition since the pebbles (people) then become the key symbol in that passage.