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The Conservative Case
for Education

‘Nicholas Tate enthusiastically and cogently exposes the harmfulness of liberalism in

education and offers an alternative – conservatism as advanced by four critical writers
and theorists not often associated with it – T S Eliot, Michael Oakeshott, Hannah
Arendt and E D Hirsch. The Conservative Case for Education is not an apology for
conservatism; it is a provocation.’
– William G. Durden, President Emeritus, Dickinson College (Carlisle,
PA, USA), Chief Global Engagement Officer, the International University
Alliance (Boston, MA, USA) and Joint Appointment Professor (research),
School of Education, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD, USA)

The Conservative Case for Education argues that educational thinking in English-
speaking countries over the last fifty years has been massively influenced by a dominant
liberal ideology based on unchallenged assumptions. Conservative voices pushing
against the current of this ideology have been few, but powerful and drawn from
across the political spectrum. The book shows how these twentieth-century voices
remain highly relevant today, using them to make a conservative case for education.
Written by a former government adviser and head teacher, the book focuses on
four of the most powerful of these conservative voices: the poet and social critic T S
Eliot, the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, the political thinker Hannah Arendt and
the educationist E D Hirsch. In the case of each thinker, the book shows how their
ideas throw fresh light on contemporary educational issues. These issues range widely
across current educational practice and include: creativity, cultural literacy, mindful-
ness, the place of religion in schools, education for citizenship, the teaching of history
and Classics, the authority of the teacher, the arguments for and against a national
curriculum, the educational response to cultural diversity, and more. A concluding
chapter sums up the conservative case for education in a set of Principles that would
be acceptable to many from the Left, as well as the Right, of the political spectrum.
The book should be of particular interest to educators and educational policy mak-
ers at a time when ‘conservative’ governments are in power in the UK and the USA,
as well as to researchers, academics and postgraduate students engaged in the study of
educational policy, or those studying educational issues from an ethical, philosophical
and cultural standpoint.

Nicholas Tate was Chief Executive of England’s School Curriculum and Assess-
ment Authority and its successor body the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority,
during the years 1994–2000. Since 2000 he has been Head of Winchester College
(2000–2003) and The International School of Geneva (2003–2011), as well as of a
global network of schools. He chaired the International Baccalaureate’s Education
Committee for five years and served on the French Education Minister’s Haut Conseil
de l’Évaluation de l’École. He has a doctorate in history and has written extensively on
history and education.
Routledge Research in Education Policy and Politics
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

The Routledge Research in Education Policy and Politics series aims to enhance
our understanding of key challenges and facilitate on-going academic debate
within the influential and growing field of Education Policy and Politics.

Books in the series include:

Modernising School Governance
Corporate Planning and Expert Handling in State Education
Andrew Wilkins

UNESCO Without Borders

Educational Campaigns for International Understanding
Edited by Aigul Kulnazarova and Christian Ydesen

Education and Political Subjectivities in Neoliberal Times and Places

Emergences of Norms and Possibilities
Edited by Eva Reimers and Lena Martinsson

Local Citizenship in the Global Arena

Educating for Community Participation and Change
Sally Findlow

Using Shakespeare’s Plays to Explore Education Policy Today

Neoliberalism through the Lens of Renaissance Humanism
Sophie Ward

Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces

The Economics of Public Schooling and Globalized Education Reform
Emma E. Rowe

Education and the Production of Space

Political Pedagogy, Geography, and Urban Revolution
Derek R. Ford
The Conservative Case
for Education
Against the Current

Nicholas Tate
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Nicholas Tate
The right of Nicholas Tate to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-05551-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-16591-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction: confronting education’s group think 1

PART 1
T S Eliot 13

1 Eliot as student and teacher 15

2 Changing definitions of culture and society – Eliot
as social and cultural critic 20
3 Education for wisdom, happiness and ‘getting on’ –
in that order 37
4 Educating the Few and the Many 48
5 Compulsion versus choice 62
6 How we forgot about the nation state: education
for identity and citizenship 68
7 Educating for prejudice (and against it) 83
8 Whatever happened to education for a Christian society? 91
9 Is there any future for Classics? 103
10 Creativity depends on transmission 114

PART 2
Michael Oakeshott 123

11 Michael Oakeshott – philosopher and educator 125

12 School as a place apart 133
vi Contents
13 The project to abolish ‘School’ 142
14 Moral, political and historical education 158
15 The decline of the University: from Cardinal Newman
to the 2015 Higher Education Green Paper 166

PART 3
Hannah Arendt 173

16 Radical objectives and conservative pedagogy 175

17 The need to stop and think 186

PART 4
E D Hirsch 199

18 The pariah strikes back: teaching for cultural literacy 201

Conclusion: the Fifteen Principles of a conservative

case for education 217

Index 231
Acknowledgements

John Catt Educational is thanked for permission to reproduce text from Nicho-
las Tate’s What Is Education For? (2015) as part of the section ‘Preparation for
political life’ in Chapter 17.
Introduction
Confronting education’s group think

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
John Maynard Keynes (Hirsch 1999: 1)

I grew up in houses whose small number of bookshelves contained the children’s

history textbooks read by my parents during the first thirty years of the twentieth
century. It was these that helped make me want to spend my life studying history
and, in due course, teaching it. As well as telling good stories and giving one
interesting facts these books also had the function of embedding in the minds of
their young readers some of the dominant ideas of the day, those whose influ-
ence, more than anything else, shape our societies: the assumption that races and
peoples have essential characteristics; pride in national identity; confidence about
what is right and wrong; a belief in progress. Underlying these ideas were other
assumptions about authority, acculturation and transmission as essential compo-
nents of an education.
From the perspective of the doubting, self-conscious, pessimistic post-imperial
1960s I was eventually able to look back at these texts and see their world picture
for the historically determined and time-limited set of constructs that it was, and
to appreciate, in the world of education, the force of John Maynard Keynes’s
dictum (above) about the power of ideas. I was not so quick, as a young teacher,
to see the new set of constructs that had replaced the old ones and in which I
myself was now enmeshed.
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu saw education as a field of activity
with its own schemata, concepts, language, rules, values and interests. For much
of the time when talking about education, and without realising what one is
doing, one does not ‘speak’, he argued, but is ‘spoken for’ through the dominant
discourse of the field (Bourdieu 1984: 17). It is the argument of the current
book that since the middle of the twentieth century education in much of the
English-speaking world has been shaped by a discourse arising out of currents
in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century European thought which, if not always
dominant on the ground, has shown a remarkable intellectual dominance inside
those circles within which educational theories are developed, educational poli-
cies decided and teachers trained. It is an ideology that is often defended with
2 Introduction
self-righteous fervour and maintained regardless of the evidence (Hirsch 2006:
50–51, 53, 61, 172–179).
The French have a phrase for this kind of phenomenon: a pensée unique, or
single way of thinking about things which is so all-encompassing that it is difficult
to step outside it. In English one might call it ‘group think’ though this fails to
convey the same sense of its oppressiveness. My purpose in this book is to explore
how a number of writers and thinkers over the last hundred years have come to
challenge this penseé unique.
My understanding of the power of the pensée unique in education has been
deepened over the years by moving around some of the different ‘sub-fields’
of education in a number of different countries. Over the years I have worked
in English state schools, English teacher education, Scottish teacher education,
English educational assessment, English national educational administration,
English independent education, international school education and, as an adviser,
in French national educational administration. Involvement in international edu-
cation also brought me into contact with the national education systems of Swit-
zerland, South Africa, Hungary and the USA and with the highly distinctive
educational ‘sub-field’ of the International Baccalaureate (IB).
Each of these, to varying degrees, had its own pensée unique. When I moved
from Scotland to England no one, but no one, among my English colleagues had
any interest in the developments in Scotland in which I had been involved. When
ten years later I moved from a national role in state education to the headship of
an English independent school I found a sector operating on lines akin to those
of some corporate body in ancien régime France and in which fellow heads of my
age had all known each other since they started teaching thirty years previously.
The world of international school heads, in which everyone spoke the same edu-
cational language and had rotated round each other’s schools, turned out not
dissimilar. Even the IB, I found, despite its wide global contacts, had difficulty in
stepping outside its constructivist and internationalist mindset.
These experiences, together with those of living for many years outside my own
country (in Spain, Scotland, Switzerland, France and, most strikingly in some
ways, as a Northerner, in the English Home Counties) taught me the advantages
of being the eternal outsider. This may help to explain my interest in thinkers
who found themselves on the educational margins: T S Eliot, whose social and
cultural views have repeatedly been treated with embarrassment even when not
attracting outright hostility; Michael Oakeshott whose 1951 inaugural lecture at
the London School of Economics put England’s left-wing political science estab-
lishment into a terrible tizzy from which his reputation within those circles never
quite recovered (Oakeshott 1991: 43–69); E D Hirsch who declared ‘I’ve been a
pariah for so long’; even Hannah Arendt who, although firmly within the western
political mainstream of her times, never hesitated to confront the group think
around her, whether that of fellow Zionists or the world of US school education.
These are the main thinkers discussed in this book.
Almost two-thirds of the book is devoted to the first two thinkers: T S Eliot
and Michael Oakeshott. Both wrote extensively about education, although
 Confronting education’s group think 3
in neither case was education ever their main concern. Both were thinkers
whose educational conservatism emerged out of a wider philosophy which
was either wholeheartedly conservative, in the case of Eliot, or partially so, in
the case of Oakeshott. Examining the educational issues raised by these two
thinkers prepares the way for a discussion of the two other thinkers – Arendt
and Hirsch – whose views on non-educational issues cannot easily be labelled
‘conservative’ but whose educational views show parallels to those of Eliot and
Oakeshott. This convergence in educational views among these four thinkers
helps us, I will argue, to define better a ‘conservative case for education’ and to
make a case for its relevance across the full range of the contemporary political
spectrum.

