Academies

The cross-disciplinary Aston Magna Academy program was established in 1978 under the direction of Raymond Erickson to provide a non-competitive, structured environment for the intensive interchange of information, questions, and ideas among interpretive artists and scholars in all disciplines of cultural history, so that the historical perspectives of all may be broadened and perhaps profoundly changed. The Aston Magna Academies have been inspired by the model of Renaissance and Baroque academies, which advanced the study and understanding of the past.

The Thirteenth Aston Magna Academy, From Handel to Hogarth: The Culture of Early Georgian England was held in 1977 at Yale University under the direction of Raymond Erickson and Academy Associate Director Sally Sanford. The Academy examined the political, social and cultural forces that shaped England during the reigns of George I and George II. Among these are class differences, English nationalism, parliamentary politics and the important and complex issue of religion in English life; the Palladian revival in architecture seen in the work of Lord Burlington, William Kent and others; the contrast manifested in painting between the "polite" world of Canaletto and the "popular" world of Hogarth; the rich tapestry of Georgian literature, from the satire and critical writings of Alexander Pope to the novels of Fielding and Defoe, the nostalgia of the generation of Samuel Johnson and the rise of romanticism in both its dark (Thomas Gray) and sublime (James Thomson) aspects; the rise of sentimentalism in English drama, the effects of the Theater Licensing Act of 1737 and the arrival on the scene of David Garrick; the important role of dance in Georgian England, both as a recreational activity of polite society and as an essential component of all sorts of theatrical presentations; and the music of Handel and his contemporaries, from opera to oratorio, consideration of the texts set to music, the role of foreign musicians in London and issues of patronage, gender and staging. In addition to separate treatments of these disciplinary areas, the interrelations of politics, art, literature and the state were also considered.

This was the 13th consecutive Academy funded by the NEH since the program's inception in 1978, bringing the Endowment's total support of the Academy and its outreach programs to some $2 million.