2 - Literary studies and the academy

Summary

English literary critics had long models from classical and modern continental literatures, and in the nineteenth century Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold were only the two most prominent of many contemporary examples. The emphasis for elementary educationalists in the early nineteenth century was necessarily different. The pressing need to educate a growing urban population tended to shift pedagogical emphasis away from disinterested notions of individual development to more pragmatic ones related to social organization and economic planning. The late acceptance of the literary study of English by the ancient universities was matched by their tentativeness in embracing the teaching of modern European literature. In the two decades between the establishing of the Oxford English School and the beginning of the First World War, scholarly criticism in English was in a healthy position in universities. Literary and textual scholarships had established themselves strongly and were plainly thriving in the academic environment.