Taylorian Lecture Explained

The Taylorian Lecture, sometimes referred to as the "Special Taylorian Lecture" or "Taylorian Special Lecture", is a prestigious annual lecture on Modern European Literature, delivered at the Taylor Institution in the University of Oxford since 1889.

1889-1899

The first eleven lectures were published collectively in 1900, under the title Studies in European Literature, being the Taylorian Lectures 1889—1899:

• 1889: Edward Dowden, “Literary Criticism in France”
• 1890: Walter Pater, “Prosper Mérimée”
• 1891: W. M. Rossetti, “Leopardi”
• 1892: T. W. Rolleston, “Lessing and Modern German Literature”
• 1893 (delivered 1894): Stéphane Mallarmé, “La musique et les lettres” (Music and Literature)
• 1894: Alfred Morel-Fatio, “L'Espagne du Don Quijote”
• 1895: H. R. F. Brown, “Paolo Sarpi”
• 1896 (delivered 1897): Paul Bourget, “Gustave Flaubert”
• 1897: C. H. Herford, “Goethe’s Italian Journey”
• 1898: Henry Butler Clarke, “The Spanish Rogue-Story”
• 1899 (delivered 1900): W. P. Ker, “Boccaccio”

1900-1920

Further lectures were delivered in the first few years of the 20th century, but were not published collectively:

• 1900: Émile Verhaeren, "La poésie française actuelle"
• 1901: Arthur Anthony Macdonell, "The Wit and Pathos of Heinrich Heine"
• 1902: James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, “Lope De Vega and Spanish Drama”
• 1903: Henry Calthrop Hollway-Calthrop, “Francesco Petrarcha”
• 1904: George Saintsbury, “Théophile Gautier: a French Man of Letters of All Work”

1920-1930

In 1917 a new endowment for an annual lecture on "subjects connected to Modern European Literature" was established by a donation of War Stock by Professors Charles Firth and Joseph Wright. This second series of lectures began in 1920. In 1930 a further volume of lectures was published, from the years 1920-1930, under the title Studies in European Literature, being the Taylorian Lectures Second Series, 1920—1930:

• 1920: Edmund Gosse, “Malherbe and the Classical Reaction in the Seventeenth Century”
• 1921: Francis Yvon Eccles, “Racine in England”
• 1922: Sir Henry Thomas, “Shakespeare and Spain”
• 1923: Edmund Garratt Gardner, “Tommaso Campanella and His Poetry”
• 1924: John George Robertson, “The Gods of Greece in German Poetry”
• 1925: Émile Legouis, “G. G. de Beaurieu et son Élève de la nature, 1763”
• 1926: John Cann Bailey, “Carducci”
• 1927: H. A. L. Fisher, “Paul Valéry”
• 1928: Abraham Flexner, “The Burden of Humanism”
• 1929: Oliver Elton, “Chekhov”
• 1930: Percy Ewing Matheson, “German Visitors to England, 1770-1795, and their impressions”

Since 1930

Since 1930 no collected volume has been issued, but individual lectures include:

