Abstract
The article reads Matthew Arnold’s poem “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” in the context of his conflicted attitudes toward Christianity, which are illustrated by an examination of his contradictory view of the Oxford Movement and of the nineteenth-century Roman Catholic revival, in both of which John Henry Newman played a major role. Arnold’s ambivalence can be traced back to the very different influences of his father and his mother, and it reflects a strong emotional, cultural, and even spiritual attachment to Christianity at the same time that he regards existing forms of Christianity as rendered impossible by the critique of the Enlightenment.
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