Commonplace, Quakers, and the Founding of Haverford School

Abstract

This article examines a series of essays published in 1830 that were instrumental in the founding of Haverford School, the first Quaker liberal arts college, where a literary, language-oriented curriculum would be taught despite the Friends' long antipathy toward higher learning. The essays successfully persuade by deploying commonplaces that bridged the disparate spheres of Quaker discourse of experience and elite, mainstream discourses of taste. The findings are significant to rhetoricians interested in how social change can be mediated even in entrenched discursive traditions, especially faith traditions that are deeply felt and strongly held.

Notes

1 I thank RR reviewers David Timmerman and Barbara Johnstone for their assistance in revising. In addition, I thank Haverford College for its generosity in awarding me the Gest Fellowship, which allowed me to conduct the research for this article in the Quaker Collection of Haverford's Magill Library. I am grateful for the excellent help of the librarians, especially Diana Fanzusoff Peterson, College Archivist, and all those who made my time at Haverford so memorable.

2 Quakers also figure in scholarship on literary and print culture; see Peters, Wright, and Newman for good examples.

3 Benjamin Rush, a founder of Dickinson College, advocated against “dead languages” in his 1788 “Plan for a Federal University” as did Benjamin Franklin in “Idea of the English School” in 1751.

4 Blair and Stewart are both included in the Haverford Library Catalog of 1836; see http://www.haverford.edu/library/special/exhibitions/fewbooks/catalog.php for a fascinating online exhibit.