Allusion. An allusion is a rhetorical technique in which a reference is made to a person, event, object, or work from history or literature. Note the allusion that Arnold makes in “Dover Beach.”
Symbol. A symbol is a thing that stands for or represents both itself and something else.
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No work more typifies the struggle between faith and doubt faced by thinking men and women of the Victorian Age than Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.” Arnold lived in a time when religion was coming under attack from science and many people were questioning their faith. He felt the loss of his own faith keenly and wrote about it in this famous poem. The poem fully meets Arnold’s own criteria for poetry, that it have a “high seriousness” and that it provide a “criticism of life.” Many critics have called Arnold’s poetry severe and melancholic, and indeed “Dover Beach” is one of the most melancholic poems ever written. However, a close reading of the selection will reveal that Arnold did have some Victorian optimism in him, for the poem offers as a stay against the anarchy and confusion of life the possibility that people can be “true / To one another.”
Make a cluster chart like the one below to indicate what the sea represents in this poem.
What sights or sounds make you feel melancholy, or blue?
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