Culture and anarchy

1. CULTURE AND
ANARCHY
Chapter no:1
“Sweetness and light”

2. Introduction
 culture:
 Highly developed state of perfection
having flawless quality.
 Anarchy:
 A state of lawless and disorder(usually
resulting from a failure of government)

3. Culture and anarchy
 An essay in political and social
criticism(1869)one of most important works of
Arnold was motivated by his desire to correct
what he saw as the content provincialism and
arrogance of English society.
 Sociopolitical essay
 A collection of few separate essays;they show
his fighting and struggle against material
affluence(abundant wealth)

4. Sweetness and light
 Background:
 In 1704 Johnathan Swift wrote of beauty and
intelligence as two noblest of things,
”sweetness and light”.
 In 1869 Matthew Arnold made Swifts latter
phrase touchstone of Victorian sensibility as
the title of the first chapter of his” culture and
Anarchy”.

5. Concept about sweetness and
light
 His central focus and argument is on
CURIOSITY-a liberal and intelligent
eagerness(keenness)about things of mind or
mental activities.
 According to him the place of curiosity is
DESIRE.It is desire that make somebody
pursue.The work of desire is to see things as
they are and if it is pursued by intelligent
person with an impartial understanding of
mind.such curiosity lead us to real culture..

6. His view about social aspect of
culture
 It comes from the love of neighbour.
 Means it gets birth from the DESIRE for
removing human errors diminishing human
misery .
 It is a person of culture who works impartially
with keenness so it gives birth to sweetness
and light.

7. Origion of culture lies in love of
perfection
 Culture is a study of perfection.
 There should be pure knowledge and moral
social passion for doing well.
 The man of culture should have pure
knowledge and impartial desire and prevail in
society for diminishing human miseries.Such
miseries can be diminished by prevailing
sweetness and light that is the job of man of
pursuing perfection.

8.  The great man of culture believe in equality
and broad mindedness.
 They are possessed by passion to spread
culture from one end of society to the
other.They carry the best ideas and the ideas
of their time.

9. comparision
 Man of culture is like honey bee.the job of honey
bee is to collect juice from all flowers (sweet or
sour) to make honey.Honey is sweet like by all in
all forms and honey has wax that is not useless
because candles are made of it.Hence in the
sweetness is light..
 In the same way a man of culture seek knowledge
from all departments and share it all.He is not
narrow minded because he brings
perfection.So,his pursuit of perfection is
sweetness and light.

10. THANKYOU