Representations of teaching, curriculum reform, and the formation of collegiate English

A close examination of the Shakespearean material in approximately two hundred British and American literary textbooks from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries reveals that the professionalization of the American professoriate influenced the formation of English literature as a field in American colleges and universities. Professionalization changed the character of the study of English literature from one centered around moral instruction dependent on an a-contextual framing of literary material to one characterized by specialized studies dependent on interpretation. The representation of pedagogy in these textbooks is an index of the effects of this professionalization on the developing professoriate and field of English literature. This dissertation also explores the connections between pedagogy, research, and field formation.;Chapter One identifies these institutional changes in American higher education through archival research examining the print history of the Variorum Shakespeare series, begun by Shakespearean scholar, editor, and autodidact Horace Howard Furness and eventually taken up by academic institutions, most notably the University of Pennsylvania, and ultimately the Modern Language Association. Chapter Two examines the implicit and explicit changes in pedagogical theories and practices through the representation of Shakespeare's work in literary textbooks printed between approximately 1850 and 1875. Chapter Three continues this work with literary textbooks printed between approximately 1875 and 1930, focusing on the textbooks produced by prolific textbook author and future president of Delaware College (1888-1896), Albert Newton Raub. Chapter Four extends this work by performing a curricular history of English at Delaware College between approximately 1850 and 1930 through a detailed examination of archival sources. The conclusion draws an analogy between this historical study of pedagogy and disciplinary formation and composition in the present moment.