Ivory tower: Difference between revisions

For other uses, see Ivory tower (disambiguation).

The term Ivory Tower designates a world or atmosphere where intellectuals engage in pursuits that are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life. As such, it has a slightly pejorative connotation, denoting a willful disconnect from the everyday world; esoteric, over-specialized, or even useless research; and academic elitism, if not condescension by those inhabiting the proverbial ivory tower. In American English usage it ordinarily denotes the academic world of colleges and universities, particularly scholars of the humanities.

Religious usage

Modern stained glass image of an ivory tower with Marian symbols (the letter M and lilies)

In Christian tradition, the term Ivory Tower is a symbol for noble purity. It originates with the Song of Solomon (7,4) ("Your neck is like an ivory tower") and was added to the epithets for Mary in the sixteenth century Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary ("tower of ivory", in latin Turris eburnea).

The image is Biblical, but its subtext of delusions in common usage derive from a separate source. Today, ivory tower usually describes a metaphysical space of solitude and sanctity disconnected from daily realities, where certain idealistic writers dream and even some scientists are considered to reside. In Iliad (XIX.560) two kinds of dreams are distinguished, as they exit from the realm of Morpheus: true dreams exit through the Gate of Horn, and false dreams through the Gate of Ivory. Virgil put the image succinctly:

There are two gates of sleep. One is of horn, easy passage for the shades of truth; the other, of gleaming white ivory, permits false dreams to ascend to the upper air. (Aeneid VI.893-896)

Modern usage

The first modern usage of "ivory tower" in the familiar sense of an unworldly dreamer can be found in a poem of 1837 by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, a French literary critic and author, who used the term "tour d'ivoire" to describe the poetical attitude of Alfred de Vigny as contrasted with the more socially engaged Victor Hugo (ref. Quinion).

At Oxford, the appearance of the Hawksmoor Towers, twin creamy-white neo-gothic towers at All Souls College, Oxford, the only pure research college at Oxford, epitomize the "ivory tower" of Academe. [1] [2]

At the George Washington University, in Washington, DC a dorm constructed in 2004 was named "Ivory Tower," a decision criticized by some GWU Faculty for the reflexive irony of giving the dorm such a moniker.

Henry James' last, unfinished novel, The Ivory Tower, was begun in 1914 and left unfinished at his death two years later. 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. "You seem all here so hideously rich," says his hero.

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). The term has a rather negative flavor today, the implication being that specialists who are so deeply drawn into their scientific fields of study that they often can't find a lingua franca with laymen outside their "ivory towers". Moreover, this problem is often ignored and instead of actively searching for a solution, most scientists simply accept that even educated people can't understand them and live in literal isolation.

References in fiction

• In Michael Ende's The Neverending Story, the Ivory Tower is the palace in the center of Fantastica where the Childlike Empress resides, called Fantasia in the movie of the same name.
• In Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, an Ivory Tower is a human artifact that allows a Hero to instantaneously build a fully functional watch tower.
• In the video game Halo 2, there is a multiplayer arena called "Ivory Tower," which takes place in a public park converted from a mansion in a skyscraper. The reason that the arena is named this is because "Ivory Tower" is also the nick-name for the studio of Martin O'Donnell, who is the music composer for the Halo video game series.
• In Heroes of Might and Magic II, the wizard castle's fifth-level unit-producing building is called Ivory Tower. It appears as a tall white tower with a staircase winding around the outside and an observatory on the top, and trains (arch-) mages.
• In the adventure game The Longest Journey, Ivory Tower is a five foot monument in Marcuria, carved out of kan'dar's jaw, that also serves as a landmark. Kan'dar is local kind of elephant.
• In the video game "Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas" there is a small sign in Las Venturas which is an advertisement for "Ivory Towers, Mental Institute".

External links

• (World Wide Words) Michael Quinion on "Ivory Tower"
• WordOrigins:"Ivory Tower"
• Henry James, The Ivory Tower 1914-unfinished