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Chapter 6 - Universities

from Part II - Social, Cultural, and Intellectual Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2024

By
David A. Fleming
Edited by
Michael Griffin  and
David O'Shaughnessy
Michael Griffin
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
David O'Shaughnessy
Affiliation:
University of Galway
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Summary

There were about 130 universities in Europe when Goldsmith was born, most founded in the preceding 200 years. Focusing on Trinity College Dublin, Edinburgh University, and the University of Leiden, this chapter uses Goldsmith’s experiences as a means to detail the nature of university education in the mid eighteenth century. The chapter sketches Goldsmith’s time at these three universities and shows that each institution had a distinctive character, defined by its age, religious ethos, governance structures, architecture, and the curriculum it offered. A discussion of Goldsmith’s own thoughts on university education in An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759) concludes the chapter.

Keywords

universitiesTrinity College DublinEdinburgh UniversityUniversity of Leidencurriculumarchitecture
Type
Chapter
Information
Oliver Goldsmith in Context , pp. 47 - 55
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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