The romantic poets and higher education

Jarvis, Robin

Abstract

This inaugural professorial lecture begins by describing what it was like to be a student at Oxford or Cambridge – then the only universities in England – in the late eighteenth century, exploring contemporary debates on their failings and tracing the emergence of the modern “Idea” of the university. It then explores the early lives of the four major Romantic poets who went to university: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron. The main argument is that Oxford and Cambridge, denounced in the period as backward, corrupt and unfit for purpose, nevertheless played an important part in the intellectual histories of all four poets, providing them with unlimited time and freedom to develop as individuals and allowing them to launch their literary careers. In showing how these four very different poets all benefited from the Oxbridge student experience, the lecture also suggests links between the apparently obscure and irrelevant world of late-Georgian higher education and modern debates on the nature and purpose of the university.

• Presentation Conference Type: Presentation / Talk
• Conference Name: Inaugural Professorial Lecture
• Start Date: Nov 16, 2006
• End Date: Nov 16, 2006
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 9, 2019
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: university, Romantic poets, Oxford, Cambridge, higher education
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1044266
• Publisher URL: http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/english/staff_r_jarvis_romantic_poets.pdf
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : Inaugural Professorial Lecture, UWE, Bristol