عنوان

A Medieval future :

TLets285151

A Medieval future :

[Thesis]

Grosvenor, Peter Christopher.

the social, economic and aesthetic thought of A.J. Penty (1875-1937).

London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London)

1997

Ph.D.

London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London)

1997

This thesis is a comprehensive account and analysis of thecontribution of architect and author A. J. Penty to Britishsocial criticism and aesthetic theory. The central argumentis that Penty has been neglected in scholarship as theresult of an historical misclassification. In the existingliterature he is presented as a marginal figure in thehistory of English guild socialism, a movement his firstbook did much to inspire. He was, in fact, in conflict withfundamental aspects of the guild socialist movement as itdeveloped. Considered in totality, Penty's views were thoseof a reactionary conservative, and his significance in earlytwentieth-century political thought can best be understoodby locating him within the essentially Victorian traditionof medievalism, which sought to use the social and economicarrangements of the Middle Ages as a perspective from whichto criticise industrial society. The thesis thereforeinvestigates the complex nature of Penty's intellectualdebts to earlier thinkers, such as Ruskin, Carlyle, Morris,Carpenter, and Matthew Arnold.A subsidiary contention is that the continuing relevance ofmedievalism in Edwardian and later intellectual life hasbeen underestimated. Some of its central themes can bediscerned in the several political currents with which Pentywas in varying degrees associated, such as guild socialism,distributism, Christian social action, agrarian revivalismand fascism. Support for this view has been found byexamining Penty's personal and intellectual links with likemindedcontemporaries, including Belloc, Chesterton, deMaeztu, Saunders Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Berdyaev and A. K.Coomaraswamy.The thesis aims to highlight the continuities between Pentyand his nineteenth-century antecedents and also to identifyhis original contributions to the development of medievalistthinking, particularly in the sphere of internationalrelations theory.32

Medievalist thinking

Grosvenor, Peter Christopher.

London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London)

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y