The careers of many of the early professors of English blur the boundaries between the terms ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’. The literary historian W. J. Courthope was a civil servant and assistant editor of the National Review before becoming Professor of Poetry at Oxford (although this was an honorary post rather than one that carried ‘professional’ academic status); George Saintsbury worked as a schoolmaster and journalist until his election to the … Read the rest
Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater
The distinction between the differing philosophies of literary study that was becoming apparent in both general critical discourse and the early English degrees has been described by Wallace Martin in terms of the opposition between ‘scholarship’, a concern with the accumulation and analysis of knowledge along scientific lines; and ‘criticism’, a more evalu- ative approach that drew on an older, humanist conception of literature. For Martin, exponents of these methods … Read the rest
Literary criticism: The influence of scholarship
These attempts to define the nature of literary knowledge took place in a society where the audience for, and purpose of, literary criticism were undergoing a number of changes. A brief outline of these changes will enable the debates about criticism to be set in context, and illuminate the source of many of the tensions that surrounded them: the changing nature of intellectual authority, brought about by the professionalisation and … Read the rest
Critics and Professors
In the last chapter, we saw that a number of models of English were starting to emerge from the earliest degree courses, as staff in the new university departments tried to decide what kind of academic syllabus would be most appropriate to the study of English literature. Wallace Martin has identified three distinct conceptual structures as dominating these early courses – the historical, philological and classical conceptions of literary study1 … Read the rest
Literary judgements: The Tripos at Cambridge
The early years of English at Cambridge are dominated by the figure of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Appointed to the King Edward VII Professorship after the death of Verrall, he seems, in some respects, an odd choice. He had spent only five years in academia (four of them as an undergraduate at Oxford) at the time of his appointment, and his career certainly has more in common with the Victorian man … Read the rest
The importance of Classics: The literary tradition
These suspicions about the academic validity of the study of English literature were also apparent at Cambridge, where once again they crystal- lised around the inauguration of a professorship, the King Edward VII Professorship of English Literature. This Professorship was established in 1910 as the result of a donation from the newspaper magnate Sir Harold Harmsworth (later Viscount Rothermere), and its holder was intended – according to Harmsworth’s stipulation – … Read the rest
Oxford and Cambridge: The development of criticism
Unlike London and the regional institutions, Oxford has played a central role in accounts of ‘the rise of English’. It is easy to see why this is the case. For one thing, its story has the attraction of controversy, in the form of the lengthy battle against the university authorities that was led by the lecturer and critic John Churton Collins. In addition, Oxford’s initial rejection of English on the … Read the rest
English in the Universities
It is easy to see why the paradigms of disciplinary development outlined in Chapter 1 have played such an important role in accounts of the ‘rise of English’. Offering on the one hand an overarching vision of the ‘social mission’ of English studies, and on the other an abstraction extrapolated from other disciplines, they are attractive in their simplicity: their accounts of the subject’s development are neat, persuasive and easy … Read the rest
Pageants
As the growing quantity of records in the Records of Early English Drama series attests, medieval moralities and cycle plays were not only the occasion for many different kinds of play but were also economically significant enterprises. Morality plays often required large place and scaffold structures, costuming, and sometimes large casts while, most notably, town guilds and other civic and religious bodies created elaborate wagons, sets, props, and costumes for … Read the rest
Pestilence
Pestilence
The pestilence (not called the Black Death until the sixteenth century) arrived on England’s southwestern shores in the summer of 1348 and quickly spread so that by the following summer it had reached London and beyond. It recurred in 1361–2, 1368–9, and 1375, then at irregular intervals thereafter, but the first outbreak was the most severe. Between one third and one half of England’s population died as a result … Read the rest