In Saundra Segan Wheeler’s scholarly article “The motive of return in Matthew Arnold’s writings,” she discusses Arnold’s passions and drives towards writing, taking influence from important literary figures such as Aristotle and Voltaire. Wheeler compares Arnold to the writer Longinus, who “interweaves language of his own with that of the authors he admires,” making him very much a product of his influences.
Wheeler then goes into an in depth examining of Arnold’s writing. “Arnold, the poetic craftsman, is commenting on the reductive nature of broad-based praise” in works like “Merope,” and Arnold also “advises his reader ...
