Contrasting Worlds in Dover Beach and Quiet Work

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Contrasting Worlds in Dover Beach and Quiet Work

Tree Works Cited The poems of Matthew Arnold always seem to portray two contrasting worlds. In this essay I will examine his poems more deeply and show what these two worlds are, what they express. I will also attempt to see his work in relation to its social and historical context.
One of the two worlds to be found in Arnold's poems is a disappointing or pessimistic world, while the other is a heavenly, ideal world. In most o f his poems the disappointing world is the real world, the actual world. In 'Quiet Work' he complains that 'a thousand discords ring', expressing 'man's fitful uproar'. This is his comment on the world around him which, like the negative world of the poem, thinks itself 'too great for haste, too high for rivalry'. Such extracts describe the rude ugliness of humanity.
In its historical context, this can be seen as a commentary on political events of the time - the February Revolution in France, the Chartist movement in England, and so on.1 He disliked these noisy protests and w...

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