Some characteristics of the pensée unique

But what is this pensée unique that Eliot, Oakeshott, Arendt and Hirsch were all
attacking in their very different ways? Let me begin to answer this question by
giving you some examples taken largely at random from the mission statement
aims of contemporary English schools as recorded on their websites.

• To provide an enjoyable, creative, relevant and evolving curriculum.

• To uphold the right of every individual to happiness.
• To create confident, rounded and resilient global citizens of the future.
• To develop a culture in which difference is not only respected but celebrated.
• To develop non-judgmental attitudes between people as individuals and
groups.
• To ensure that equality at our school permeates all aspects of school life.
• To help pupils to choose their own cultural and religious values and to
respect those of others regardless of their own preferences.
• To make learning fun, fulfilling and for everyone.

While each of these statements contains elements of an aim to which no one

could possibly object, they nonetheless reflect a distinctive view of the world – so
pervasive that it can pass unnoticed – which promotes a number of fundamental
assumptions none of which can or should be taken for granted. Implied or in
some cases stated within these aims are the following.

• Education should be directly relevant to the individual child and his or her
circumstances, and not primarily a body of knowledge about the world, with
its own rules and structures, which needs to be transmitted to everyone.
• Education is as much about pupil-centred activity which involves creating
new things as it is about learning to understand the world as it is.
• The development of values, attitudes and dispositions, and the promotion
of a particular kind of society, is more central to school education than the
acquisition of knowledge or the studying of subjects (which are often not
mentioned or downplayed in school mission statements).
4 Introduction
• School should be about fun and the achievement of happiness, with endur-
ance, persistence and delayed gratification under-emphasised as essential ele-
ments of learning.
• There is no hierarchy of cultures, therefore all cultures should be celebrated,
whatever they contain, and the culture of one’s own society not be allowed
to predominate within the school curriculum.
• There are no objective values, therefore other people’s values should be
respected, indeed celebrated, in schools, whatever they are.
• Equality in all areas is the dominant value, with the removal of educational
inequalities of all kinds taking precedence over all other considerations.
• The school’s duty is to promote loyalty to the world community, not primar-
ily to the national one.

These characteristics of the western educational pensée unique are not of course
confined to England or the UK, as our discussion of Arendt and Hirsch, whose
writings focused on the USA, will show. Nor are they just to be found in English-
speaking countries, though this is where they are most in evidence.
In France the philosopher of education Laurent Fedi has not just shown how
the term pensée unique is an appropriate description of the set of beliefs about
education currently dominant within a country but, even more disturbingly, of
the worldview that an education system grounded in these beliefs is successfully
inculcating into the minds of its pupils (Fedi 2011: 133, 191–209). Fedi argues
that educational approaches which formerly promoted a pensée unique based
on tradition and authority have simply been replaced by a new pensée unique
which claims to be emancipatory, anti-authoritarian, anti-conformist, ‘modern’,
‘democratic’, tolerant, respectful of difference and the Other, but which in most
respects is equally tyrannical. It is indeed worse than what preceded it because it
pretends to be helping young people to become reflective and self-critical while
doing precisely the opposite, the only self-criticism in this regime that is per-
mitted being in relation to the extent to which one falls short of the dominant
‘politically correct’ pieties promoted by the school, the media and the cultural
and political elite.1
In arguing ‘against the current’ in this way, Fedi, like other thinkers discussed
in this book, is far from being an archetypal ‘conservative’. His argument against
the pensée unique of contemporary education is that it is promoting – as some-
thing not open to question – ‘a new man’ (un nouveau homme), a particular
model of a human being, one who is both ‘competent’, with the skills and mind-
set enabling him to take his place in a flexible, nomadic global marketplace, but
also ‘cooperative’ and conformist, accepting this place without protest, adapt-
able, capable of living in a diverse society and free from strong opinions and
attachments (especially national ones). The drive behind this kind of education
is partly a wish to strengthen the bonds of solidarity in a broken and alienating
society but also, and primarily, the pressures coming from the global economy.
The mission of the contemporary school, says Fedi, is to create this ‘new man’.
 Confronting education’s group think 5
In order to do this it has abandoned its prime duty to instruct in favour of social
engineering. As a result it is not just failing to arm its pupils against the propa-
ganda which surrounds them, but subjecting them to it.2

Some origins of the pensée unique

If these are some of the characteristics and manifestations of the pensée unique
with which this book is concerned what are its origins? Arendt traced them to a
‘complex of modern educational theories which originated in Middle Europe and
consist of an astounding hodgepodge of sense and nonsense’ (Arendt 1961: 178).
Hirsch attributed them to ‘European romanticism’ and ‘American pragmatism’,
with Jean-Jacques Rousseau largely responsible for the former and John Dewey
for the latter (Hirsch 1987: xiv–xv, 31, 119). From Rousseau’s Émile comes the
notion that adults should be careful not to ‘impose’ adult ideas on children until
they both need them and are able to understand them together with the recom-
mendation that children should therefore learn by doing, through exploration
and enquiry, and not through traditional approaches deemed to be didactic and
oppressive. From Dewey comes the specific emphasis on enabling children to
construct themselves and their understanding of the world through a process of
enquiry, the stress on collaborative learning, and an attitude towards truths and
values that prioritises their practical consequences and social utility rather than
their intrinsic rightness. Out of this complex of ideas emerged a dislike of whole
class instruction, a downplaying of the role of knowledge, distaste for traditional
subjects, and a rejection of the very idea of a prescribed curriculum.
Rousseau and Dewey, however, cannot be held solely accountable for the set
of views against which Eliot, Oakeshott, Arendt and Hirsch were all reacting.
They are, at least in part, a reflection of a wider ‘ideological syndrome’ covering
a range of characteristics – feelings, attitudes and values as well as principles and
doctrines – whose links with each other are sometimes loose and whose socio-
economic roots can be found in industrialisation, urbanisation and the weakening
of traditional social and religious authorities. It is an ideological syndrome ulti-
mately traceable to strands within the West’s eighteenth-century Enlightenment:
its belief in freedom, its rationalism, universalism, individualism and egalitarian-
ism, and its optimism about the possibility of progress. It is a syndrome that helps
to put into a wider context the aims Rousseauite and Deweyan educators have
both for their students and for the kind of society and world that, through the
education they are providing, they are setting out to promote.
The main components of this ideological syndrome are also closely linked to
the version of liberalism deriving from the Enlightenment which has been the
dominant ideology of those western societies within which the twentieth-century
educational progressivism criticised by our four thinkers took deepest root. It is
a version of liberalism that has changed a great deal over the last hundred and
fifty years, moving increasingly away from its libertarian ‘small government’ roots
towards an ever greater emphasis on state intervention, distributive justice and
6 Introduction
the creation of a new social order. It is a version of liberalism that has dug particu-
larly deep roots in the academic institutions of English-speaking countries and
among the personnel of national education systems. The political philosopher
John Gray has seen it as ‘so ubiquitously pervasive . . . in American intellectual
life’, and in educational practice, ‘that it sometimes seems barely possible to for-
mulate a thought that is not liberal, let alone to express it freely’ (Burnham 1965:
160–162, 220, 243; Scruton 2014: 65; Gray 1993: 249).
The proponents of this version of liberalism, according to the philosopher and
political theorist James Burnham subscribe, by and large, to the following beliefs.

• Human beings are innately good.

• Human beings are perfectible.
• There is no innate obstacle to the realisation of a society of peace, free-
dom, justice and well-being.
• The obstacles to progress and the achievement of a good society are
ignorance and faulty social institutions.
• There are solutions to every social problem and these can be found
through the use of reason and science.
• One must continually question authority, prejudice and the merely tra-
ditional, customary or habitual (especially within one’s own society and
in western civilisation).
• The task of education is not to uphold, but to destroy contentment with
the status quo.
• The right sort of education will produce good citizens. Good citizens
will produce a good society.
• In the name of equality social reform should be designed to correct
existing inequalities and to equalise the conditions, including those of
nurture and schooling, which produce them.
• Equality also applies to matters of culture. There is no intrinsic superior-
ity in western civilisation, which indeed has much to feel ashamed about.
• The goal of social and political life is secular: to increase the material
well-being of humanity.
• National sovereignty is an outworn concept. One’s duty is to humankind.
(Burnham 1965: 125–131, 49–50, 53, 56–57, 62, 65, 79)

There are of course many varieties of liberalism. These differ in their degrees of
individualism, egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism and in their attitudes towards
multiculturalism, religion and the role of the state.3 The term ‘liberal’ is also
popularly used in very different ways, often in the USA synonymously with ‘left-
wing’ while also, both in the USA and the UK, to describe more narrowly those
who adopt a Hayekian free-market attitude to economics.
It is the kind of liberalism, as broadly defined above by Burnham, however,
which has been most prominent and most powerful in its impact within western
societies. Given the continuing prevalence of this ideology it is not surprising
 Confronting education’s group think 7
that the educational ideas of people such as Rousseau and Dewey, which are very
much in harmony with it and which in Dewey’s case emerge directly from it,
should have proved so attractive and still shape our educational discourse as pro-
foundly as they do today. The attractiveness of this ideology, with its emphasis on
cultural relativism, its downplaying of the national and its need for a ‘new man’,
can also be seen to have been enhanced, as Laurent Fedi suggests, by the expan-
sion of global capitalism and the whole process of globalisation as experienced
during the last half century.

