Victorian poet and critic, introduced in Dialogue 29 as McLuhan's emblem of the cathartic school of art. Reading McLuhan's 1953 essay on Joyce — itself published exactly a century after Arnold's 1853 "Preface to Poems" — Bob presents Arnold's preface as the type-case of the "cathartic ethical view of art," the moral stance that treats discontinuity and popular culture as things to be resisted rather than read.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the named face of the school McLuhan rejects — the Victorian moralist whose 1853 preface, read on its exact centenary, stands for the cathartic hostility to discontinuity and popular culture that the cognitive artist must break
The charge McLuhan pins on Arnold — the moral view of art hardens into a refusal of discontinuity, which McLuhan (per Bob) locates precisely in Arnold's 1853 "Preface to Poems."
"the cathartic ethical view of art has led to a doctrinaire hostility to the use of discontinuity in art."
Why the quarrel matters for the Trump reading — the cathartic school's hostility to discontinuity is the same reflex that makes it deaf to popular culture, the deafness Bob says disqualifies it from perceiving a figure like Trump.
"this hostility also is indifferent to all popular art."
Connections
In McLuhan's 1953 Joyce essay, Arnold's 1853 "Preface to Poems" is the case in point for the cathartic school's "doctrinaire hostility to the use of discontinuity in art."