User:IndtAithir/Irving Literary Society
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The Irving Literary Society (or simply The Irving) is a literary society seated in Ithaca, Upstate New York, at Cornell University. The U.S. Bureau of Education described it as a "purely literary society" following the "traditions of the old literary societies of Eastern universities." The Irving was a campus leader in the 1870s, “ . . . when Cornell was young and boasted but two college buildings and no sidewalks, when the Ten-Thirty Club, the mock programmes, and the two literary societies were everything . . . . “[1] The Irving and its peers were considered prominent, forming an intellectual culture[2] later diminished at Cornell University during the Gilded Era.[3] The Irving Literary Society and other purely literary societies disseminated Eastern elite culture from generation to generation and benchmarked merit performance in extracurricular life.[4] In the community created, the Irving and its peers established an environment conducive to free intellectual thought.[5] At their peak, the Irving and its peers were housed by the University in Society Hall, located within North University (now White Hall).[6]
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Abbreviation | The Irving |
---|---|
Formation | October 24, 1868 |
Headquarters | The Gables |
Location |
|
Region served | Ithaca, New York |
Membership | 1200 |
Dean, Irving Liteary Society | Tom Alexander 2011 (tapped) Brian Bendett 2010 |
Main organ | The New York Alphan ("NYAlphan") |
Parent organization | Phi Kappa Psi |
Affiliations | Cornell University |
==Prominence==
The Irving held its first business meeting in Room No. 4, Cascadilla Place, on October 20, 1868, some thirteen days after Cornell University opened its doors.[7] John Andrew Rea proposed the name preferred by Andrew Dickson White; others proposed the John Bright Brotherhood, honoring England’s orator of great renown.[8] As John Andrew Rea, founder of both the Irving and his local fraternity chapter recalled during the Great Depression:
What I was thinking of most at that time was founding a fraternity and a literary society. I was Phi Kappa Psi, and wanted Foraker and Buchwalter to come on and join me in founding the New York Alpha, which we did, and we had a great bunch of boys. The literary society was first in time. Mr. Williams of our class agitated for the organization of a society under the name “Philanthea.” I was appointed on the committee to report on the name for the second society. We did not want a Latin or Greek name, for this was a new institution, one that had never existed before. After much discussion, we went to Mr. White and told him we were starting a society and he suggested we use the name of “Irving,” after the founder of American literature. The committee accepted it and reported it to the boys and so it was called the Irving Literary Society. I have no record of the demise of the Irving . . . . There were no other activities than those of the fraternity and the literary society. That was all we knew anything about; no athletics the first year. The literary society had public exhibitions with essays, orations, and debates. They were held downtown.[9]
A compromise was struck in which “the Irving” was chosen for the name, while Bright and America’s greatest orator, Charles Sumner, were admitted as the first honorary members. Interesting, each of the early sessions was opened with prayer.[10] Tradition within today's Irving holds that Andrew Dickson White preferred a name celebrating the State of New York's native arts, letters and culture over a name rooted in the neo-classical revival.
The Irving’s performance was sufficiently prominent in its first decade and a half of existence to prompt the Ithaca Daily Democrat to lament its ‘decline’ under mechanical and engineering students pursuing ‘technical’ interests in the mid-1880s.[11] As an example of American intellectual endeavor in the late 19th century, the historic record of the Irving provides evidence of a national transition. Cornell University projected itself as a turning point in American education reform. The Irving was considered an integral and prominent part of that reform.[12] The life of the Irving, as such, parallels and shadows the transition of Cornell University away from the English collegiate model prevalent in 19th century American education and into the technical, German research university model, of which Cornell became a national exemplar over the next century.
By 1900, however, the United States Bureau of Education was able to cite the Irving’s experience as evidence that the East Coast’s traditional, literary culture did not taking root at the new Cornell University in the same manner in which it flourished at Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania and other “seaboard” schools.[13] The Land Grant college undergraduate culture was increasingly, organized athletics. But during their preeminence, the Irving and its peers produced literature at a rate higher than the campus average for the next generation, leading commentators at the turn of the 20th century to question whether academic standards had fallen since Cornell University’s founding.[14]
The Society's early experience tracks significant changes in American collegiate culture between 1860 and 1900. The Irving as such exhibits traits similar to secret societies such as Brown’s Franklin Society; Dartmouth’s Sphinx (senior society); and, perhaps, even Trinity College’s Episkopon. Given the varied circumstances of its history, the Irving transcends several group categories, showing elements of a literary society, a secret society, and – through its relationship to the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at Cornell – a college fraternity. Cornell’s Irving Literary Society is also similar to Yale’s Elizabethan Club in that part of its mission is to extol a particular genre of activity, notably the native arts, letters and culture of New York State. Its scope of activity is more akin to Penn’s Philomathean Society, though its resources are not as great. Other comparators would include Virginia’s Washington Literary Society and Debating Union. Unlike Princeton’s American Whig-Cliosophic Society, Georgetown’s Philodemic Society, Virginia’s Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, and Columbia’s Philolexian Society, the Irving has not retained its forensic and debate missions, which it now leaves to the Cornell Debate Association, which is the heir to the Irving’s now defunct rival, the Philalethean Society. The life of the Irving has gained it notoriety outside the narrow sphere of Cornell life.[15]