The reception and teaching of Shakespeare in nineteenth and early twentieth century America
Lauck, John Hampton, II
This item is only available for download by members of the University of Illinois community. Students, faculty, and staff at the U of I may log in with your NetID and password to view the item. If you are trying to access an Illinois-restricted dissertation or thesis, you can request a copy through your library's Inter-Library Loan office or purchase a copy directly from ProQuest.
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/19739
Description
Title
The reception and teaching of Shakespeare in nineteenth and early twentieth century America
Author(s)
Lauck, John Hampton, II
Issue Date
1991
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Shapiro, Michael
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Language and Literature
Education, History of
Literature, English
Language
eng
Abstract
Historically, Shakespeare's function in the American school curriculum has changed from being a vehicle of moral instruction to being an agent for deepening students' emotional response to life in general. He entered American culture through the familiar stage tradition and fragments of his work were used in the early schoolbooks. Recognizing the educational limitations of brief excerpts from his plays, high schools in the era of Henry Hudson and William Rolfe approached Shakespeare through editions of whole plays, justifying such study within the frameworks of orthodox Christianity and Unitarianism, respectively, and utilizing an aesthetic emphasis made possible by Romantic critical theory. The aesthetic approach to the texts competed for a time with the German-inspired philological approach, but a non-dogmatic aesthetic criticism eventually triumphed, with its appeals to emotion and to the validity of personal experience.
As the schools and colleges gradually took control over the dissemination of Shakespeare in American culture, the lively Shakespeare of the stage tradition receded and was replaced by the misty figure created by literary historians in their struggle to mold the data of scholarship into a coherent whole. The complex vision of Shakespeare we have thus obtained is alienating students from further contact with Shakespeare because it is largely divorced from the stage tradition.
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.
