Home
THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF THE SPIRIT
Supplied by author:
This book is a comprehensive and detailed history of the generic English Department, beginning with the Elizabethan pre-school and Latin grammar school. It shows how the study of the bible and liturgical texts gave way to the study of humanistic, classical and literary texts as a politically discreet, socially acceptable method of teaching literacy in English. As literature in English, and as books, magazines and newspapers, became more varied and popular, the focus on literature in English composition and declamation exercises became more prevalent. Finally the practice was given a theoretical foundation in the writings of Matthew Arnold and became the basis of curricula in the first modern universities: Glasgow in Scotland, Harvard in the US, and the extension departments of Oxford, Cambridge etcetera.
As soon as the practice of teaching literacy through literature was established, writers, especially poets, began to find a home in the schools and, especially, the universities. These, unlike the public schools, had no specific teacher-training requirements in their hiring practices; a combination of degree status and publication was all. Studies of major anthologies through the latter half of the twentieth century show that over half of the major poets and roughly a quarter of the major fiction writers in North America and the UK worked as full-time English professors, and thousands more writers moved in and out of the Department as writers in residence and readers. The Department more and more assumed the role of patron and curator of the national literatures of the countries in which it operated.
However, starting early in the twentieth century Arnoldian theory - the humanistic defense of the study of literature - was questioned, and the practice of teaching literacy through literature was gradually abandoned. This started in the Department's "service" courses for students in the sciences, applied sciences and business, and spread to the required freshman English course, which developed a purely compositionist segment that usually involved the writing of essays on public issues rather than literary topics. Starting in the seventies, "theory" questioned the whole idea of literature, shrinking English Studies and making room for a compositionist Department. Literature was passed on from English Studies programs to burgeoning Creative Writing programs, and writer-professors moved more and more into that program.
At every stage, these changes created tensions for writer-professors and turf wars in the Department and between the Department and factions of the literary community. This book deals especially with these struggles as they effected writer-professors - scholars against generalists (Kittredge vs Babbitt for example) early in the twentieth century, engineering etcetera faculty against English faculty over service courses in the 1930's and on, creative writing advocates vs scholars and parts of the literary community in the struggle to establish creative writing programs in the fifties and sixties, "theory" against the English studies canon starting in the 1970's, and the workshop (MFA) approach against the scholarly (linguistic) approach within ascendent creative writing programs from the 1960's to the present.
This book is a comprehensive and detailed history of the generic English Department, beginning with the Elizabethan pre-school and Latin grammar school. It shows how the study of the bible and liturgical texts gave way to the study of humanistic, classical and literary texts as a politically discreet, socially acceptable method of teaching literacy in English. As literature in English, and as books, magazines and newspapers, became more varied and popular, the focus on literature in English composition and declamation exercises became more prevalent. Finally the practice was given a theoretical foundation in the writings of Matthew Arnold and became the basis of curricula in the first modern universities: Glasgow in Scotland, Harvard in the US, and the extension departments of Oxford, Cambridge etcetera.
As soon as the practice of teaching literacy through literature was established, writers, especially poets, began to find a home in the schools and, especially, the universities. These, unlike the public schools, had no specific teacher-training requirements in their hiring practices; a combination of degree status and publication was all. Studies of major anthologies through the latter half of the twentieth century show that over half of the major poets and roughly a quarter of the major fiction writers in North America and the UK worked as full-time English professors, and thousands more writers moved in and out of the Department as writers in residence and readers. The Department more and more assumed the role of patron and curator of the national literatures of the countries in which it operated.
However, starting early in the twentieth century Arnoldian theory - the humanistic defense of the study of literature - was questioned, and the practice of teaching literacy through literature was gradually abandoned. This started in the Department's "service" courses for students in the sciences, applied sciences and business, and spread to the required freshman English course, which developed a purely compositionist segment that usually involved the writing of essays on public issues rather than literary topics. Starting in the seventies, "theory" questioned the whole idea of literature, shrinking English Studies and making room for a compositionist Department. Literature was passed on from English Studies programs to burgeoning Creative Writing programs, and writer-professors moved more and more into that program.
At every stage, these changes created tensions for writer-professors and turf wars in the Department and between the Department and factions of the literary community. This book deals especially with these struggles as they effected writer-professors - scholars against generalists (Kittredge vs Babbitt for example) early in the twentieth century, engineering etcetera faculty against English faculty over service courses in the 1930's and on, creative writing advocates vs scholars and parts of the literary community in the struggle to establish creative writing programs in the fifties and sixties, "theory" against the English studies canon starting in the 1970's, and the workshop (MFA) approach against the scholarly (linguistic) approach within ascendent creative writing programs from the 1960's to the present.
Submitted on November 22, 2014 in By David.
