![]() ![]() Others have also noted that these terms bear little resemblance to the actual best universities in a country. Some have criticized the elitism associated with these groups. In many countries, these institutions aligned themselves with a specific mission or athletic ties. They have often garnered reputations as elite institutions by joining or creating associations with other universities. The ivory tower is most often connected with the careers and lifestyles of academics in university and college systems. Writers for Philadelphia's other newspapers sarcastically referred to the former headquarters of the establishment Philadelphia Inquirer, a white art deco tower called the Elverson Building, as the "Ivory Tower of Truth." Academic usage The ivory towers of King's College London's Maughan Library For Jarrell the Ivory Tower led modern poetry into obscurity. Jarrell's main thrust is that the rich poetry of the modernist period was over-dependent upon reference to other literary works. In Randall Jarrell's essay "The End of the Line" (1942), Jarrell asserts that if modern poetry is to survive then poets must come down from the "Ivory Tower" of elitist composition. The skylines of Oxford and Cambridge universities, along with many Ivy League universities, are dotted with turrets and spires which are often described as 'Ivory Towers'. In Andrew Hodges' biography of the University of Cambridge scientist Alan Turing, he discusses Turing's 1936–38 stay at Princeton University and writes that "he tower of the Graduate College was an exact replica of Magdalen College, and it was popularly called the Ivory Tower, because of that benefactor of Princeton, the Procter who manufactured Ivory soap." William Cooper Procter (Princeton class of 1883) was a significant supporter of the construction of the Graduate College, and the main dining hall bears the Procter name. The term has a rather negative flavor today, the implication being that specialists who are so deeply drawn into their fields of study often can't find a lingua franca with laymen outside their "ivory towers". Thus, there are two meanings mixed together: mockery of an absent-minded savant and admiration of someone who is able to devote his or her entire efforts to a noble cause (hence " ivory", a noble but impractical building material). ![]() "You seem all here so hideously rich", says his hero. Paralleling James' own dismaying experience of the United States after twenty years away, it chronicles the effect on a high-minded returning upper-class American of the vulgar emptiness of the Gilded Age. ![]() Henry James's last novel, The Ivory Tower, was begun in 1914 and left unfinished at his death two years later. In early versions of chess, this piece was imagined as conveying and shielding a powerful warrior. The name Rook is derived from the Persian rukh ("chariot"), maybe influenced by the Italian rocca ("fortress"). This poetic use of "tour d'ivoire" may have been an allusion to the rook (or castle) in chess, which is another meaning of the French word tour. Villemain", by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, a French literary critic and author, who used the term "tour d'ivoire" for the poetical attitude of Alfred de Vigny as contrasted with the more socially engaged Victor Hugo: "Et Vigny, plus secret, Comme en sa tour d'ivoire, avant midi rentrait". The first modern usage of "ivory tower" in the familiar sense of an unworldly dreamer can be found in a poem of 1837, "Pensées d'Août, à M. ![]()
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