Taylorian Lecture

The Taylorian Lecture, sometimes referred to as the "Special Taylorian Lecture" or "Taylorian Special Lecture", is a prestigious annual lecture on Modern European Literature, delivered at the Taylor Institution in the University of Oxford since 1889.

1889-1899

The first eleven lectures were published collectively in 1900, under the title
Studies in European Literature, being the Taylorian Lectures 1889—1899
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*1889: Edward Dowden, “Literary Criticism in France”
*1890: Walter Pater, “ Prosper Mérimée”
*1891: W. M. Rossetti, “Leopardi”
*1892: T. W. Rolleston, “Lessing and Modern German Literature”
*1893 (delivered 1894): Stéphane Mallarmé, “La musique et les lettres” (Music and Literature)
*1894: Alfred Morel-Fatio, “L'Espagne du Don Quijote”
*1895: H. R. F. Brown, “Paolo Sarpi”
*1896 (delivered 1897): Paul Bourget, “Gustave Flaubert”
*1897: C. H. Herford, “Goethe’s Italian Journey”
*1898: Henry Butler Clarke, “ The Spanish Rogue-Story”
*1899 (delivered 1900): W. P. Ker, “ Boccaccio”

1900-1920

Further lectures were delivered in the first few years of the 20th century, but were not published collectively:
*1900: Émile Verhaeren, "La poésie française actuelle"
*1901: Arthur Anthony Macdonell, "The Wit and Pathos of Heinrich Heine"
*1902: James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, “Lope De Vega and Spanish Drama”
*1903: Henry Calthrop Hollway-Calthrop, “ Francesco Petrarcha”
*1904: George Saintsbury, “ Théophile Gautier: a French Man of Letters of All Work”

1920-1930

In 1917 a new endowment for an annual lecture on "subjects connected to Modern European Literature" was established by a donation of War Stock by Professors Charles Firth and Joseph Wright. This second series of lectures began in 1920. In 1930 a further volume of lectures was published, from the years 1920-1930, under the title ''Studies in European Literature, being the Taylorian Lectures Second Series, 1920—1930'':
*1920: Edmund Gosse, “Malherbe and the Classical Reaction in the Seventeenth Century”
*1921: Francis Yvon Eccles, “Racine in England”
*1922: Sir Henry Thomas, “Shakespeare and Spain”
*1923: Edmund Garratt Gardner, “ Tommaso Campanella and His Poetry”
*1924: John George Robertson, “The Gods of Greece in German Poetry”
*1925: Émile Legouis, “ G. G. de Beaurieu et son Élève de la nature, 1763”
*1926: John Cann Bailey, “ Carducci”
*1927: H. A. L. Fisher, “Paul Valéry”
*1928: Abraham Flexner, “The Burden of Humanism”
*1929: Oliver Elton, “ Chekhov”
*1930: Percy Ewing Matheson, “German Visitors to England, 1770-1795, and their impressions”

Since 1930

Since 1930 no collected volume has been issued, but individual lectures include:
*1931: Hilaire Belloc, “On Translation”
*1932 (delivered 1933): George S. Gordon, “ St. Evremond”
*1933: Geoffrey Langdale Bickersteth, “Form, Tone, and Rhythm in Italian Poetry”
*1934: Mario Roques, “La poésie Roumaine contemporaine”
*1935: H. W. Garrod, “ Tolstoi's Theory of Art”
*1936: Herbert John Clifford Grierson, “Two Dutch Poets”
*1937: Sir William Alexander Craigie, “The Art of Poetry in Iceland”
*1938: Ernest Hoepffner, “Aux origines de la nouvelle française”
*1939: Edgar Allison Peers, “Antonio Machado”
*1942: Alf Sommerfelt, “The Written and Spoken Word in Norway”
*1943: Stanisław Stroński, “La poésie et la réalité aux temps des troubadours” (Poetry and reality at the time of the troubadours)
*1944: Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, “National and International stability: Althusius, Grotius, van Vollenhoven”
*1945: Richard McGillivray Dawkins, “The Nature of the Cypriot Chronicle of Leontios Makhairas”
*1946: H. J. Chaytor, “The Provençal Chanson de Geste”
*1947: Leonard Ashley Willoughby, “Unity and Continuity in Goethe”
*1948: John Orr, “The Impact of French upon English”
*1949: Thomas Mann, “Goethe und die Demokratie”
*1951: Jean Sarrailh, “ La crise religieuse en Espagne à la fin du XVIIIe siècle”
*1952: Bruno Migliorini, “The Contribution of the Individual to Language”
*1953: Charles Bruneau, “La prose littéraire de Proust à Camus”
*1954: Francis Bull, “Ibsen: The Man and the Dramatist”
*1955: Sir Harold Idris Bell, “The Nature of Poetry as Conceived by the Welsh Bards”
*1957: Frederick Charles Roe, “Sir Thomas Urquhart and Rabelais”
*1959: Elizabeth Mary Wilkinson, “Schiller, Poet or Philosopher?”
*1961: Cecil Maurice Bowra, “Poetry and the First World War”
*1966: Edward M. Wilson, “Some Aspects of Spanish Literary History” (published 1967)
*1967: Charles Ralph Boxer, “Some Literary Sources for the History of Brazil in the Eighteenth Century”
*1968: Walter Höllerer, “Elite und Utopie: Zum 100. Geburtstag Stefan Georges” (published 1969)
*1971: Carlo Dionisotti, “Europe in Sixteenth-Century Italian Literature”Giulio C. Lepschy, ''Mother tongues and other reflections on the Italian language'' (2002), p. 126
*1974: Harry Levin, “Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and the European Horizon” (published 1975)
*1978: R. A. Leigh, “ Rousseau and the Problem of Tolerance in the Eighteenth Century”
*1983: P. E. Russell, “Prince Henry the Navigator: The Rise and Fall of a Culture Hero” (published 1984)
*1987: Paul Preston, “Salvador de Madariaga and the Quest for Liberty in Spain”
*1992: Barry Ife, “The New World and the Literary Imagination”
*2008: Jeffrey Hamburger, “Representations of Reading – Reading Representations: The Female Reader from the Hedwig Codex to Châtillon’s Léopoldine au Livre d’Heures”
*2009: Maria de Fátima Silva, “Returning to the Classics in Contemporary Portuguese Drama (with special reference to Hélia Correia’s dramatic works)”
*2010: Lina Bolzoni, “Of Poetry, Poets and the Magic of Mirrors in the Renaissance”

Notes

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Lecture series at the University of Oxford
Recurring events established in 1889