Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)

MATTHEW PALMER The English Cathedral: Prom Description to Analysis

The English Cathedral: from Description to Analysis 77 originally having been coined to describe the pointed arch then considered the work of the uncultured Goths which contrasted with the round arch of the classical Greeks or Romans.

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4 At other times the style has been lauded to the point of being hailed at various times as the "Christian style", the "socialist style"

, the "national style"

, the English not being alone in making this latter claim.

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5 Today, the association that English cathedrals tend to have with national character sits comfortably with the needs and requirements of the heritage industry, where cathedrals are marketed as being timeless manifestions of England's culture. However, when one in fact looks at the history of religious ceremonial, church music and all those other institutions and events which make the English cathedral what it is today, much of what one sees comes under what Eric Hobsbawn terms an "invented tradition", something which he defines as "a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition and automatically implies continuity with the past."

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6 It is important to remember that the architectural environment in which these set of practices take place are very different from those experienced by medieval worshippers and visitors in later centuries. As David Cannadine writes, "the combination of poverty of means and absence of taste made the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century a low point in ecclesiastical and ecclesiological concern".

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7 The pendulum was to swing to the other extreme with the arrival of the Gothic Revivalists. Indeed, the fervent ecclesiologists of the Cambridge Camden Society, founded in around 1839, was to have as catastrophic effect on England's cathedrals as the neglect which preceded it. Adherents of "ecclesiology"

, the science of churchbuilding and decoration, believed that by collecting sufficient evidence one could discover universal principles they believed Gothic architects abided by. It was an approach which credited architects with embuing all aspects of their designs with symbolism. Once they had felt they had discovered the principles, Gothic Revivalists were not satisfied only with 1

4 Clark, Kenneth, The Gothic Revival (Harmondsworth, Pelican, 1949), pp. 2-3, Before the honour was finally conceded to the French it was long believed by English antiquarians that the Gothic style originated in England. 1

5 Franki, op. cit. pp. 680-692, l fi Hobsbawm, Eric, in The Invention of Tradition, eds. Hobsbawm E. and Ranger T. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 1. 17 Cannadine, David, "The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition'", c. 1820-1977 in Ibid., p. 115.