26-10-2011, 04:54
(3/6)
Année 1930
[citation=Shippey, p. 141-143]« A few years later Tolkien, by now securely in place, wrote a rather franker piece in The Oxford Magazine for 29th May 1930 [pp. 778-782], a proposal for reforming “The Oxford English School.” You will see that Tolkien here wastes no time on “friendly rivalry” or “neighbourliness,” but admits that the opposite is true:
The sub-text of this – noticed I should think by no-one at the time, and few lacer – is that Tolkien wanted to replace the Oxford syllabus by the one he was used to at Leeds, where the “Two Little Schemes” of his poem mentioned above were in fact called “the A-scheme” and “the B-scheme.” <…> Opinions differ as to how far Tolkien’s 1930 plan was successful: by the time I arrived to teach at Oxford in 1972 the philological option within the School of English (which is what Tolkien seems to mean by the scheme he wished to label “B”) was effectively moribund, taken by fewer than ten students a year out of around 250. On the other hand, it is assumed by Gross (1999: 440) that the Tolkien/Lewis plan of reform was in fact accepted, though I do not know on what evidence. It is <143> also by no means clear what Tolkien meant by his talk of “special burden” and “special advantage”: there is a sense that the whole piece is as it were ‘coded,’ with particular meaning only to insiders. »[/citation]
Michael D. C Drout permet d’en savoir un peu plus sur le contenu de l’article de Tolkien « The Oxford English School » :
[citation=Drout, p. 145]« (…) Tolkien did try to “fight his corner” (to use Shippey’s words; [“Tolkien’s Academic Reputation Today”, Amon Hen no100 (1989), p. 21]) for philology and the integrated lin¬guistic and literary-critical approach to literature. This argument is most famously (and, in concrete matters of syllabus and course of study, most successfully) made in “The Oxford English School,” published in The Oxford Magazine in May of 1930, in which Tolkien advocates the creation of another course of study at Oxford that would emphasize Scandinavian languages and literature as well as philological study. Tolkien also defends philology thus: “the student who follows” the poems of the Northern tongues “is expected not only to know the results of this [philological] work, but to understand the methods, even to share in the labour. Bereft of an ancient tradition, he has the advantage of building a new” (780). His proposed course of study provides a “fairly solid block of balanced literary and linguistic” interest and would train new scholars in the essentials of the field. »[/citation]
Carpenter, citant une autre partie de l’article, nous apprend que Tolkien proposait de supprimer toute étude des auteurs postérieurs à 1830 (!) :
[citation=Carpenter, Inklings, p. 26]« Tolkien recommended, in an article in the Oxford Magazine, “jettisoning certainly the nineteenth century (unless parts of it could appear as an ‘additional subject’)”, and suggested that the compulsory papers should stop at 1830.
The notion of improving the study of ancient literature by curtailing the reading of modern writers had a certain appeal at Oxford. The English Faculty had always been embarrassed by those in the University – and there were many – who alleged that undergraduates could read English literature in their baths, and did not need dons to teach it to them any more than they needed nursemaids to wipe their noses. (Lewis himself shared this view.) The study of recent writers was particularly open to this charge; so there was some attraction in amputating the nineteenth century from the syllabus, particularly if it was to give place to what was indubitably a more scholarly pursuit in Oxford’s eyes, the reading of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. This is perhaps why, though Tolkien’s proposal to finish the syllabus at 1830 was strongly resisted by many of the “literature” dons, it was not quashed, but became the subject of considerable argument in the English Faculty (…). »[/citation]
C.S. Lewis (qui ne connaît Tolkien que depuis un an à peine) vote initialement contre le projet, avant de le soutenir activement.
