A New Renaissance? Classics at Corpus Christi in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

The history of Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, is followed from its renaissance foundation (1517) to a new scholarly renaissance in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Three Fellows are identified whose work embodied a change from the use of Latin to the introduction of English: Thomas Cokayne, Basil Kennett, and Thomas Burgess. The 1850 Royal Commission led to significant changes in the status and organisation of Oxford colleges; these are related to changes in secondary schooling. The career of Arthur Sidgwick is taken as an illuminating case. The history of classical Chairs is considered, in particular the Corpus Chair of Latin first occupied by John Conington and later by Robinson Ellis, Henry Nettleship, and Eduard Fraenkel. The varieties of scholarship in the late 19^th and 20^th centuries are compared.