• 1931: Hilaire Belloc, “On Translation”^[1]
• 1932 (delivered 1933): George S. Gordon, “St. Evremond”
• 1933: Geoffrey Langdale Bickersteth, “Form, Tone, and Rhythm in Italian Poetry”
• 1934: Mario Roques, “La poésie Roumaine contemporaine”
• 1935: H. W. Garrod, “Tolstoi's Theory of Art”^[2]
• 1936: Herbert John Clifford Grierson, “Two Dutch Poets”^[3]
• 1937: Sir William Alexander Craigie, “The Art of Poetry in Iceland”
• 1938: Ernest Hoepffner, “Aux origines de la nouvelle française”^[4]
• 1939: Edgar Allison Peers, “Antonio Machado”^[5]
• 1942: Alf Sommerfelt, “The Written and Spoken Word in Norway”^[6]
• 1943: Stanisław Stroński, “La poésie et la réalité aux temps des troubadours” (Poetry and reality at the time of the troubadours)
• 1944: Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, “National and International stability: Althusius, Grotius, van Vollenhoven”^[7]
• 1945: Richard McGillivray Dawkins, “The Nature of the Cypriot Chronicle of Leontios Makhairas”
• 1946: H. J. Chaytor, “The Provençal Chanson de Geste”
• 1947: Leonard Ashley Willoughby, “Unity and Continuity in Goethe”
• 1948: John Orr, “The Impact of French upon English”^[8]
• 1949: Thomas Mann, “Goethe und die Demokratie”
• 1951: Jean Sarrailh, “La crise religieuse en Espagne à la fin du XVIIIe siècle”
• 1952: Bruno Migliorini, “The Contribution of the Individual to Language”
• 1953: Charles Bruneau, “La prose littéraire de Proust à Camus”
• 1954: Francis Bull, “Ibsen: The Man and the Dramatist”
• 1955: Sir Harold Idris Bell, “The Nature of Poetry as Conceived by the Welsh Bards”
• 1957: Frederick Charles Roe, “Sir Thomas Urquhart and Rabelais”^[9]
• 1959: Elizabeth Mary Wilkinson, “Schiller, Poet or Philosopher?”^[10]
• 1961: Cecil Maurice Bowra, “Poetry and the First World War”
• 1966: Edward M. Wilson, “Some Aspects of Spanish Literary History” (published 1967)
• 1967: Charles Ralph Boxer, “Some Literary Sources for the History of Brazil in the Eighteenth Century”^[11]
• 1968: Walter Höllerer, “Elite und Utopie: Zum 100. Geburtstag Stefan Georges” (published 1969)
• 1971: Carlo Dionisotti, “Europe in Sixteenth-Century Italian Literature”^[12]
• 1974: Harry Levin, “Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and the European Horizon” (published 1975)
• 1978: R. A. Leigh, “Rousseau and the Problem of Tolerance in the Eighteenth Century”
• 1983: P. E. Russell, “Prince Henry the Navigator: The Rise and Fall of a Culture Hero” (published 1984)
• 1987: Paul Preston, “Salvador de Madariaga and the Quest for Liberty in Spain”
• 1992: Barry Ife, “The New World and the Literary Imagination”
• 2008: Jeffrey Hamburger, “Representations of Reading – Reading Representations: The Female Reader from the Hedwig Codex to Châtillon’s Léopoldine au Livre d’Heures”
• 2009: Maria de Fátima Silva, “Returning to the Classics in Contemporary Portuguese Drama (with special reference to Hélia Correia’s dramatic works)”
• 2009: Pedro Manuel Cátedra, "Uso y usos de la literatura en la Edad Media española"
• 2010: Lina Bolzoni, “Of Poetry, Poets and the Magic of Mirrors in the Renaissance”

Notes and References

1. J. Michael Walton, Found in translation: Greek drama in English (2006), p. 62
2. H. W. Garrod, Tolstoi's Theory of Art: Taylorian Lecture, 1935 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935)
3. Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson, 'TWO DUTCH POETS The Taylorian Lecture in the University of Oxford' in Essays and Addresses (1940), ch. VIII
4. Ernest Hoepffner, Aux origines de la nouvelle française (The Taylorian Lecture 1938) (Oxford, 1939)
5. E. Allison Peers, Antonio Machado (The Taylorian Lecture, 1939) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940)
6. Alf Sommerfelt, The written and spoken word in Norway (The Taylorian Lecture, 1942) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942)
7. Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, National and international stability: Althusius: Grotius: van Vollenhoven (Oxford University Press, 1944, 69 pages
8. Studies in Romance philology and French literature (University of Manchester, 1953), p. xiii
9. Frederick Charles Roe, Sir Thomas Urquhart and Rabelais: The Taylorian lecture, 1957 (1957)
10. Elizabeth Mary Wilkinson, Schiller: Poet or Philosopher? Special Taylorian Lecture (Oxford, 1961)
11. Marshall Craig Eakin, Paulo Roberto de Almeida, Rubens Antonio Barbosa, Envisioning Brazil: a guide to Brazilian studies (2005), p. 359
12. Giulio C. Lepschy, Mother tongues and other reflections on the Italian language (2002), p. 126