Critiquing the pensée unique

It is equally unsurprising that some thinkers should have reacted both against
these educational ideas and against their ideological underpinnings: because they
were themselves anti-liberal, as Eliot very explicitly was during the early part of
his life; because of a wider anti-rationalism, in Oakeshott’s case; because these
ideas were contrary to ingrained features of ‘the human condition’, in the case of
Arendt; because of the alarm he felt at the individual and social consequences of
adopting these approaches to education, in the case of Hirsch.
While disagreeing fundamentally on many matters all of these thinkers felt able,
in their different ways and to varying degrees, to reassert the idea of education
for its own sake, the authority of the teacher and the importance of the transmis-
sion through education of what Matthew Arnold called ‘the best which has been
thought and said in the world’ (Arnold 1932: 6). Most of them, again in their
different ways and in varying degrees, challenged education’s implicit cultural
and ethical relativism, its emphasis on contemporary relevance, its ill-considered
interpretation of egalitarianism and its narrow obsession with economic utility.
At times the differences between the four thinkers are greater than the similari-
ties, but all shared a profound unease with the pensée unique as I have tried to
define it, though not necessarily with all of the liberal ideological underpinnings
on which it is based or with other features of liberalism such as its concern with
human autonomy or belief in freedom of expression. All four fought against what
they saw to be the main currents of educational thought in their time and were
highly self-conscious with regard to their role in doing so.

Conservatism
It is tempting to label this group of educational thinkers as ‘conservative’. In
strictly educational terms they were all reacting against a set of contemporary
assumptions and advocating a return to some of the assumptions that these had
recently replaced and which they felt had been both educationally and socially
more valuable. In this sense they are all both ‘reactionary’ and, insofar as their
stance includes a reasoned commitment to continuity and tradition, ‘conserva-
tive’. As indicating a set of educational views that emerge out of a wider response
to the world, both words, however, would be misleading.
8 Introduction
In his discussion of the ‘conservative’ critique of liberalism John Skorupski
identifies three strains of ‘conservatism’: ‘practical conservatism’, which avoids
abstract claims and focuses on what works in particular societies, times and places;
‘neo-liberalism’, which stresses free markets and a strong but small state; and a
‘conservatism’ centred on continuity, community, tradition and hierarchy and
which sees these as the organic elements of a good society (Skorupski 2015:
401). Kieron O’Hara refuses the name ‘conservatism’ to the neo-liberal strain,
seeing this as a mistaken identification arising from the way in which neo-liberals
and small c conservatives often find themselves in alliance within big C Conserva-
tive Parties against the common enemies of egalitarianism and socialism, as has
happened over the years in both the UK Conservative and the US Republican
parties. He also qualifies the third strain by arguing that whereas conservatives
start from the general assumption that continuity is essential and tradition nor-
mally a good thing their main concern, in a modern world that is rapidly chang-
ing whether one likes it or not, is not to oppose all change, but to ensure that it is
undertaken cautiously, sensibly managed and fully evaluated (O’Hara 2011: 88,
202). This attitude would also characterise the first strain of ‘conservatism’ and
these two strains would be likely, in addition, to have in common a respect for the
role of authority and order, a sense of the importance of the moral foundations of
society, a distrust of a too powerful state, a commitment to individual liberty and
an aversion to endless innovation. Both strains are also likely normally to have
in common a privileging of liberty over all forms of equality other than the basic
moral equality of human beings, and a distaste for egalitarianism as an expression
of envy and a device to enhance the power of the state (Vincent 2016: 34, 40–42,
96–97, 105–106).
If one tries to apply these features to our four thinkers one could not easily link
any of them to Skorupski’s second, neo-liberal, strain. Oakeshott fits firmly into
the first strain, but not into the other two, Eliot into both the first and the third;
and Arendt and Hirsch, except in ways that would feel very uncomfortable, into
none of them.4 Eliot is the most ‘conservative’ of the four, illustrating most of
the characteristics of English conservative thought – belief in the imperfection of
humankind, distrust of theory, attachment to established customs – but even here
it is a term that requires considerable qualification (Quinton 1978: 12–13, 16).
Although in some areas there are distant family resemblances between the four
thinkers they should be approached as a group of individuals, taking into account
all the distinctive nuances and subtleties that each of them brings to the matters
under discussion, and not as any kind of school of thought. It will also become
clear that an individual’s views on education do not necessarily or neatly follow
from his or her broader political views.
Labels such as ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’ are even more unhelpful. ‘Conserva-
tive’, being a ‘positional ideology’ rather than a universalist one, is just as accessi-
ble to the ‘left’ as to the ‘right’ (the post-Stalinist USSR was as deeply concerned
to conserve its existing order as Burke had been with that of late eighteenth-
century Britain). Those frequently described as being on ‘the Right’ are also
more likely in the contemporary world to be moral and intellectual ‘radicals’,
 Confronting education’s group think 9
even ‘revolutionaries’, given the dominance of the pensée unique of the allegedly
more subversive ‘Left’ (Gray 1993: 39).
The book nonetheless argues a case for describing all four of the thinkers, as far
as their educational views are concerned, as at least in part ‘conservative’. Jean-
Philippe Vincent, in a wide-ranging analysis of ‘conservative’ thought, which
covers many thinkers beyond the usual British and American ones, sees ‘conser-
vatism’ as a ‘style of thought’ and ‘habits of thought’ as much as a doctrine, and
it is in this sense of the term that the current book aims to develop a distinctively
‘conservative case for education’. It is a style of thought Vincent sees as shared
by many writers – Tacitus, St Augustine, Montaigne, Jane Austen, Chateaubri-
and, Balzac, Flaubert, Walter Scott, Proust, Solzhenitsyn, among others – as well
as one that characterises certain political thinkers, actors and regimes (Vincent
2016: 92, 116). It is marked by a sense of the fallibility of human endeavours, a
belief in original sin (or its secular equivalent), a distrust of abstract ideas and of
any over-reliance on Reason to solve the world’s problems, deep scepticism about
the notion of unlimited progress in human affairs, and an allergic reaction to all
forms of utopianism and millenarianism.
‘Conservatives’ with these habits of thought are distinguished by their pru-
dence and the modesty of their claims to understanding. For ‘conservatives’ the
present moment is the culmination of past developments, to be carefully inter-
rogated with a view to determining what the next best steps might be. For the
liberal progressivist it is the launching pad for some radiant future which it is
one’s duty to embrace. ‘Conservatives’ are neither reactionaries nor revolutionar-
ies, but reformers. They pay attention to tradition and appreciate the importance
of roots and of the legacy of History. They value links between generations and
have a strong sense of the importance in people’s lives of deeply embedded and
well-established communities such as family, locality, religious group and nation
(as opposed to the contemporary factitious communities of gender, sexuality,
ethnicity and lifestyle). Their preferences are always for the concrete and the local
over the abstract and the universal (Vincent 2016: passim).
The book explores the social, cultural and educational ideas of each of the
four thinkers, both in themselves and for their relevance to contemporary edu-
cational issues, including ones (such as the implications for education of the
emergence of a more culturally diverse society in the UK) that post-date their
writings. At times this takes us a long way from the world on which they were
commenting – Eliot said nothing about Islam, for example – but shows the
continuing applicability of their thoughts to new situations. The concluding
chapter identifies some common threads and suggests ways in which the col-
lective contribution of these four thinkers has implications for education today.
While avoiding the application of neat labels to the four thinkers under closest
discussion it also re-examines the extent to which a distinctively ‘conservative’
approach to education is identifiable, insofar as it can be said to reflect some of
the habits of thought mentioned above, concludes that it is, summarises its main
features in the form of Fifteen Principles, and argues that it deserves greater
attention than it has received.
10 Introduction
This book was written during a period which saw a Conservative Party in power
in the UK, first under David Cameron (from May 2015) and then under Theresa
May (from July 2016), a Republican Party under Donald Trump come to power
in the USA (from January 2017), and a number of parties sometimes described
as ‘right-wing’ grow in importance in continental Europe. If the ‘conservative’
approach to education outlined in the book constitutes a coherent set of ideas
about why and how we should educate the young, and my contention is that it
does, it should help us to decide to what extent self-confessed ‘conservatives’ in
these governments (all members of the UK Conservative Party by definition and
many US Republicans) label themselves appropriately. Early indications suggest
that test cases of the degree and nature of the ‘conservatism’ of the new govern-
ments may include Theresa May’s plans for a partial revival of grammar schools in
England, Donald Trump’s distaste for the Common Core State Standards which
one of our four ‘conservative’ thinkers (E D Hirsch) helped to shape, and the
interest of US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in enhancing parental choice
via the more widespread use of school vouchers.
The gestation of this book has also coincided with the UK’s decision, fol-
lowing a referendum in June 2016, to leave the European Union, the growth
of continental European parties keen on the preservation and strengthening of
nation states, and a strongly patriotic and at times nationalist tone to the 2016
Republican campaign for the US presidency. Another theme of the book will be
the extent to which a ‘conservative’ approach to education privileges an induc-
tion into membership of the nation state, while also fostering a global perspec-
tive, or whether indeed it should eschew both in line with Hannah Arendt’s wish
‘not to instruct (children) in the art of living’ (Arendt 1961: 195).
One of the four thinkers (Oakeshott) was English by birth, two were Ameri-
can by birth (Eliot and Hirsch) and one (Hannah Arendt) was a naturalised
American who spent the second half of her life in the USA. To offset the Anglo-
American focus of the book I have also at times tried to show how in France a not
dissimilar current of opinion has been challenging the left liberal educational and
cultural orthodoxies of our times. Chantal Delsol, Alain Finkielkraut, Philippe
Muray and Renaud Camus are, if anything, even less of a school than Eliot, Oake-
shott, Arendt and Hirsch, but in educational and cultural matters are similarly
often on the margins and ranged against a dominant pensée unique. In the same
way that counter-cultural currents of opinion within the English-speaking world
throw fresh light on its dominant assumptions, so viewpoints from a different
society help one to see things in one’s own experience that one might otherwise
have missed.

