Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:44:48.379Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE CLASSICISM OF HUGH TREVOR-ROPER

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2015

S. J. V. Malloch
S. J. V. Malloch*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham, UK
*
* Department of Classics, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Hugh Trevor-Roper was educated as a classicist until he transferred to history, in which he made his reputation, after two years at Oxford. His schooling engendered in him a classicism that was characterised by a love of classical literature and style, but rested on a repudiation of the philological tradition in classical studies. This reaction helps to explain his change of intellectual career. His classicism, however, endured: it influenced his mature conception of the practice of historical studies, and can be traced throughout his life. This essay explores a neglected aspect of Trevor-Roper's intellectual biography through his ‘Apologia transfugae’ (1973), which explains his rationale for abandoning classics, and published and unpublished writings attesting to his classicism, especially his first publication ‘Homer unmasked!’ (1936) and his wartime notebooks.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 61 , December 2015 , pp. 29 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works cited

Bagehot, W. (1858) ‘William Cowper’, in Estimates of some Englishmen and Scotchmen, London, 46–103 = Bagehot (1879) i.255–307.Google Scholar
Bagehot, W. (1879) Literary studies, 2 vols., London.Google Scholar
Beard, M. (2013) Confronting the classics, London.Google Scholar
Briggs, W. W. and Calder, W. M. (eds.) (1990) Classical scholarship: a biographical encyclopedia, New York and London.Google Scholar
Burnett, A. (ed.) (2007) The letters of A. E. Housman, 2 vols., Oxford.Google Scholar
Butler, S. (1913) The humour of Homer and other essays. Ed. Streatfield, R. A., London.Google Scholar
Butler, S. (1934) Further extracts from the note-books of Samuel Butler. Ed. Bartholomew, A. T., London.Google Scholar
Butler, S. (2003) The authoress of the Odyssey: where and when she wrote, who she was, and use she made of the Iliad, and how the poem grew under her hand. Introduction by Whitmarsh, T., Bristol.Google Scholar
Butterfield, D. and Stray, C. (eds.) (2009) A. E. Housman: classical scholar, London.Google Scholar
Currie, R. (1994) ‘The arts and social sciences, 1914–1939’, in Harrison (1994) 109–38.Google Scholar
Diggle, J. and Goodyear, F. R. D. (eds.) (1973) The classical papers of A. E. Housman, 3 vols., Cambridge.Google Scholar
Finley, M. I. (1966) ‘Unfreezing the classics’, TLS 7 April, 289–90.Google Scholar
Finley, M. I. (1978) The world of Odysseus, 2nd revised edition, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Finley, M. I. (1982) ‘Modern prejudice’, London Review of Books 2 December, 3–4.Google Scholar
Finley, M. I. (2002) The world of Odysseus. Introduction by Hornblower, S.. Folio Society edn, London.Google Scholar
Finley, M. I. and Hopkins, K. (2014) ‘Keith Hopkins interviews Sir Moses Finley: October 1985 transcript’, AJPh 135, 179–201.Google Scholar
Ghosh, P. (2011) ‘Hugh Trevor-Roper and the history of Ideas’, History of European Ideas 37, 483–505.Google Scholar
Gretton, J. (1973) ‘Classics teachers “fighting for our lives”’, TES 3026 (26 May) 8.Google Scholar
Hainsworth, J. B. (1979) Review of Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus 2 , Classical Review 29, 135.Google Scholar
Harris, W. V. (ed.) (2013) Moses Finley and politics, Leiden and Boston.Google Scholar
Harrison, B. (ed.) (1994) The history of the University of Oxford. Volume viii: The twentieth century, Oxford.Google Scholar
Housman, A. E. (1926) M. Annaei Lucani Belli ciuilis libri decem, Oxford.Google Scholar
Housman, A. E. (1931) ‘Praefanda’, Hermes 66, 402–12 = Diggle and Goodyear (1973) iii.1175–1184.Google Scholar
Kenney, E. J. (ed.) (1990) Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Kidd, C. (2011) ‘The Warren commission and the dons: an Anglo-American microhistory’, Modern Intellectual History 8, 411–34.Google Scholar
Lloyd-Jones, H. (1981) ‘Remarks on the Homeric question’, in Lloyd-Jones et al. (1981) 15–29 = Lloyd-Jones (1990) 3–20.Google Scholar
Lloyd-Jones, H. (1982a) Blood for the ghosts: classical influences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, London.Google Scholar
Lloyd-Jones, H. (1982b) Classical survivals: the classics in the modern world, London.Google Scholar
Lloyd-Jones, H. (1990) Greek epic, lyric, and tragedy: the academic papers of Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Oxford.Google Scholar
Lloyd-Jones, H., Pearl, V. and Worden, B. (eds.) (1981) History and imagination: essays in honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper, London.Google Scholar
Naiden, F. S. and Talbert, R. (2014) ‘Introduction [to the special issue: Moses Finley in America: the making of an ancient historian]’, AJPh 135, 167–78.Google Scholar
