Talk:Arthur Hugh Clough

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[edit] Disambiguation

There's a need for a disambiguation page for Clough. A search of the word takes one to the page for the village of Clough with no mention of the poet. 01:24 05 Sept 2005 soverman

[edit] Bibliography

Why is "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1969), by John Fowles, listed in the bibliography? Is Clough a character in the book? A comment would be helpful? I have added the Emerson-Clough letters and begun reformatting the bibliography, but do not at present have all the info I need to format all entries. Mddietz 15:24, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent Changes

143.229.177.162, I applaud your recent changes and thank you very much for improving an article that very much had needed to be reworked. The old article carried forward the late nineteenth and early twentieth century's appraisals of Clough and badly needed a good mending. I will say, however, that I wish you would sign your work and add the necessary citations.

I do have a few small quibbles (both with your changes and the material you have left in) and I hope you do not mind my stating them here. Note this is all off the top of my head, and I am likely to have gotten a good bit of it wrong; without a direct appeal to the accepted references I would not suggest making any further changes:

Why remove the reference to his mother? It seems valid and, frankly, rather relevant. Again, lets see what the references have to say.
Clough's relation to the Oxford Movement is, by my reckoning, misstated in both the earlier version and the new version. He was fascinated by it, as was Matthew Arnold, but he seems to have never really come under its spell. His relation to it was largely through Ward, and when he distanced himself from Ward, he distanced himself from the movement.
You have left standing the statement that Clough and Arnold did not care for each other's poetry; their relationship as poets was much more complex. Their letters are an essential part of this relationship and begin the formulation of the critical mode that Arnold would later exploit in his prose writing. If I remember rightly Arnold came to like the Bothie, and Clough was very pleased with the Scholar Gypsy. Arnold was hard on his friend, but that was Arnold's way.
Clough's post-graduate years at Oxford are not well handled in either version--when in this time of his life did Clough ever "settle down" to something? The character of reading parties is significant to Clough if only for the sake of the Bothie and probably needs some mention.
"Skeptical" is clearly more Clough's mode than "critical." His concerns were, to a large degree, more inwardly than outwardly focused. Your change here seems to need a fair citation as it is rather a major re-framing of Clough's biography. The distance between personal skepticism and social criticism is, I suspect, not so well defined today as it was then, but it is still a difference of some significance.
I'm not sure "Easter Day" was inspired by the siege of Rome. It was, after all, written in Naples.
To state that he rejected Unitarianism is odd, as he never seems to have seriously considered adopting it, but did attempt to adapt to it while under the employ of the Unitarians.
Sorry, but "averse to dogmatism" is a better phrase than "opposed to all forms of dogmatism." (To oppose is itself a dogmatic position, to be averse is more consistent with Clough;s stand.)
Not sure why the statement on his exhaustion was removed; it is well founded in the extant biographical information.
"Thyrsis" is, indeed, not altogether strong in its praise of Clough and the original's "faint praise" was not far off.
"No part of Clough's life was wholly given up to poetry" is, if I am not mistaken, Anthony Kenny's phrase and suggests something quite important about Clough.
Yes, his poetry is better respected today than it was but fifty years ago, but "masterpiece quality" is a dubious distinction and does not do the change in valuation of Clough's poetry the justice it deserves.
The reference to Arnold's "Grande Chartreuse" in "stands between two worlds" was not at all inappropriate for Clough, the author of "Dipsychus."
His wife's efforts in editing his remains are much too important to have been left out altogether.

It's natural to want to move wholly in one direction or another. Either Clough is a failed poet or a great master; a faithful religionist or a skeptical atheist,-- but Clough is perhaps most intriguing for his resolute stand between two worlds. This article does, indeed, need work. Your efforts have, frankly, considerably improved it. But the work should really be done reference in hand with citations clearly labelled. Mddietz 19:30, 16 September 2007 (UTC)