Notes
1 One of many examples of the required mode of ‘self-reflection’, according to Fedi
(2011: 207–208), was an exercise requiring baccalaureate candidates to comment
on the highly political song ‘Lily’ by Pierre Perret and then to write an imaginative
piece ‘denouncing the racism experienced by the Somalian girl (in the song) on her
arrival in France’.
 Confronting education’s group think 11
2 Fedi (2011: 202–203, 209) quotes Noam Chomsky’s views on humanistic educa-
tion in support.
3 See chapters in Wall (2015) on: liberalism and equality, pp. 212–236, liberalism
and religion, pp. 282–304, liberalism and multiculturalism, pp. 305–328, and lib-
eralism and nationalism, pp. 329–351.
4 Even Oakeshott can be described as not ‘self-evidently conservative’, at least in
relation to the English tradition of philosophical conservatism (Covell 1986: xi).

References
Arendt, H (1961), ‘The Crisis in Education’, in Between Past and Future, New York:
Viking.
Arnold, M (1932), Culture and Anarchy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P (1984), Questions de sociologie, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.
Burnham, J (1965), Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Lib-
eralism, London: Jonathan Cape.
Covell, C (1986), The Redefinition of Conservatism: Politics and Doctrine, Basing-
stoke and London: Macmillan.
Fedi, L (2011), La Chouette et L’Encrier. Promenades dans les philosophies françaises de
l’éducation, Paris: Éditions Kimé.
Gray, J (1993), Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought, New York and London:
Routledge.
Hirsch, E D (1987), Cultural Literacy, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
——— (1999), The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, New York:
Anchor Books.
——— (2006), The Making of Americans: Democracy and our Schools, New Haven
and London: Yale University Press.
Oakeshott, M (1991), ‘Political education’, in Rationalism in politics and other essays,
Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
O’Hara, K (2011), Conservatism, London: Reaktion Books.
Quinton, A (1978), The Politics of Imperfection: The Religious and Secular Traditions
of Conservative Thought in England From Hooker to Oakeshott, The 1976 T S Eliot
Lectures, London and Boston: Faber and Faber.
Scruton, R (2014), How to Be a Conservative, London: Bloomsbury.
Skorupski, J (2015), ‘The Conservative Critique of Liberalism’, in Wall, S (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Liberalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vincent, J-P (2016), Qu’est-ce que le conservatisme? Histoire intellectuelle d’une idée
politique, Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Wall, S (ed.) (2015), The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Part 1

T S Eliot
1 Eliot as student and teacher

For much of his adult life T S Eliot (1888–1965) was widely regarded as one of
the foremost living poets writing in the English language. Many critics still feel
that his poetry, and especially its two highlights The Waste Land and Four Quar-
tets, are among the major literary achievements of the first half of the twentieth
century. Some of his best poems are complex, difficult and full of literary, histori-
cal and philosophical references. They also touch on themes to which everyone
can respond: the search for meaning and purpose, the failure to live fully, the
rejection of sentimentality and facile optimism, and what one of his critics has
called his lifelong preoccupation with ‘cross-examin(ing) every careless claim to
passion’ and ‘discovering what we really feel under the carapace of convention’
(Raine 2006: 40, 166). His literary impact has extended far beyond his birth
country the USA and his adopted country the UK. He is still a source of inspira-
tion for contemporary poets.
Eliot, in addition, was a distinguished and prolific literary critic, a social and
cultural critic, and what these days might be called a ‘public intellectual’. In the
1920s and 1930s he edited the quarterly magazine Criterion, which played an
important role in British and European literary and intellectual life. His writings,
lectures and radio broadcasts, especially after he won the Nobel Prize in Litera-
ture in 1948, earned him a global reputation: 14,000 people flocked to a baseball
field in Minnesota to hear him talk on ‘The Frontiers of Criticism’; a large crowd
greeted him at the dock when, at the beginning of a lecture tour, his ship arrived
in South Africa; and three and a half million viewers watched his play The Cocktail
Party on US television (Asher 1995: 110; Julius 2003: 4).
Eliot’s concerns as a literary, cultural and social critic led him to reflect deeply
on education, its aims, content and contribution to cultural and social cohesion.
These reflections are evident in writings throughout his career, but most notably
in his 1932 essay Modern Education and the Classics (Eliot 1936), The Idea of
a Christian Society (Eliot 1939), his 1948 work Notes towards the Definition of
Culture (Eliot 1962) and in the lectures on The Aims of Education he gave at the
University of Chicago in 1950 (Eliot 1965a). Although he disclaimed expertise
in education – I have ‘no qualifications at all’ to talk on the matter, he said at
the opening of his Chicago lectures – the depth and range of his educational
thinking bears comparison with that of three other great literary figures who
16 T S Eliot
since the Renaissance have also made major contributions to the development of
western educational thought: Michel de Montaigne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
Matthew Arnold.
The comparison with Arnold, with whom Eliot had a strong but ambivalent
relationship – Craig Raine describes him as Eliot’s ‘powerful, repressed father
figure’ – is particularly apt. The two men, whose ‘public intellectual’ roles were
not dissimilar, shared concerns about the fundamental role of education in cul-
tural transmission, while differing profoundly on other matters of education, reli-
gion and morals (Raine 2006: 143–145; Eliot 1964: 103–119; Cornell 1950).
Part One of the book explores, first, briefly in this chapter, Eliot’s background
as student and teacher, second, in Chapter Two, his visions of society and culture
and, third, in Chapters Three to Ten, the ways in which these visions shaped his
views on a number of specific educational issues of contemporary relevance.

Eliot as student
Eliot came from a New England family, of English origin, which had settled in St
Louis, Missouri, in the Midwest, and which was strongly involved in education
and the Unitarian Church. His grandfather had been a co-founder of Washing-
ton University in St Louis, of which Eliot’s own father, a businessman, was also
a director for forty years; two uncles joined the ministry; and a cousin Charles
William Eliot was President of Harvard during part of Eliot’s own time at that
university. He was brought up, he said, amidst ‘the symbols of Religion, the
Community and Education’, those three elements of the conservative order that
he was to write so much about in his social criticism.
He attended the preparatory department of Washington University called
Smith Academy where, in his own words, he had an exemplary grounding in ‘the
essentials’: ‘Latin and Greek, together with Greek and Roman history, English
and American history, elementary mathematics, French and German . . . and
English composition (which) was still called Rhetoric’. Looking back on that
period of his life he saw it as ‘the most important part’ of his education, more
important by implication than what followed at Harvard (Eliot 1965b: 45;
Kojecký 1971: 199; Holt 2011: 9–15; Bantock 1970: 14–15). The fact that he
was able to name seven of his teachers at fifty years’ distance – a feat not all of us
are able to perform – is perhaps an endorsement of the extent to which, as he put
it, he had been ‘well taught’. One can trace back to his schooldays the origins
of the numerous classical references that contribute so much to the images and
themes of his poetry and plays. One can also see in that early classical grounding
the origins of his later sense of the dependence of English literature on that of
Greece and Rome and of his robust defence of the place of Classics in education
(Sullivan 2011: 169–179; Eliot 1957a).
After graduating from Smith Academy Eliot spent a preparatory year at Milton
Academy in Massachusetts before going on to Harvard where, following gradu-
ation in 1909, he remained as an Assistant in Philosophy pursuing a doctorate
in that subject. Apart from the year 1910–11, which he spent in Paris, taking
 Eliot as student and teacher 17
classes at the Sorbonne, he remained at Harvard until 1914, seemingly on track
for an academic career in philosophy. His studies during this period, which as
well as philosophy included the social sciences, Buddhism, oriental languages and
a range of literatures, find echoes in numerous places in both his criticism and
poetry. His involvement in philosophy left a distinctive legacy, in his fondness for
painstaking analysis and carefully drawn distinctions, but also for abstract nouns,
dogmatic generalisations and occasional long-windedness.
Also traceable in his social and cultural thinking is the influence of some of his
teachers at Harvard, and especially Irving Babbitt and George Santayana. In the
case of Irving Babbitt the influence was profound, though with attraction and
repulsion in fairly even balance (Eliot 1951a; Eliot 1951b). Eliot’s year in Paris
probably had an even greater impact, in perfecting his French, giving him French
Symbolist models such as Laforgue and Mallarmé to draw on in the poetry he
was beginning to write, and introducing him to strands of French social and
cultural criticism traces of which can be found in all his major prose writings.
Eliot’s French improved sufficiently to enable him to start writing poems in that
language and, later in life, he translated French texts for publication in Criterion.
The summer of 1914 found Eliot attending a summer programme at Marburg
in Germany, prematurely interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War,
which compelled him to move quickly to England where he had been granted
a scholarship to study at Merton College, Oxford. It was in England where he
decided to stay, get married and launch himself as poet and critic. Despite aban-
doning thoughts of an academic career he continued to work on his thesis, which
he submitted in 1916 but for which, through a failure to arrange a viva voce
examination, he was never awarded a doctorate.
Building on sound legacies of family and schooling, his time at Harvard, the
Sorbonne and Oxford helped to give Eliot an impressive c.v. According to the
biographer of his early years Robert Crawford, ‘no other major twentieth-century
poet was so thoroughly and strenuously educated’ (Crawford 2015: 172). It was
a wide-ranging education qualifying him for lifetime membership of the kind of
cultured class he felt to be essential for the sake of the transmission of civilisa-
tion from one generation to another. Eliot’s cultural and social criticism offers
a rationale for such a class and for the type of education that would feed it. It is
a rationale which implies a vision of society light years away from the egalitarian
West of the early twenty-first century. That does not make Eliot’s vision unwor-
thy of consideration, as later chapters attempt to show.

Eliot as teacher
As well as taking weekly tutorial groups as an Assistant in Philosophy at Harvard,
Eliot had other direct experience of teaching. After leaving Oxford he taught
French and Latin for a year at Highgate School, a North London prep school,
where his pupils included the young John Betjeman, the future Poet Laureate.
Betjeman recalled being taught by ‘the American master, Mr Eliot . . . long, lean
and pale’ in his verse autobiography Summoned by Bells (Betjeman 1960: 29–30).
18 T S Eliot
Eliot’s spell at Highgate was followed by a term at the Royal Grammar School
in High Wycombe. From 1916 to 1919, once a week, he also ran an adult educa-
tion course for the University of London which brought him into contact with
people outside his usual social circle. Although his letters home suggest a degree
of condescension towards his adult students they also impressed him by their
intellectual enthusiasm and social conservatism. Later in life he ran a course for
undergraduates on contemporary English literature.
He clearly did not find school teaching easy and in this context queried, in his
Chicago lectures on education, whether teachers were being adequately paid.
Working in a bank from 9:15 to 5:30 Monday to Friday, and the whole of a Sat-
urday once a month, with two weeks’ holiday a year, he argued, ‘was a rest cure
compared with teaching in a school’. His classroom experiences also left him with
strong views on class sizes and the need to give priority to reducing them: under
fifteen he felt was ideal, twenty was the absolute maximum, much less could be
done with thirty, and once numbers were over thirty all the teacher could do was
try to keep order, leaving ‘the clever children (to) creep at the pace of the back-
ward’ (Eliot 1965a: 62, 101; Trexler 2011: 275–276). His strong sense of the
reality of schools helps to explain his reluctance to turn his later general prescrip-
tions for education into specific recommendations about pedagogy.

References
Asher, K (1995), T.S. Eliot and Ideology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bantock, G H (1970), T.S. Eliot and Education, London: Faber and Faber.
Betjeman, J (1960), Summoned by Bells, London: John Murray.
Cornell, W F (1950), The Educational Thought and Influence of Matthew Arnold,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Crawford, R (2015), Young Eliot: From St Louis to The Waste Land, London: Jona-
than Cape.
Eliot, T S (1936), ‘Modern Education and the Classics’, in Essays Ancient and Mod-
ern, London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1939), The Idea of a Christian Society, London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1951a), ‘The Humanism of Irving Babbitt’ (1928), in Selected Essays, London:
Faber and Faber.
——— (1951b), ‘Second Thoughts About Humanism’ (1929), in Selected Essays,
London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1957a), ‘What Is a Classic?’ (1944), in On Poetry and Poets, London: Faber
and Faber.
——— (1957b), ‘Virgil and the Christian World’ (1951), in On Poetry and Poets,
London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1962), Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, London: Faber and Faber.
———(1964) ‘Matthew Arnold’, in The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism, London:
Faber and Faber.
——— (1965a), ‘The Aims of Education’, in To Criticize the Critic and Other Writ-
ings, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
——— (1965b), ‘American Literature and the American Language’, in To Criticize
the Critic and Other Writings, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
 Eliot as student and teacher 19
Holt E K III (2011), ‘St Louis’, in Harding, J (ed.), T.S. Eliot in Context, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Julius, A (2003), T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form, London: Thames and
Hudson.
Kojecký, R (1971), T S Eliot’s Social Criticism, London: Faber and Faber.
Raine, C (2006), T.S. Eliot, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sullivan, H (2011), ‘Classics’, in Harding, J (ed.), T.S. Eliot in Context, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Trexler, A (2011), ‘Economics’, in Harding, J (ed.), T.S. Eliot in Context, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
2 Changing definitions of culture
and society – Eliot as social
and cultural critic

Eliot’s cultural and social criticism: French

and other influences
Eliot’s views on education need to be seen in the context of his vision of society
and culture. This is true of everyone’s views on education, including those of
politicians and educators, even when their vision may not be fully articulated.
In Eliot’s case his vision of society and culture was one he tried hard to define
throughout his life and it is from this vision that his thoughts on education
emerge. As he said in his Chicago lectures, education cannot be discussed in
isolation. It must have ‘a social purpose’ and beyond this take into account ‘the
whole nature of man’ (Eliot 1965: 104–105).
Exploring ‘the whole nature of man’ may be said to sum up what Eliot was
doing in his poetry and criticism. It is for this reason that his thoughts on edu-
cation, arising from these reflections, remain so interesting today in a society
in need of a social and cultural vision on which to base not just its education
but its wider sense of identity and purpose. This chapter summarises the main
themes of Eliot’s social and cultural criticism. Chapters Three to Ten examine
the ways in which these themes are reflected through the different aspects of
Eliot’s thoughts on education and how they illuminate a range of contemporary
educational issues.
Critics and biographers have tried to show how and why the radical, sceptical,
anguished young poet of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, published in 1915,
should have turned into the arch-conservative defender of religious orthodoxy
and social hierarchy who in 1928 described himself as ‘classicist in literature, roy-
alist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion’ (Eliot 1970: 7). Some have seen a
disjunction between two different Eliots; others, while not under-estimating the
changes in his views, have interpreted earlier poems such as The Waste Land as
‘the dark night of the soul’ that is merely a step on the path to conversion. Eliot
himself rejected the idea that he had experienced any kind of sudden ‘conversion’
and some critics, not least by examining his poetry, have drawn attention to the
marked continuities in his writing and thought (Spurr 2017: 188–189).
One writer, Kenneth Asher, whose study focuses on Eliot’s ‘ideology’, sees a
greater unity in Eliot’s thought. He traces this to the early influence of a brand of
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Roland Furieux,
tome 1
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Title: Roland Furieux, tome 1

Traduction nouvelle par Francisque Reynard

Author: Lodovico Ariosto

Translator: Francisque Reynard

Release date: October 22, 2023 [eBook #71932]

Language: French

Original publication: Paris: Lemerre, 1880

Credits: Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
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material from the Google Books project.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROLAND

FURIEUX, TOME 1 ***
 ARIOSTE

ROLAND FURIEUX
Traduction nouvelle
PAR

FRANCISQUE REYNARD
TOME PREMIER

PARIS
ALPHONSE LEMERRE, ÉDITEUR
27-31, PASSAGE CHOISEUL, 27-31

M DCCC LXXX
Il a été tiré de ce livre :

40 exemplaires sur papier de Chine.

40 — Whatman.

Tous ces exemplaires sont numérotés et paraphés par l’éditeur.

 PRÉFACE
DU TRADUCTEUR

Si Arioste ne nous avait laissé que ses comédies et son livre de

satires, quel que soit le mérite de ces ouvrages, de quelque
renommée qu’ils aient joui jadis, il est certain que le nom de leur
auteur serait depuis longtemps sinon oublié, du moins confondu
dans la foule des écrivains de son époque : les Berni, les Trissin, les
Bembo, les Molza, les Sadolet, les Alamani, les Rucellaï, et tutti
quanti. Heureusement pour Arioste et pour nous, son poème de
Roland furieux l’a mis hors rang, à ce point que Voltaire, après l’avoir
tout d’abord proclamé l’égal de Virgile, finit par le placer au-dessus
d’Homère. Ne va-t-il pas jusqu’à dire, dans son Essai sur le poème
épique, à l’article Tasse : « Si on lit Homère par une espèce de
devoir, on lit et on relit Arioste pour son plaisir. » Le blasphème est
manifeste. Homère est le poète souverain auquel nul ne saurait être
égalé. Il s’avance en tête de tous les autres « comme un Sire, » pour
employer l’expression si belle et si juste de Dante. Mais si l’auteur de
Roland doit s’incliner devant le créateur de l’Iliade et de l’Odyssée,
« cette source qui épanche un si large fleuve [1] , » il peut marcher de
pair avec les plus grands et les meilleurs.
[1] Divine Comédie, de l’Enfer, chap. I, verset 27.
 Le Roland furieux est, en effet, un des joyaux de la pensée
humaine. Il a l’éclat et la solidité du diamant, comme il en a la pureté
et la rare valeur. C’est une de ces œuvres charmantes et fortes qui
ont le privilège de traverser les âges sans prendre une ride, toujours
plus jeunes, plus éblouissantes de fraîcheur et de vie à mesure que
les années s’accumulent sur leur tête. Elles sont immortelles de
naissance, ayant reçu dans leur berceau ce don de vérité éternelle
que le génie seul possède.
Le sujet en est multiple. Arioste nous le dit lui-même dès le
premier vers : « Les dames, les chevaliers, les armes, les amours,
les courtoisies, les entreprises audacieuses, voilà ce que je
chante. » Et durant quarante-six chants, qui ne comptent pas moins
de quarante mille vers, il poursuit imperturbablement le programme
annoncé, sans la moindre fatigue pour lui, et au perpétuel
enchantement de ses lecteurs, « avec une grâce égale, en vers
pleins et faciles, riants comme les campagnes d’Italie, chauds et
brillants comme les rayons du jour qui l’éclaire, et plus durables que
les monuments qui l’embellissent [2] ». Soit qu’il nous entraîne à la
poursuite d’Angélique qui fuit le paladin Renaud à travers les forêts
pleines d’épouvante ; soit qu’il nous raconte la folie furieuse de
Roland, semant sur son passage la terreur et la mort ; soit qu’il
décrive les batailles homériques des Sarrasins et des soldats de
Charlemagne sous les murs de Paris ; soit qu’il s’égare en quelque
digression plaisante et joyeuse, comme l’histoire de Joconde, il nous
tient sous le charme de sa belle humeur, de sa langue nombreuse et
imagée, de son éloquence indignée ou railleuse, sans cesse maître
de lui-même, et « conservant toujours un ordre admirable dans un
désordre apparent [3] ».
[2] M.-J. Chénier. Cours de lecture.
[3] M.-J. Chénier. Id.

« Il y a dans l’Orlando furioso, dit Voltaire, un mérite inconnu à

toute l’antiquité, c’est celui de ses exordes. Chaque chant est
comme un palais enchanté, dont le vestibule est toujours dans un
goût différent, tantôt majestueux, tantôt simple, même grotesque.
C’est de la morale ou de la gaieté, ou de la galanterie, et toujours du
naturel et de la vérité [4] ».
[4] Voltaire. Dictionnaire philosophique, article
Épopée.

Rien de plus vrai que cette observation ; mais si, dès le vestibule,
l’architecte a déployé ses plus rares merveilles, l’intérieur du palais
n’est pas moins séduisant ni moins fécond en surprises de tous
genres.
Où trouver plus de grâce et de charme que dans ces strophes si
connues, où la jeune vierge est comparée à la rose sur son buisson :

La jeune vierge est semblable à la rose qui, dans un beau

jardin, repose solitaire et en sûreté sur le buisson natal, alors
que le troupeau ni le pasteur n’est proche. La brise suave et
l’aube rougissante, l’eau, la terre lui prodiguent leurs faveurs ;
les jeunes amants et les dames énamourées aiment à s’en
parer le sein et les tempes.
Mais elle n’est pas plutôt séparée de la branche maternelle
et de sa tige verdoyante, que tout ce que des hommes et du ciel
elle avait reçu de faveurs, de grâce et de beauté, elle le perd. La
vierge qui laisse cueillir la fleur dont elle doit avoir plus de souci
que de ses beaux yeux et de sa propre vie, perd dans le cœur
de tous ses autres amants le prix qu’auparavant elle avait.
Qu’elle soit méprisée des autres, et de celui-là seul aimée à
qui elle a fait de soi-même un si large abandon… [5] .

[5] Roland furieux, chant I.

Quel plus touchant, quel plus saisissant tableau que celui

d’Angélique perdue sur le rivage d’une île déserte, à l’heure où la
nuit tombe :

Quand elle se vit seule, en ce désert dont la vue seule la

mettait en peur, à l’heure où Phébus, couché dans la mer,
 laissait l’air et la terre dans une obscurité profonde, elle s’arrêta
dans une attitude qui aurait fait douter quiconque aurait vu sa
figure, si elle était une femme véritable et douée de vie, ou bien
un rocher ayant cette forme.
Stupide et les yeux fixés sur le saule mouvant, les cheveux
dénoués et en désordre, les mains jointes et les lèvres
immobiles, elle tenait ses regards languissants levés vers le
ciel, comme si elle accusait le grand Moteur d’avoir déchaîné
tous les destins à sa perte. Elle resta un moment immobile et
comme atterrée ; puis elle délia sa langue à la plainte et ses
yeux aux pleurs.
Elle disait : « Fortune, que te reste-t-il encore à faire pour
avoir rassasié sur moi tes fureurs et assouvi ta vengeance ?…
[6] ».

[6] Roland furieux, chant VIII.

Arioste n’est pas seulement le poète de la grâce et de l’émotion

douce. Il a, quand il le faut, des accents âpres et mâles pour
dépeindre les sanglantes mêlées, les assauts vertigineux, les cités
croulant sous la flamme. Ses guerriers, même les moins
intéressants, sont dessinés avec une vigueur, avec une maestria
superbe. Écoutez-le parler de Rodomont escaladant les murs de
Paris :

Rodomont, non moins indompté, superbe et colère, que le

fut jadis Nemrod, n’aurait pas hésité à escalader le ciel, même
de nuit, s’il en avait trouvé le chemin en ce monde. Il ne s’arrête
pas à regarder si les murailles sont entières ou si la brèche est
praticable, ou s’il y a de l’eau dans le fossé. Il traverse le fossé à
la course et vole à travers l’eau bourbeuse où il est plongé
jusqu’à la bouche.
Souillé de fange, ruisselant d’eau, il va à travers le feu, les
rochers, les traits et les balistes, comme le sanglier qui se fraye
à travers les roseaux des marécages de Mallea un ample
 passage avec son poitrail, ses griffes et ses défenses. Le
Sarrasin, l’écu haut, méprise le ciel tout autant que les remparts.
A peine Rodomont s’est-il élancé à l’assaut, qu’il parvient sur
une de ces plates-formes qui, en dedans des murailles, forment
une espèce de pont vaste et large, où se tiennent les soldats
français. On le voit alors fracasser plus d’un front, pratiquer des
tonsures plus larges que celles des moines, faire voler les bras
et les têtes, et pleuvoir, du haut des remparts dans le fossé, un
fleuve de sang.
… Pendant que la foule des barbares descend, ou plutôt se
précipite dans le fossé hérissé de périls, et de là, par toutes
sortes de moyens, s’efforce de monter sur la seconde enceinte,
le roi de Sarse, comme s’il avait eu des ailes à chacun de ses
membres, malgré le poids de son corps gigantesque et son
armure si lourde, bondit de l’autre côté du fossé.
Ce fossé n’avait pas moins de trente pieds de large. Il le
franchit avec la légèreté d’un lévrier, et ne fait, en retombant,
pas plus de bruit que s’il avait eu du feutre sous les pieds. Il
frappe sur les uns et sur les autres, et, sous ses coups, les
armures semblent non pas de fer, mais de peau ou d’écorce,
tant est bonne la trempe de son épée et si grande est sa
force [7] .
[7] Roland furieux, chant XIV.

Si maintenant on veut avoir la mesure complète de la souplesse

du talent d’Arioste, qu’on mette en regard de ce portrait du guerrier
sarrasin le passage où Angélique est exposée nue, sur une plage
lointaine, aux entreprises d’un vieil ermite magicien. Je me hâte de
le dire, il serait difficile d’imaginer une situation plus risquée, d’entrer
dans des détails plus précis et plus scabreux ; mais il serait
impossible aussi de s’en tirer avec plus de finesse, de malicieuse
habileté, de rouerie naïve. Qu’on en juge :
 Il (l’ermite) avait à son côté une poche ; il l’ouvre et il en tire
une fiole pleine de liqueur. Sur ces yeux puissants où Amour a
allumé sa plus cuisante flamme, il en jette légèrement une
goutte qui suffit à endormir Angélique. La voilà gisant, renversée
sur le sable, livrée à tous les désirs du lubrique vieillard.
Il l’embrasse et la palpe à plaisir, et elle dort et ne peut faire
résistance. Il lui baise tantôt le sein, tantôt la bouche ; personne
ne peut le voir en ce lieu âpre et désert. Mais, dans cette
rencontre, son destrier trébuche, et le corps débile ne répond
point au désir. Il avait peu de vigueur, ayant trop d’années, et il
peut d’autant moins qu’il s’essouffle davantage.
Il tente toutes les voies, tous les moyens, mais son roussin
paresseux se refuse à sauter ; en vain il lui secoue le frein, en
vain il le tourmente, il ne peut lui faire tenir la tête haute. Enfin, il
s’endort auprès de la dame qu’un nouveau danger menace
encore [8] .

[8] Roland furieux, chant VIII.

Quelle richesse de palette, quelle variété de tons, quelle finesse,

quelle grâce, quelle force, quelle puissance de peinture ! Comme
c’est bien la maîtresse qualité qu’Horace réclame chez un poète : ut
pictura poesis.
On a voulu voir dans Roland furieux une critique de la chevalerie.
Ces grands coups d’épée qui fendent du haut en bas chevaux et
cavaliers bardés de fer ; ces lances magiques au bout desquelles
Roland emporte à bras tendu et au galop de son coursier jusqu’à dix
Sarrasins, enfilés les uns après les autres comme une brochette de
mauviettes ou de grenouilles ; ces castels enchantés qui
apparaissent et s’évanouissent à la cime des monts chenus sur un
signe, sur une parole du premier magicien qui passe ; ces guerriers
qui, après avoir terrassé en champ clos leurs plus robustes
adversaires, se reposent en triomphant la nuit suivante de dix
pucelles ; tous ces moyens, tous ces exploits hors nature ont été pris
pour une parodie volontaire des mœurs chevaleresques déjà fort en
désuétude au temps d’Arioste. On a comparé Roland à Don
Quichotte, et Arioste à Cervantès. C’est, je crois, une erreur. Au
commencement du XVIe siècle, la mode était toujours aux romans de
chevalerie. Le Morgante maggiore de Pulci, et le Roland amoureux
de Boïardo, publiés dans les dernières années du siècle
précédent [9] , étaient encore en pleine possession de la vogue
immense qui les avait accueillis lors de leur apparition. Arioste a
voulu, à son tour, écrire une œuvre qui répondît au goût du public. Il
a simplement suivi les traces de ses devanciers, et cela est si vrai,
qu’il ne s’est même pas donné la peine de chercher une fable
nouvelle. Il a pris celle de Roland amoureux qui était resté inachevé,
et dont Roland furieux n’est en réalité que la continuation. Ce sont
les mêmes personnages et quasi les mêmes aventures, qui ont un
même cadre : la guerre des Chrétiens et des Sarrasins. Seulement,
sous la plume d’un écrivain de génie, le cadre s’est agrandi, les
personnages ont pris un relief inattendu, et ce qui n’était en principe
qu’un roman de chevalerie, s’est élevé aux proportions d’un poème
épique. La teinte de raillerie jetée sur l’ensemble de l’œuvre ne
provient pas d’une idée préconçue, n’est pas la résultante d’une
pensée philosophique ou sociale, elle est l’expression naturelle, et
pour ainsi dire inconsciente, de la société incrédule et superstitieuse,
ignorante et lettrée, raffinée et barbare, au milieu de laquelle vivait
Arioste, et dont il fut lui-même un très curieux spécimen.
[9] Le Roland amoureux, de Boïardo, parut en 1495.

Esprit léger et sérieux tout à la fois, ambitieux et désintéressé,

prodigue par tempérament et économe par nécessité, Ludovic
Arioste est une figure à part au milieu de ces gentilshommes
courtisans qui donnaient aux petites cours italiennes de la
Renaissance, et surtout à la cour du duc de Ferrare, une si brillante
physionomie. Il naquit en 1474, à Reggio, province de Modène. Sa
famille était originaire de Bologne, ainsi qu’il nous le dit dans la
sixième de ses satires. Son père et ses oncles, hommes d’un certain
mérite, occupaient des emplois assez élevés dans la cité de Ferrare.
Sa mère appartenait à la très ancienne famille des Malaguzzi, ce qui
le faisait cousin-germain d’Annibal Malaguzzi, auquel il a dédié la
première de ses satires, et qu’il cite une fois ou deux avec éloge
dans son poème. Il était l’aîné de dix enfants, cinq garçons et cinq
filles. Nous savons, par sa satire IV, le nom de ses frères :

De cinq que nous sommes, Charles est dans le royaume

d’où les Turcs ont chassé mon Cléandre, et il a le dessein d’y
rester quelque temps.
Galas sollicite, dans la cité d’Évandre, la permission de
porter la chemise sur la simarre ; et toi, tu es allé vers le
Seigneur, ô Alexandre.
Voici Gabriel ; mais que veux-tu qu’il fasse, étant, depuis
l’enfance, resté, par malechance, estropié des jambes et des
bras ?
Il ne fut jamais en place ni en cour.

Le patrimoine était mince pour élever toute cette nombreuse

famille. Les ancêtres d’Arioste ne s’étaient point enrichis dans le
négoce ou par les trafics :

Jamais Mercure n’a été trop ami des miens [10] .

[10] Satire III.

Aussi lui advint-il, comme jadis à Ovide, et à tant d’autres depuis,

d’avoir à lutter contre la volonté paternelle pour se livrer à l’étude
des belles-lettres où le poussaient ses goûts et comme la prescience
de son génie. C’est ce dont il se plaint en ces termes à son ami
Bembo :

Hélas ! quand j’eus l’âge convenable pour goûter au miel

Pégaséen, alors que mes joues fraîches ne se voyaient pas
encore fleuries d’un seul poil,
Mon père me chassa avec les épieux et les lances, et non
pas seulement avec les éperons, à compulser textes et gloses,
 et m’occupa cinq ans à ces sottises [11] .

[11] Satire IV.

Après cinq ans d’essais infructueux et de luttes incessantes, son

père finit par s’apercevoir qu’il perdait son temps à vouloir faire de
son fils un homme de loi. Il lui rendit sa liberté. Arioste avait déjà
dépassé l’âge de vingt ans. Il lui fallut réparer le temps perdu. Sa
bonne fortune le fit tomber entre les mains du célèbre Grégoire de
Spolète, savant helléniste et latiniste, sous la direction duquel il fit de
rapides progrès dans la langue de Virgile et d’Horace. Il venait à
peine d’entreprendre l’étude du grec quand il perdit son professeur.
Sur les instances d’Isabelle, femme de Jean Galéas, Grégoire avait
consenti à accompagner en France le jeune Ludovic Sforza,
prisonnier de Louis XII. Peu de temps après, le père d’Arioste
mourut, et tous les soins de la famille retombèrent à la charge de ce
dernier, de sorte qu’il dut faire marcher de front ses études et ses
démarches pour établir ses sœurs et ses frères. Il s’acquitta de cette
double tâche avec un courage admirable.
Entre temps, il s’était fait connaître par quelques pièces de vers,
sonnets, madrigaux, canzones. Sa réputation naissante lui valut la
protection d’Hippolyte, cardinal d’Este, qui se l’attacha en qualité de
poète. Mais, bien qu’Arioste fût déjà fort estimé pour ses talents
d’écrivain, le cardinal se servit plus souvent de lui comme messager
d’État que comme poète attitré. Il l’envoya à diverses reprises
auprès du pape ; une première fois quand les Vénitiens déclarèrent
la guerre au duc Alphonse, pour lui réclamer une somme importante
que lui devait Jules II ; une seconde fois, après la victoire des
Français à Ravenne.
C’est au milieu de ces allées et venues qu’Arioste composa son
poème de Roland, qu’il dédia au cardinal Hippolyte, lequel ne paraît
guère en avoir compris la valeur. Un jour, après avoir entendu la
lecture de plusieurs chants que le poète venait de terminer, il lui dit
en riant : « Hé ! maître Ludovic, où diable avez-vous pris toutes
ces… sottises ? » Le mot, en italien, est autrement expressif, mais il
ne saurait être traduit en français [12] . Je dois ajouter que si le
cardinal faisait assez peu de cas du talent de poète d’Arioste, il le
payait fort mal.
[12] Messer Ludovico, dove avete pigliato tante
coglionerie ?

Mais il fallait vivre ; il fallait surtout pourvoir aux besoins de la

nombreuse couvée dont il était l’unique soutien. Arioste resta dix-
sept ans auprès d’Hippolyte. A la mort du cardinal, il passa au
service du duc Alphonse qui le traita avec plus de considération,
sinon avec plus de largesse. Mais le désir de ne pas s’éloigner de
Ferrare lui fit accepter cette nouvelle servitude.

Ce n’est pas que le service du duc soit bon de tous points ;

ce qui me plaît surtout en lui, c’est que je m’éloigne rarement du
nid natal, ce qui jette peu de trouble dans mes travaux [13] .

[13] Satire IV.

Arioste s’était bâti à Ferrare une maison entourée d’un jardin.

C’est là qu’il écrivit la plupart de ses ouvrages, et qu’il mit la dernière
main à son poème de Roland. A son vif regret, à la mort de Léon X,
il dut quitter sa chère retraite pour aller prendre le gouvernement de
la province de Garfagnana, en plein Apennin. On raconte à ce sujet
l’aventure suivante : Il se rendait à sa résidence, et était sur le point
d’arriver à Castelnuovo, quand il fut arrêté par des brigands,
lesquels, aussitôt qu’ils eurent appris quel était leur prisonnier, le
comblèrent de marques de respect et l’escortèrent jusqu’à ce qu’il
eût franchi le passage dangereux. Peut-être n’est-ce là qu’une
légende ; mais l’aventure n’a rien d’invraisemblable. Elle est bien
dans les mœurs de l’époque, et s’accorde parfaitement avec
l’admiration que les contemporains d’Arioste avaient pour le poète
de Roland.
Il resta trois ans à Castelnuovo. Rentré à la fin de sa mission à
Ferrare, il ne s’y occupa plus que de ses travaux littéraires,
retouchant sans cesse son poème de Roland. Il venait d’en donner
une édition définitive, lorsqu’il mourut, le 8 juillet 1533, à l’âge de
cinquante-neuf ans.
Outre Roland furieux, Arioste a écrit cinq comédies et des satires
au nombre de sept. Voici comment s’exprime, au sujet de ces
dernières, un des maîtres de la critique italienne : « Dans le genre de
la satire, comme dans le genre épique et dans celui de la comédie,
Arioste excelle comme se rapprochant le plus d’Horace, lequel a su,
plus que les autres auteurs latins, conserver à la satire l’allure de la
comédie [14] . » Pour nous, les satires d’Arioste ont surtout le mérite
de nous retracer dans ses détails intimes la vie du poète.
[14] Gravina. Trattato della Ragion poetica.

Des cinq comédies, la plus célèbre, la meilleure aussi, est celle

qui a pour titre : I Suppositi. Puis viennent la Cassaria, il
Negromante, la Lena, et la Scolastica. Cette dernière, laissée
inachevée par Arioste, fut terminée par son frère Gabriel. Ces cinq
pièces, où se retrouvent à un haut degré les principales qualités de
l’auteur de Roland, l’abondance, la verve, la clarté, l’esprit
d’observation, eurent toutes, sauf la dernière qui ne fut pas jouée, du
moins du vivant d’Arioste, un grand succès et le placèrent au
premier rang des auteurs comiques en Italie. Mais encore une fois,
son vrai titre aux yeux de la postérité n’est ni dans ses comédies, ni
dans ses satires, ni dans les poésies lyriques qu’il a composées en
l’honneur de divers personnages de la maison d’Este et, en
particulier, du cardinal Hippolyte ; c’est dans Roland qu’il faut le
chercher. Les satires et les comédies d’Arioste ne sont plus guère
lues que des érudits, tandis que Roland est dans toutes les mains, a
été traduit dans toutes les langues. Bien qu’âgé de près de quatre
siècles, il est, comme dit le poète :

Jeune encore de gloire et d’immortalité.

Roland furieux fut publié pour la première fois à Ferrare, en 1515

ou 1516. Depuis cette époque, il en a été fait de nombreuses
traductions françaises en prose et en vers. Voltaire disait à ce
propos : « Je n’ai jamais pu lire un seul chant de ce poème dans nos
traductions [15] . » Si Voltaire vivait encore, il tiendrait certainement le
même langage. Les traductions de Roland faites après lui ne valent
guère mieux que celles qui existaient de son temps. Si les dernières
ont été parfois un peu plus scrupuleuses sous le rapport de
l’exactitude, elles sont toutes d’un terre à terre désespérant. Aucune
n’a cherché à rendre le coloris étincelant, la naïveté savante,
l’enjouement, le brio qu’Arioste a répandus à pleines mains sur son
œuvre. A les lire, on ressent la même impression que ferait éprouver
la vue d’un papillon dont les ailes, prises entre les doigts d’un rustre,
y auraient laissé leurs couleurs.
[15] Dictionnaire philosophique, mot Épopée.

Cependant, je ne crois pas qu’il soit impossible de donner de nos

jours une bonne traduction du chef-d’œuvre d’Arioste. La langue
française du XIXe siècle, telle que nous l’ont faite J.-J. Rousseau,
Chateaubriand, George Sand, Victor Hugo, est un instrument assez
souple, assez sonore, assez complet pour prendre tous les tons,
pour rendre toutes les nuances d’un idiome étranger, surtout de
l’italien avec lequel elle a tant d’affinités d’origine. Aussi, n’ai-je pas
hésité à traduire Roland furieux après tant d’autres. Ai-je réussi à
faire mieux que mes devanciers ? Il ne m’appartient pas d’en juger.
Ce que je puis dire, c’est que je me suis efforcé de mieux faire. En
tout cas, la façon si bienveillante avec laquelle le public a accueilli
mes traductions de la Divine Comédie et du Décaméron, me fait
espérer qu’il me tiendra compte, cette fois encore, des efforts que
j’ai faits pour lui offrir, dans toute sa vérité, un des chefs-d’œuvre et,
suivant quelques-uns, parmi lesquels Voltaire, le chef-d’œuvre de la
poésie italienne.

Francisque REYNARD.

Paris, 30 octobre 1879.

 ROLAND FURIEUX

CHANT PREMIER.

Argument. — Angélique, s’étant enfuie de la tente du duc de

Bavière, rencontre Renaud qui est à la recherche de son cheval. Elle
fuit de tout son pouvoir cet amant qu’elle hait, et trouve sur la rive
d’un fleuve le païen Ferragus. Renaud, pour savoir à qui
appartiendra Angélique, en vient aux mains avec le Sarrasin ; mais
les deux rivaux s’étant aperçus de la disparition de la donzelle,
cessent leur combat. — Pendant que Ferragus s’efforce de ravoir
son casque qu’il a laissé tomber dans le fleuve, Angélique rencontre
par hasard Sacripant qui saisit cette occasion pour s’emparer du
cheval de Renaud. Celui-ci survient en menaçant.

Je chante les dames, les chevaliers, les armes, les amours, les
courtoisies, les audacieuses entreprises qui furent au temps où les
Maures passèrent la mer d’Afrique et firent tant de ravages en
France, suivant la colère et les juvéniles fureurs d’Agramant leur roi,
qui s’était vanté de venger la mort de Trojan [16] sur le roi Charles,
empereur romain.
 Je dirai de Roland [17] , par la même occasion, des choses qui
n’ont jamais été dites en prose ni en rime ; comment, par amour, il
devint furieux et fou, d’homme qui auparavant avait été tenu pour si
sage. Je le dirai, si, par celle qui en a fait quasi autant de moi [18] en
m’enlevant par moments le peu d’esprit que j’ai, il m’en est pourtant
assez laissé pour qu’il me suffise à achever tout ce que j’ai promis.
Qu’il vous plaise, race généreuse d’Hercule [19] , ornement et
splendeur de notre siècle, ô Hippolyte, d’agréer ce que veut et peut
seulement vous donner votre humble serviteur. Ce que je vous dois,
je puis le payer partie en paroles, partie en écrits. Et qu’on ne me
reproche pas de vous donner peu, car tout autant que je puis
donner, je vous donne.
Vous entendrez, parmi les plus dignes héros que je m’apprête à
nommer avec louange, citer ce Roger qui fut, de vous et de vos
aïeux illustres, l’antique cep. Je vous ferai entendre sa haute valeur
et ses faits éclatants, si vous me prêtez l’oreille et si vos hautes
pensées s’abaissent un peu, de façon que jusqu’à elles mes vers
puissent arriver.
Roland, qui longtemps fut énamouré de la belle Angélique et
pour elle avait dans l’Inde, en Médie, en Tartarie, laissé d’infinis et
d’immortels trophées [20] , était revenu avec elle dans le Ponant, où,
sous les grands monts Pyrénéens, avec les gens de France et
d’Allemagne, le roi Charles tenait campagne
Pour faire repentir encore le roi Marsille et le roi Agramant [21] de
la folle hardiesse qu’ils avaient eue, l’un de conduire d’Afrique autant
de gens qui étaient en état de porter l’épée et la lance, l’autre d’avoir
soulevé l’Espagne, dans l’intention de détruire le beau royaume de
France. Ainsi Roland arriva fort à point ; mais il se repentit vite d’y
être venu ;
Car peu après sa dame lui fut ravie. — Voilà comme le jugement
humain se trompe si souvent ! — Celle que, des rivages d’Occident
à ceux d’Orient, il avait défendue dans une si longue guerre,
maintenant lui est enlevée au milieu de tous ses amis, sans qu’il