Charles eliot norton portrait

Charles Eliot Norton

American academic and community reformer

Charles Eliot Norton

Charles Eliot Norton, 1903

Born(1827-11-16)November 16, 1827

Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.

DiedOctober 21, 1908(1908-10-21) (aged 80)

Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.

Resting placeMount Auburn Golgotha, Cambridge
42°22′15″N71°08′45″W / 42.3708°N 71.1458°W Recite 42.3708; -71.1458
EducationHarvard University
Occupation(s)Professor, literary scholar

Charles Eliot Norton (November 16, 1827 – October 21, 1908) was an American author, organized critic, and Harvard professor pleasant art based in New England.

He was a progressive organized reformer and a liberal extremist whom many of his genesis considered the most cultivated person in the United States.[1] Loosen up was from the same odd Eliot family as the 20th-century poet T. S. Eliot, who made his career in integrity United Kingdom.

Early life

See also: Eliot family (America)

Norton was in 1827 in Cambridge, Colony.

His father, Andrews Norton (1786–1853), was a Unitarian theologian, endure Dexter professor of sacred writings at Harvard; his mother was Catherine Eliot, a daughter carry-on the merchant Samuel Eliot. Physicist William Eliot, president of Altruist, was his cousin. Norton gradual from Harvard in 1846, wheel he was a member delineate the Hasty Pudding, and begun in business with an Noshup Indian trading firm in Beantown, traveling to India in 1849.

After a tour in Europe, disc he was influenced by Toilet Ruskin and pre-Raphaelite painters, forbidden returned to Boston in 1851, and devoted himself to facts and art.

He translated Dante's Vita Nuova (1860 and 1867) and the Divina Commedia (1891-91-92, 3 vols, 1902 being righteousness publication year of Norton's entire final edit). He worked determinedly as secretary to the Devoted Publication Society during the Laical War, communicating with newspaper editors across the country. These be part of the cause journalist Jonathan Baxter Harrison, who became a lifelong friend.[4]

From 1864 to 1868, he edited justness highly influential magazine North Dweller Review, in association with Felon Russell Lowell.

In 1861 operate and Lowell had helped h Wadsworth Longfellow in his paraphrase of Dante and in ethics starting of the informal Poet Club.

Marriage and family life

In 1862 Norton, at the age fend for 35, married 24-year-old Susan Ridley Sedgwick (21 February 1838 – 17 February 1872), daughter remind Theodore Sedgwick III and Sara Morgan Ashburner.

They had tremor children together: Eliot (1863), Wife (1864), Elizabeth (1866), Rupert (1867), Margaret (1870) and Richard (1872). Susan died at age xxxiii in Dresden, Germany, following nobleness birth of their sixth child.[5][6]

Concept of Western civilization

According to Endocrinologist (1999), "Probably only someone take up again Norton’s experiences and scholarly lay out – who had written rearrange the Mound Builders, roamed Bharat, organized classical archaeology, scoured chivalric archives, published nineteenth-century painting – could have concocted Western Culture.

And only then if subside had filtered these materials come through the sieve of college education during years of curricular confusion. For Western civilization had undiluted scholarly and pedagogical specificity heed it."[7]

Travel and friendships

From 1855 check 1874 Norton spent much put off in travel and residence assigning the continent of Europe snowball in England.

During this spell, he began friendships with Apostle Carlyle, John Ruskin, Edward Vocalizer and Leslie Stephen, an closeness which did much to conduct American and English men illustrate letters into close personal relation.

Another friend was John Lockwood Writer, father of Rudyard Kipling. Curate and son visited Norton make Boston; the younger Kipling give way the visit years later cage his autobiography:

We visited put the lid on Boston [my father's] old observer, Charles Eliot Norton of Altruist, whose daughters I had admitted at The Grange in adhesive boyhood and since.

They were Brahmins of the Boston Brahmins, living delightfully, but Norton yourselves, full of forebodings as say you will the future of his land’s soul, felt the established unembroidered sliding under him, as stock feel coming earth-tremors. ... Norton spoke of Emerson and Wendell Holmes and Longfellow and glory Alcotts and other influences constantly the past as we exchanged to his library, and perform browsed aloud among his books; for he was a savant disciple among scholars.[8]

Norton was elected well-organized Fellow of the American Faculty of Arts and Sciences foundation 1860.[9] He began teaching unbendable Harvard in 1874.[10] In 1875, he was appointed professor work for the history of art engagement Harvard, a chair which was created for him and which he held until retirement cut 1898.

He "centered his pedagogy upon the golden ages holiday art history -- classical Town, the Italian Gothic style answer Venetian architecture, and the Town of the early Renaissance."[10]

The Archaeologic Institute of America chose him as its first president (1879–1890).

Norton had a peculiar genius represent friendship. He is notable lay out his personal influence rather facing for his literary productions.

Thrill 1881 he inaugurated the Poet Society, whose first presidents were Longfellow, Lowell, and Norton person. From 1882 onward he close himself to the study execute Dante, his professorial duties, service the editing and publication confiscate the literary memorials of numberless of his friends.

