The literary histories of Courthope, Gosse and Saintsbury, written in the closing years of the nineteenth century, exemplify two markedly different approaches to the genre that draw on the opposing techniques of schol- arship and criticism. Such differences are also apparent in early twentieth- century studies of Shakespeare, which can be used to illustrate the… Continue reading The analysis of Shakespeare
Tag: Professor of Poetry
Literary history: Scholarship and narrative
The personal forms of authority to which these professors clung stand at an ironic distance from the courses outlined in Chapter 2, in which the factual bodies of knowledge associated with the text’s language, sources and historical background offered themselves as a ready solution to the problem of how literary knowledge could be taught and… Continue reading Literary history: Scholarship and narrative
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… Continue reading Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater