Peripheral visions: A bi-medial analysis of otherness in Matthew Arnold’s poetry and illustrated editions

Alqublan, Zaina 2025. Peripheral visions: A bi-medial analysis of otherness in Matthew Arnold’s poetry and illustrated editions. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Despite Matthew Arnold’s enduring reputation today, the illustrated editions of his poetry from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remain largely forgotten. Yet, these editions address pressing questions: how did Victorian and early modernist audiences engage with Arnold’s poetry beyond the written word? More importantly, what do these illustrations reveal about the evolving artistic, cultural, and ideological contexts of the era? While Arnold has traditionally been positioned at the centre of Victorian intellectual and moral discourse, this thesis shifts the focus to his poetry’s engagement with figures on the margins of society. Oriental foreigners, gypsies, social and religious outcasts, and other peripheral characters populate his verse. The illustrated editions examined in this study not only bring these characters into sharper focus but, in some cases, visually reinterpret and even extend the meanings embedded in Arnold’s texts. By foregrounding the visual alongside the textual, this thesis argues that these illustrated editions serve as active participants in shaping how Arnold’s poetry was understood by contemporary and later readers. My research adopts a bi-medial methodological approach that combines close textual analysis of a selection of Arnold’s poems — ‘The Sick King in Bokhara’, ‘Sohrab and Rustum’, ‘The Scholar Gipsy’, ‘The Strayed Reveller’, ‘The Forsaken Merman’, ‘Saint Brandan’, and ‘Tristram and Iseult’ — with their corresponding illustrated editions. These editions, featuring artists such as Dorothy Carleton Smyth, Henry Ospovat, Jean C. Archer, A. A. Dixon, L. D. Luard, Louey Chisholm, Violet Dinsdale, Annabel Kidston, and W. Russell Flint, are examined in relation to the developments in the history of the book, and the broader cultural dynamics of the period. My thesis argues that these illustrated editions are transformative agents, actively reshaping and expanding the narrative discourse, rather than merely reflecting it, and at times, highlight nuances that might otherwise remain latent in the text.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	21 May 2025
Last Modified:	22 May 2025 15:10
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/178408

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