Nisbet, R. (2007) ‘The study of classical literature at Oxford, 1936–1988: i. Half a century of classical research at Oxford’, in Stray (2007) 219–25.Google Scholar
Oakley, S. P. (2009) ‘Housman, Lucan and Fraenkel’, in Butterfield and Stray (2009) 65–94.Google Scholar
Pattenden, P. (2002–3) ‘Master of Peterhouse’, Peterhouse Annual Record, 205–12.Google Scholar
Pinney, T. (ed.) (1974–81) The letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, 6 vols., Cambridge.Google Scholar
Reeve, M. D. (2009) ‘Dust and fudge: manuscripts in Housman's generation’, in Butterfield and Stray (2009) 139–52.Google Scholar
Reeve, M. D. (2011) Manuscripts and methods: essays on editing and transmission, Rome.Google Scholar
Robertson, J. (2009) ‘Hugh Trevor-Roper, intellectual history and “The religious origins of the enlightenment”’, English Historical Review 124, 1389–1421.Google Scholar
Russell, D. (2007) ‘The study of classical literature at Oxford, 1936–1988: ii. Times change’, in Stray (2007) 225–38.Google Scholar
Saumarez Smith, J. (2014) ‘Hugh Trevor-Roper's library’, The Book Collector 63, 427–32.Google Scholar
Sharwood Smith, J. E. (1974) ‘Editorial’, Didaskalos 4, 391–2.Google Scholar
Sisman, A. (2010) Hugh Trevor-Roper: the biography, London.Google Scholar
Stanford, W. B. (1957) ‘The Homeric world’, Classical Review 7, 199–201.Google Scholar
Stray, C. (1998) Classics transformed: schools, universities, and society in England, 1830–1960, Oxford.Google Scholar
Stray, C. (ed.) (2007) Oxford classics: teaching and learning 1800–2000, London.Google Scholar
Stray, C. (2015) ‘Eduard Fraenkel: an exploration’, Syllecta Classica 25, 33–73.Google Scholar
Stray, C. (forthcoming) ‘Thomas Gaisford: legion, legend, lexicographer’.Google Scholar
Stray, C., Pelling, C. and Harrison, S. J. (eds.) (forthcoming) Commemorating E. R. Dodds, Oxford.Google Scholar
Thomas, K. (2007) ‘A highly paradoxical historian’, The New York Review of Books 54.6 (12 April), 53–7.Google Scholar
Todd, R. B. (2004) The dictionary of British classicists, 3 vols., Bristol.Google Scholar
Tompkins, D. P. (2013) ‘Moses Finkelstein and the American scene: the political formation of Moses Finley, 1932–1955’, in Harris (2013) 5–30.Google Scholar
Trevelyan, G. O. (1876) Life and letters of Lord Macaulay, 2 vols., London.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (1936) ‘Homer unmasked!’, The Oxford Magazine 30 April, 514–17.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (1939) ‘William Somervile: the poet of the chase’, Country Life 10 June, 614–15.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (1956) ‘The world of Homer’, New Statesman 14 July, 45–6 = (1957a) 6–11.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (1957a) Historical essays, London.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (1957b) History: professional and lay. An inaugural lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 12 November 1957, Oxford = Lloyd-Jones et al. (1981) 1–14.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (1974) ‘Apologia transfugae’, Didaskalos 4, 393–412.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (1976) Princes and artists: patronage and ideology at four Habsburg courts 1517–1633, London.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (1989) ‘The Peterhouse effect’, The Independent Magazine 9 December, 16.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (1991) ‘Why Virgil?’, Proceedings of the Virgil Society 20, 60–75.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (2006) Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson. Ed. Davenport-Hines, R., London.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (2010) History and the enlightenment. Ed. Robertson, J., New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (2014a) One hundred letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper. Ed. Davenport-Hines, R. and Sisman, A., Oxford.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (2014b) The secret world: behind the curtain of British intelligence in World War II and the Cold War. Ed. Harrison, E., London.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. (2015) The wartime journals (corrected edition). Ed. Davenport-Hines, R., London.Google Scholar
Tuckwell, W. (1907) Reminiscences of Oxford, London.Google Scholar
Tulloch, R. (2002–3) ‘Dacre the dictator’, Peterhouse Annual Record, 212–13.Google Scholar
West, S. (2007) ‘Eduard Fraenkel recalled’, in Stray (2007) 203–18.Google Scholar
Whitmarsh, T. (2002) ‘What Samuel Butler saw: classics, authorship and cultural authority in late Victorian England’, PCPS 48, 66–86.Google Scholar
Whittaker, C. R. (1997) ‘Moses Finley 1912–1986’, PBA 94, 459–72.Google Scholar
Whitton, C. (2013) Pliny the Younger: Epistles book ii, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Wilson, N. G. (2011) ‘Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones (1922–2009)’, PBA 172, 215–29.Google Scholar
Worden, B. (2007) ‘Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper (1914–2003)’, PBA 150, 247–84.Google Scholar