English Studies: The World of Scholarship in 1883

Abstract

The most productive approach to the world of scholarship in 1883 requires starting further back, about 1821, when individuals drawn by a passion for philology and English studies first sought to master a new field and become scholars. Passion is not too strong a word here. During the second and third quarters of the century, despite a lack of opportunity for formal training, despite isolation from European scholars, despite the difficulty of getting books and the absence of encouragement or likely reward, these scholars undertook enormous and very different kinds of projects. Their commitment and scholarship, which earned national and international respect, helped to define the American scholar as a specialist and to shape what they insisted was a discipline suitable for the undergraduate college curriculum. Active both outside and within the academy, they not only generated national recognition of the scholar's need for research libraries and higher education's need for scholars but established the value of teaching English in American colleges and universities. Because of their efforts, by 1883 the world of scholarship, at least in broad outline, was the world we now know. That is, though 1883 marks the founding of the Modern Language Association and therefore an important beginning in the professionalization of the discipline, it also marks the end of a pioneering era in American scholarship.