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English Literature And Scottish University Reform: David Masson's State Of Learning In Scotland, Jack M. Downs

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the role of the Victorian critic David Masson, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, in the mid-Victorian reform of the Scottish university curriculum, as mandated by the Scottish Universities Act (1858), in light of the late George Elder Davie's influential study The Democratic Intellect and subsequent scholarship, and examines Masson's two inaugural lectures, particularly his State of Learning in Scotland (1866), and his inclusion in his Edinburgh lectures of Scottish literature within a British teaching canon.