Année 1930
[citation=Shippey, p. 141-143]« A few years later Tolkien, by now securely in place, wrote a rather franker piece in The Oxford Magazine for 29th May 1930 [pp. 778-782], a proposal for reforming “The Oxford English School.” You will see that Tolkien here wastes no time on “friendly rivalry” or “neighbourliness,” but admits that the opposite is true:
In the English School, owing to the accidents of its history, the distinction between philology and literature is <142> notoriously marked […] its branches are customarily but loosely dubbed the “language” and “literature” side – titles which never were accurate, fortunately for both. History may explain their arising, but provides no defence for their retention. Their banishment is probably the first need of reform in the Oxford School, even A and B would be preferable [ ... ]
There is also “philology” – the special burden of Northern tongues, even of classical Icelandic, yet in fact the special advantage they possess as a discipline. From their study philology cannot be eliminated. It is essential to the critical apparatus of student and scholar. The poems and prose they study – the senses of their words, their syntax, their idiom, metre, and allusion – were res- cued from oblivion by philologists.
The sub-text of this – noticed I should think by no-one at the time, and few lacer – is that Tolkien wanted to replace the Oxford syllabus by the one he was used to at Leeds, where the “Two Little Schemes” of his poem mentioned above were in fact called “the A-scheme” and “the B-scheme.” <…> Opinions differ as to how far Tolkien’s 1930 plan was successful: by the time I arrived to teach at Oxford in 1972 the philological option within the School of English (which is what Tolkien seems to mean by the scheme he wished to label “B”) was effectively moribund, taken by fewer than ten students a year out of around 250. On the other hand, it is assumed by Gross (1999: 440) that the Tolkien/Lewis plan of reform was in fact accepted, though I do not know on what evidence. It is <143> also by no means clear what Tolkien meant by his talk of “special burden” and “special advantage”: there is a sense that the whole piece is as it were ‘coded,’ with particular meaning only to insiders. »[/citation]
Michael D. C Drout permet d’en savoir un peu plus sur le contenu de l’article de Tolkien « The Oxford English School » :
[citation=Drout, p. 145]« (…) Tolkien did try to “fight his corner” (to use Shippey’s words; [“Tolkien’s Academic Reputation Today”, Amon Hen no100 (1989), p. 21]) for philology and the integrated lin¬guistic and literary-critical approach to literature. This argument is most famously (and, in concrete matters of syllabus and course of study, most successfully) made in “The Oxford English School,” published in The Oxford Magazine in May of 1930, in which Tolkien advocates the creation of another course of study at Oxford that would emphasize Scandinavian languages and literature as well as philological study. Tolkien also defends philology thus: “the student who follows” the poems of the Northern tongues “is expected not only to know the results of this [philological] work, but to understand the methods, even to share in the labour. Bereft of an ancient tradition, he has the advantage of building a new” (780). His proposed course of study provides a “fairly solid block of balanced literary and linguistic” interest and would train new scholars in the essentials of the field. »[/citation]
Carpenter, citant une autre partie de l’article, nous apprend que Tolkien proposait de supprimer toute étude des auteurs postérieurs à 1830 (!) :
[citation=Carpenter, Inklings, p. 26]« Tolkien recommended, in an article in the Oxford Magazine, “jettisoning certainly the nineteenth century (unless parts of it could appear as an ‘additional subject’)”, and suggested that the compulsory papers should stop at 1830.
The notion of improving the study of ancient literature by curtailing the reading of modern writers had a certain appeal at Oxford. The English Faculty had always been embarrassed by those in the University – and there were many – who alleged that undergraduates could read English literature in their baths, and did not need dons to teach it to them any more than they needed nursemaids to wipe their noses. (Lewis himself shared this view.) The study of recent writers was particularly open to this charge; so there was some attraction in amputating the nineteenth century from the syllabus, particularly if it was to give place to what was indubitably a more scholarly pursuit in Oxford’s eyes, the reading of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. This is perhaps why, though Tolkien’s proposal to finish the syllabus at 1830 was strongly resisted by many of the “literature” dons, it was not quashed, but became the subject of considerable argument in the English Faculty (…). »[/citation]
C.S. Lewis (qui ne connaît Tolkien que depuis un an à peine) vote initialement contre le projet, avant de le soutenir activement.