Ambition, the Canon, and the Arnolds

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-462
Author(s):  
Dorothy Mermin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Elementary Schools ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Professional Careers ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Professional Educator ◽  
Cultural Efficacy ◽  
English Speaking

The idea of a literary canon is inextricably connected in English-speaking countries with the Arnolds: Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby, who was credited with revivifying the classical curriculum while recreating the great public schools, and his eldest son, Matthew, the most influential nineteenth-century spokesman for the moral, spiritual, social, and cultural efficacy of a canon widened to include English poetry and available, at least in theory, to every literate English person. Like his father, Matthew Arnold was a professional educator: he earned his living as an inspector of schools, mostly elementary schools for the poor. For both Arnolds, the canon is the curriculum at the heart of the pedagogical enterprise; and the grand, almost mystical power they attached to it spilled over onto the pedagogue. Their professional careers entailed considerable sacrifice of worldly ambition, but the power of pedagogy as they conceived it became their object and their reward.

Chaucer among the Victorians

2020 ◽  
pp. 188-201
Author(s):  
Richard Utz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Geoffrey Chaucer ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Manuscript Studies ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Strong Interest ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Subject

The nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a growing fascination with Geoffrey Chaucer and his texts. English Victorians as well as their contemporaries in other English-speaking countries imagined Chaucer as a predecessor to their own preferred aesthetics, ideologies, and mentalities. During the first half of the nineteenth century, antiquarians and gentlemen scholars discover the writer as part of the general enthusiasm about England’s medieval past. They lay the groundwork for the professional medievalists of the final third of the century, when Chaucer’s texts become the subject of manuscript studies, historical linguistics, and literary studies. This interest among the educated classes is accompanied by a strong interest among the general Victorian public. These readers encounter Chaucer via adaptations, translations, bowdlerized anthologies, children’s versions, and ‘Penny Dreadfuls’. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Chaucer is generally acknowledged as the father of English poetry and the source of immense nationalist pride.

Mobility Stopped in Its Tracks

Transfers ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catharine Coleborne
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Poor White ◽  
White Immigrants ◽  
The Many ◽  
Interpretive Framework

This article examines the interpretive framework of “mobility” and how it might usefully be extended to the study of the Australasian colonial world of the nineteenth century, suggesting that social institutions reveal glimpses of (im)mobility. As the colonies became destinations for the many thousands of immigrants on the move, different forms of mobility were desired, including migration itself, or loathed, such as the itinerant lifestyles of vagrants. Specifically, the article examines mobility through brief accounts of the curtailed lives of the poor white immigrants of the period. The meanings of mobility were produced by immigrants' insanity, vagrancy, wandering, and their casual movement between, and reliance on, welfare and medical institutions. The regulation of these forms of mobility tells us more about the contemporary paradox of the co-constitution of mobility and stasis, as well as providing a more fluid understanding of mobility as a set of transfers between places and people.

Inadvertent Exemplars: Life History Portraits of Two Socially Just Principals

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Scanlan
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Life History ◽  
Elementary Schools ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Public Elementary Schools ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Native English Speaking

This study creates life history portraits of two White middle-class native-English-speaking principals demonstrating commitments to social justice in their work in public elementary schools serving disproportionately high populations of students who are marginalized by poverty, race, and linguistic heritage. Through self-reported life histories of these principals, I create portraits that illustrate how these practitioners draw motivation, commitment, and sustenance in varied, complicated, and at times contradictory ways.

The Relief of Poverty in Mid Nineteenth-Century Colyton

Rural History ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Robin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor Person ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare state emerged in 1948 when the National Assistance Act finally abolished the New Poor Law Forty-two years later, as politicians and bureaucrats struggle to keep increasing expenditure within bounds, the existence of the welfare state in its present form is under threat. Just over 150 years ago, the Old Poor Law was presenting parish ratepayers with a similar problem of rising costs, leading in 1834 to a fundamental reorganisation into the New Poor Law It may therefore be profitable to see how effective in practice the New Poor Law was when it replaced a system widely regarded as profligate, and to consider the extent to which benefits payable through the welfare state were available a hundred years or more ago.This study examines in detail how the New Poor Law, and other forms of relief, affected the whole population of the rural parish of Colyton, in south Devonshire, during the thirty years from 1851 to 1881. It will first describe the sources from which a poor person in Colyton in the mid nineteenth century could look for relief; next discuss how widespread poverty was and who the poor were; then look at what kinds of relief were available, under what conditions; and finally assess the comparative importance to the poor of the different agencies providing assistance.

scholarly journals “The Terror of their Lives”: Irish Jurors' Experiences

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 703-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Níamh Howlin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Poor State ◽  
Public Meetings ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Jury Service ◽  
The World ◽  
Jury System

A commentator noted in 1881 that Irishmen regarded jury service as “the greatest burden that can be inflicted upon them … they would be delighted if trial by jury was suspended tomorrow.” He later added, “[o]f course an enormous outcry would be raised about it in the national press, and in public meetings; but jurors … would give anything in the world not to serve … because it is the terror of their lives.” Much has been written about the poor state of the nineteenth-century Irish jury system, and it is certainly true that for various social, economic and political reasons, in comparison with that in England, the Irish system appears to have operated in a way that fell somewhat short of ideal. This article seeks to provide an understanding of the realities facing the jurors themselves, and will examine their experiences of the justice system before, during, and after the trial.

The Problem of the Domitianic Date of Revelation

1993 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christian Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Apostolic Fathers ◽  
English Speaking World

In the latter half of the nineteenth century no New Testament scholar in the English speaking world was more respected than J. B. Lightfoot. His New Testament commentaries and his magisterial five volume work on the Apostolic Fathers were models of the scholarly thoroughness of British erudition coupled with the humility of Anglican piety. Their influence would reach well into the twentieth century.

III. The Medical Mission and the Care of the Sick Poor in Nineteenth-Century England

1964 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen J. Heasman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Medical Missions ◽  
Medical Mission ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, in their book The State and the Doctor, which was submitted in the first instance as a memorandum to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in 1909, dismiss the work of the free dispensaries and medical missions in one short paragraph.

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