The Future of the Humanities single work   poetry  
Issue Details: First known date: 2016... 2016 The Future of the Humanities
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'Russell Kirk, the twentieth century’s great man of letters, who had the distinction of being the only American ever awarded the Doctor of Letters degree by St Andrew’s University, wrote a weekly column for the conservative journal National Review called “The Ivory Tower”. The column focused on the affairs of the Academy: outstanding academics, books, and all manner of conflict and scandal that perpetually bedevil universities. Dr Kirk kept the column going for twenty-five years, discontinuing it around the turn of the ‘Eighties, having become known as the foremost commentator on academic affairs from among those who stood by what Barry Spurr called “the Old Idea of a University”. 1 Following Cardinal Newman, Professor Spurr defended the academy as the home of those who “embrace the heterodoxy of human knowledge unhampered by considerations of practical application or societal constraints”. This, too, was where Dr Kirk felt most at home, but undoubtedly any disciple of the Old Idea who paid such careful attention to the state of the academy between 1955 and 1980 would have found it increasingly difficult to write with any optimism about academia’s future. Yet Dr Kirk, an independent scholar throughout his career, was fortunate enough not to depend on the universities for his daily bread. So he withdrew to his home in Mecosta, Michigan, and championed high culture and liberal education from the battlefield of his choosing. The National Review’s founding editor, William F. Buckley, Jr. recalled him resigning his post, saying simply, “I think I’ve done this for long enough”.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Free Mind : Essays and Poems in Honour of Barry Spurr Catherine Runcie (editor), Revesby : Edwin H. Lowe Publishing , 2016 10728339 2016 anthology poetry essay

    'For over forty years, Barry Spurr has created a significant body of work in English literary scholarship, spanning a wide range of fields from Early Modern literature to contemporary Australian poetry. Barry Spurr is acknowledged as a leading scholar in the fields of religious literature and liturgical language, most notably in the works of Renaissance poet John Donne, the Modernist poet T.S. Eliot, and the language and literature of the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He was appointed by the University of Sydney as Australia's first Professor of Poetry and Poetics, and holds a notable reputation as a teacher and mentor to students, and as a friend to peers and colleagues. He has also been notable as a public intellectual, with a particular interest in the role of literature in the modern education system, and the role of the humanities in the modern university.

    'This book is a collection of scholarly papers, contemplative essays and poems, written or contributed in honour of Barry Spurr. The Festschrift's contributors include his former teachers and mentors, his students and colleagues, and includes scholars and public intellectuals in his fields of scholarship or public interest. This Festschrift is a very fine collection of poetry, public discourse and literary criticism, on topics ranging from the works of William Shakespeare, to John Milton, T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Wilfred Owen, in addition to scholarship on liturgical language and religious and literary philosophy.' (Publication summary)

    Revesby : Edwin H. Lowe Publishing , 2016
Last amended 15 Feb 2017 10:46:46
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