George Stuart Gordon

George Stuart Gordon (1881–12 March 1942) was a British literary scholar.

Life

Gordon was educated at the University of Glasgow and Oriel College, Oxford, where he received a First Class in Classical Moderations in 1904, Literae Humaniores in 1906, and the Stanhope Prize in 1905. He was a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1907 to 1915.

Gordon was Professor of English Literature at the University of Leeds from 1913 to 1922. Later, he was Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, from 1922 to 1928;{{cite book|editor1-last=Levens|editor1-first=R.G.C.|title=Merton College Register 1900–1964|date=1964|publisher=Basil Blackwell|location=Oxford|page=149}} President of Magdalen College, Oxford,He had been a Fellow of Magdalen from 1907; mentioned in C. S. Lewis, Letters p.208. Gordon tutored Lewis.{{cite web|url=http://www.cslewis.org/resources/chronocsl.html |title=C. S. Lewis Foundation - the Life of C.S. Lewis |access-date=2007-04-12 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120206021046/http://www.cslewis.org/resources/chronocsl.html |archive-date=2012-02-06 }}. Professor of Poetry there, and Vice-Chancellor (1938–1941). He was one of the Kolbítar, J. R. R. Tolkien's group of readers of Icelandic sagas.{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110725061246/http://www.planet-tolkien.com/modules/tolkien/biography.php|url=http://www.planet-tolkien.com/modules/tolkien/biography.php|title=Biography of J.R.R. Tolkien|archive-date=25 July 2011|work=Planet Tolkien}}{{unreliable source?|date=May 2020}} His students at Oxford included the author Sherard Vines.{{cite journal|url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/145763616.pdf|first=William|last=Snell|title=Five Previously Unpublished Poems by Sherard Vines|journal=The Geibun-Kenkyu: Journal of Arts and Letters|volume=95|year=2008|page=501}}

Gordon famously argued that English Literature was capable of having a widespread and positive influence. In his inaugural lecture for his Merton professorship, he argued that "England is sick, and … English literature must save it. The Churches (as I understand) having failed, and social remedies being slow, English literature has now a triple function: still, I suppose, to delight and instruct us, but also, and above all, to save our souls and heal the State".{{cite book |page=82 |last=Wheen |first=Francis |date=2004 |title=How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World |publisher=Harper Perennial}}

His son, George Gordon, was a noted physiologist.{{cite journal|url=http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7370/972/d/DC1 |title=George Gordon |journal=BMJ |date=12 July 2021 |publisher=BMJ Publishing Group Ltd}}

Works

Henry Peacham's The Compleat Gentleman (1906) editor
English Literature and the Classics (1912) editor, contribution on Theophrastus
Mons and the Retreat (1917)Under MI7; see [http://www.psywar.org/psywar/reproductions/MI7b.pdf PDF]
Medium Aevum and the Middle Age (1925) Society for Pure English Tract 19
Richard II (Shakespeare) (1925) editor
On writing and writers, Walter Alexander Raleigh (1926) editor
Companionable Books (1927)
Shakespeare's English (1928) Society for Pure English Tract 29
Anglo-American Literary Relations (1942)
The Letters of G. S. Gordon, 1902-1942 (Oxford University Press, 1943)
Shakespearian Comedy and other studies (1945)
The Discipline of Letters (1946)
Robert Bridges (1946) Rede Lecture
More Companionable Books (1947)
The Lives of Authors (1950)