G.W.L. Marshall-Hall began work as first Ormond Professor of Music at Melbourne University in 1891. In July and August 1898 he published a book of poems and gave a public address, which, together, led to demands for his dismissal. The outcry against him came largely from a section of the community which Matthew Arnold, some thirty years earlier in England, had identified as Hebraic. The radical contrast between, on the one hand, the underlying assumptions of this group, particularly its epistemology and axiology and, on the other, the Hellenic, Existentialist axioms that informed Marshall-Hall’s thinking, created a situation which was structurally conducive to the hostile outbreak of collective action that occurred. This structural conductiveness was reinforced by a number of elements of strain - a belief in the debased character of the times; a pervasive Manicheanism; various misunderstandings in regard to Marshall-Hall’s views, deriving from the unsystematic and frequently allegorical manner of their exposition; and contemporary perceptions of his role as a university teacher, and of the tone in which his outbursts were couched (itself the outcome of a blend of conscious beliefs and unconscious motivation). (For complete abstract open document)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245579 |
| Date | January 1986 |
| Creators | Rich, Joseph Wolfgang |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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