The Life and Legacy of Edwin Greenlaw: “Teacher and Scholar”

<p>Drawing from recently available archival documents, this paper traces the life, works, and influence of Edwin Greenlaw (1874–1931), a notable scholar of Spenser and the English Renaissance and a beloved and influential teacher. Information from a biographical manuscript authored by his brother is supplemented with contextual history of literary education in turn-of-the-century America and the debates between literary historians and critics of the early twentieth century in order to trace Greenlaw’s model impact as both a practitioner and leader. His exegesis of Spenser’s political allegory, his numerous edited literature textbooks for the general student, and his activism for a more publicly involved university are characteristic of his exemplary career. Letters from his colleagues and students, written after his early death, emphasize Greenlaw’s remarkable and contagious passion for scholarship, a passion which might inform current movements in literary studies as they reconstruct pathways to hermeneutics.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Master

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Comparative Literature

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2022

Author dc:creator

• Higham, Mykelin

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Martin Elsky

• English Language and Literature
• Intellectual History
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
• Spenser
• philology
• North Carolina
• literary history
• Elizabethan studies
• biography

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4703

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-5767