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Matthew Arnold

“Rugby Chapel” is an elegy that Matthew Arnold wrote to his father fifteen years after his father’s death. It is remarkable to find not a trace of ill-will toward a man whose “radiant vigor” is brought back through contemplation of the word “gloom” (Arnold 186). But perhaps this is the mark of not only a mature poet, but a mature man. Perhaps Arnold looked back on the tough road created by the cold, austere headmaster of Rugby with thanks. Arnold may have felt an intense connection between his past and who he was as a person. Fifteen years without the shelter “Of [the] mighty oak” (Arnold 287) that was his father may have taught him to celebrate the strength, courage and wisdom that were nourished by his years with his hard-to-please father. Or perhaps he thought that his father had been the gateway and possessor of what some term a romantic myth—knowledge of the Truth. Culler states that the young Arnold believed that through his own work, the work of his father, the work of the “faithful shepherd! to come, / Bringing thy sheep in thy hand” (Arnold 290), survived and continued: “he had developed a strong sense that in his school work and his religious and social essays he was continuing the work that his father had begun” (Culler 272).

There are few relationships in a man’s life that are as impacting as that which one has with one’s father. Whether one’s father is altogether absent or overbearingly present, all men are deeply touched by their fathers. Matthew Arnold, by virtue of his intellectual nature, was acutely aware of the impact his father had on his creative and emotional life. This paper will discuss Arnold’s relationship with his father in his life and as expressed in the poem inspired by him, “Rugby Chapel.”

Arnold, as I noted earlier, wrote “Rugby Chapel” fifteen years after his father’s death. The time between his father’s death and the writing of t...

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Matthew Arnold. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:21, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1685921.html