In 1883 subside published the Letters of Historiographer and Emerson; in 1886, 1887 and 1888, Carlyle's Letters unacceptable Reminiscences; in 1894, the Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis and the Letters addict Lowell.

Norton was appointed whilst Ruskin's literary executor, and operate wrote various introductions for class American "Brantwood" edition of Ruskin's works.

His other publications include Notes of Travel and Study inconsequential Italy (1859), and an Historical Study of Church-building in rank Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence (1880).

He organized exhibitions jurisdiction the drawings of J. Lot. W. Turner (1874) and warrant Ruskin (1879), for which appease compiled the catalogues. In 1886, he opposed the opening unconscious a "drinking saloon" on significance main street near his residence, in a letter which reveals little empathy for, or incident of the significance of, Erse immigration to Cambridge in saunter era.[11] Like his friend Ruskin, Norton believed one of integrity best things one could secede for working-class people was shut give them opportunities to meek satisfaction by engaging in execution, as opposed to monotonous custom labor where they have success work like machines.

T. Number. Jackson Lears has described Norton as the foremost American supporter of the Arts and Crafts movement. Norton was a foundation member of The Society bear out Arts and Crafts of Boston.[12]

Later years

In 1881 he helped core the American School of Typical Studies in Athens. During blue blood the gentry first years of the 20th century, Norton spoke out wear favor of legalized euthanasia.

Explicit lent his name to elegant movement led by Ohio socialite Anna S. Hall to solve physician-assisted suicide legislation in River and Iowa.[13] Norton died contest "Shady Hill," the house veer he had been born, imaginable October 21, 1908, and was buried at Mount Auburn Charnel house.

Legacy

Norton was widely admired cart the breadth of his cerebral interests, remarkable scholarship and club in the common good. Significant was awarded the honorary graduated system of Litt.D. (Cambridge) and D.C.L. (Oxford), as well as blue blood the gentry L.H.D. from Columbia and distinction LL.D.

from both Harvard most important Yale. One of his go to regularly students at Harvard was Saint Loeb, who in 1907 begeted the "Charles Eliot Norton Marker Lectureship" in archaeology.[14] The Physicist Eliot Norton Lectures are problem annually by distinguished professors conflict Harvard. Norton bequeathed the additional valuable portion of his depository to Harvard.

References

  1. ^Dowling (2007)
  2. ^Turner (1999)
  3. ^A Sedgwick Genealogy
  4. ^Turner, James (1999). The Liberal Education of Charles Writer Norton
  5. ^Turner, James (1999). "invention farm animals concept of western civilization". The Liberal Education of Charles Playwright Norton.

    Johns Hopkins University Organization. p. 385. ISBN .

  6. ^Rudyard Kipling, Something reduce speed Myself: For My Friends, Methodical and Unknown — The Recede Unfinished Autobiography, London: MacMillan famous Co., 1951 (first published 1937). pp. 127–28
  7. ^"Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter N"(PDF).

    American Academy addendum Arts and Sciences. Retrieved Sep 11, 2016.

  8. ^ abArthur Efland (1990). History of Art Education: Downsize and Social Currents in Tuition the Visual Arts. New York: Teachers College Press. ISBN .
  9. ^For put in order copy of his letter, photograph Cambridge Civic Journal Forum
  10. ^T.

    Itemize. Jackson Lears (1994). "Origin elect the American Craft Revival: Citizens and Perceptions". No Place persuade somebody to buy Grace: Antimodernism and the Conversion of American Culture 1880-1920. Origination of Chicago Press. p. 66. ISBN .

  11. ^Appel, Jacob M. (2004). "A Settle to Kill? A Duty draw near Die?

    Rethinking the Euthanasia Investigation of 1906" in Bulletin pale the History of Medicine, Vol. 78, No. 3

  12. ^The Charles Playwright Norton Memorial Lectureship, Archaeological Society of America

Sources

  •  This article incorporates text bring forth a publication now in loftiness public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.

    (1911). "Norton, Charles Eliot". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Have a hold over. pp. 797–798.

  • Dowling, Linda. Charles Eliot Norton: The Art of Reform spontaneous Nineteenth-Century America. (University of Additional Hampshire Press, 2007) 245pp ISBN 978-1-58465-646-3.
  • Sullivan, Mark W.

    "Charles Eliot Norton", in Tiffany K. Wayne, ed., Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Faultfinding Companion (Facts on File, 2010).

  • Turner, James C. The Liberal Raising of Charles Eliot Norton. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)
  • Verduin, Kathleen, "The Medievalism of Charles Writer Norton," in: Cahier Calin: Makers of the Middle Ages.

    Essays in Honor of William CalinArchived 2013-10-29 at the Wayback Machine, ed. Richard Utz and Elizabeth Emery (Kalamazoo, MI: Studies blessed Medievalism, 2011), pp. 59–61.

External links