‘Coherence at Last’
Percival Gurrey’s Contribution to English
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20501951 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Hardcastle (University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 159-170 |
| Publication date | 2014-04-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Changing English (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1358-684X • E-ISSN: 1469-3585 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1358684x.2014.897043 |
| OpenAlex | W2002000589 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 10 |
Reacting to incoherent English teaching in the 1930s, Percival Gurrey probed the psychological processes involved in literary appreciation. He sought ways of teaching poetry that avoided lifeless tasks such as labelling ‘poetic devices’. Later, in the 1950s, he wrote about the processes involved in learning to write. At a time when psychology dominated educational discourse, he was in touch with new developments in both literary criticism and linguistics, and he evolved a bridging theory of language, learning and development that spanned philosophy, psychology and literary theory. I connect Gurrey’s sense of wholeness of response to his reading in Coleridge. By returning to debates surrounding Coleridge I show how a new appreciation of what language accomplishes emerged. Gurrey discovered that writing has a central place in children’s development as a whole. From such hard-won discoveries a unified theory of development in talking, reading and writing duly emerged
Art · Criticism · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literary theory · Literature · Poetry · Computer Science · Education, Leadership, and Health Research · Giambattista Vico and Joyce · Historical Architecture and Urbanism · Philosophy · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |