On the origins, nature and influence of the buried life of Matthew Arnold : the buried life in literature, 1750-1950 / Anthony Hunt

2010

[Truncated abstract] In this thesis an attempt is made to link together, or find common ground between, a few seemingly disparate things. Firstly, an attempt is made to link some of the critical interests or obsessions of the twentieth-century English poet and critic, Ted Hughes, to those of the twentiethcentury American memoirist and critic, Paul Fussell. In particular, an attempt is made to find a link between Hughes' work on writers such as William Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen and Keith Douglas, and Fussell's work on writers such as T.S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen, Keith Douglas and Robert Byron. Secondly, an attempt is made to link together, or find common ground between, the works of the nineteenth-century English poet and critic, Matthew Arnold, and those of the twentieth-century American poet and critic, T.S. Eliot. In particular, an attempt is made to find common ground between Arnold's poem, "Empedocles on Etna", and Eliot's poem, "The Waste Land", and to link that to the critical interests of Hughes and Fussell. Arnold's concept of the buried life, which has its basis in nineteenth-century uniformitarianism, such as that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, provides the link or common ground between these seemingly disparate things; and an understanding of this concept allows for a reading or interpretation of "Empedocles on Etna" that is not possible without that understanding. This thesis explores the concept of the buried life, then, with particular reference to its use in the works of Matthew Arnold. It also explores the concept's origins in the literature of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-centuries, and in ancient Greek literature; its use in the literature of the mid-nineteenth-century by writers other than Arnold; and its influence on the literature of the late-nineteenth and the early to midtwentieth-centuries.

In particular, it looks at its influence on T.S. Eliot. As the concept of the buried life did not develop in isolation, and is similar to a number of other concepts from the period 1750-1950, other related concepts from that period, such as Emerson's concept of the universal mind, Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the primal unity and Carl Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, are discussed in this thesis, insofar as they can help to explain the origins, nature and influence of the buried life. It is argued that the buried life is a concept that, firstly, helps to explain the nature of poetic inspiration, so that it is like the old idea of the poetic Muse. However, it locates the Muse mainly within the poet's subconscious mind, but also within what is usually buried in certain landscapes or submerged in certain seascapes. Secondly, it is argued that this concept is like a replacement for, supplement to, or alternative version of Christianity, which locates God mainly within the poet's subconscious mind, but also within what is buried in landscapes or submerged in seascapes; and it equates God with a type of universal consciousness. In this concept, poetry comes from a fusion of the poet's conscious mind with their subconscious mind; or from a fusion of the poet's mind with what is buried in certain landscapes or submerged in certain seascapes; or from a fusion of the poet's surface life with their buried life; or from a fusion of the poet's individual consciousness with a universal consciousness; or from a fusion of the poet with God. As the concept of the buried life has never received any extended critical consideration, at least in an Arnoldian context, the original contribution......

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Australia, 2010

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