Given that the plot of Donna Tartt's novel "The Secret History" unfolds at a provincial college in Vermont, I immediately wondered how such a remarkable course in Ancient Greek could have crystallised there

Given that the plot of Donna Tartt's novel "The Secret History" unfolds at a provincial college in Vermont, I immediately wondered how such a remarkable course in Ancient Greek could have crystallised there. Immersion in the classical world seemed a privilege of the chosen few, a prerogative of status.

The answer, as it turned out, was to be found in an article on the history of American colleges and their transformation into universities. The traditional curriculum, which included the study of dead languages, began to come under ever more frequent criticism in the early nineteenth century, and the debate spread to academic circles, among teachers and trustees alike. By the end of the century, talk of the need to change the old college system, which gave not only no university-level education but, in principle, no scientific grounding or knowledge up to a professional standard, had turned into plans for full-scale reform. Thus crisis led to development.

For example, in keeping with the new programme of practical education, Cornell University was opened in 1868, placing its emphasis above all on agricultural knowledge. At this university "anyone could receive instruction in any subject". Industrial chemistry and veterinary medicine could be studied by people regardless of race and sex.

The classical learning, whose dominance the critics of the colleges had decried at the start of the century, found refuge under the aegis of the defenders of "liberal culture". Adherents of this tendency sought to move away from professionalisation and specialisation for the sake of forming a man of culture, and with the preservation of aristocratic ideals at that. They settled in prestigious universities such as Yale, which set itself the aim of preserving the highest achievements of the golden age, or Princeton under Woodrow Wilson, where the search for oneself was encouraged through mastery of the fine arts and scientific courses under individual professorial guidance. It was this model that gave rise to the pastoral college in the backwoods, recreated by Donna Tartt in "The Secret History" on the pattern of her own college.

For more on the American academic revolution, read the text by Tatyana Zemlyakova: https://postnauka.ru/faq/89501