Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 The effects of a broken home: Bertrand Russell and Cambridge
- 2 I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis and Cambridge English
- 3 Emily Davies, the Sidgwicks and the education of women in Cambridge
- 4 Radioastronomy in Cambridge
- 5 Three Cambridge prehistorians
- 6 John Maynard Keynes
- 7 Mathematics in Cambridge and beyond
- 8 James Stuart: engineering, philanthropy and radical politics
- 9 The Darwins in Cambridge
- 10 How the Burgess Shale came to Cambridge; and what happened
- 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 12 ‘Brains in their fingertips’: physics at the Cavendish Laboratory 1880–1940
- 13 J. N. Figgis and the history of political thought in Cambridge
- 14 Molecular biology in Cambridge
- 15 James Frazer and Cambridge anthropology
- 16 Michael Oakeshott
2 - I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis and Cambridge English
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 The effects of a broken home: Bertrand Russell and Cambridge
- 2 I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis and Cambridge English
- 3 Emily Davies, the Sidgwicks and the education of women in Cambridge
- 4 Radioastronomy in Cambridge
- 5 Three Cambridge prehistorians
- 6 John Maynard Keynes
- 7 Mathematics in Cambridge and beyond
- 8 James Stuart: engineering, philanthropy and radical politics
- 9 The Darwins in Cambridge
- 10 How the Burgess Shale came to Cambridge; and what happened
- 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 12 ‘Brains in their fingertips’: physics at the Cavendish Laboratory 1880–1940
- 13 J. N. Figgis and the history of political thought in Cambridge
- 14 Molecular biology in Cambridge
- 15 James Frazer and Cambridge anthropology
- 16 Michael Oakeshott
Summary
The phrase ‘Cambridge English’ comes with a weight that is more than that of simple reference to the possibility of studying English in the University. It is taken as pointing to something more substantial, a particular way of thinking about and doing English, of what that represents. In this substantial sense, Cambridge English has a particular historical development in the years between the two World Wars and a powerful social influence through the extension of its version of ‘English’ into schools and universities both in Britain and in other English-speaking countries. It can be seen, in fact, as about an intense crisis in culture and society and, as such, part of a process of critical engagement with modern civilisation that had been developed throughout the nineteenth century (the tradition so well described by the Cambridge-English-educated Raymond Williams in his book Culture and Society). To understand Cambridge English in these terms is to consider the work of two men, I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis; it is from them that Cambridge English derived its definition, they who made it more than just English at Cambridge.
English came late to Cambridge, decisively established as an independent subject for study only in the years following the First World War. Initially, it was an optional language in the new Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos set up in 1884, with the focus linguistic and philological.
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- Cambridge Minds , pp. 20 - 33Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
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