J. I. M. Stewart’s The Aylwins: The Collegiate Story Exemplified
J. I. M. Stewart’s The Aylwins: The Collegiate Story Exemplified

Summary/Abstract: J. I. M. Stewart’s novel The Aylwins, the story of an Oxford don deeply troubled by the fact that his son has been expelled from school for cheating, is a fine example of academic fiction or, as its narrator puts it, “a collegiate story”. The novel encompasses many instances of academic life: dons customarily dining together in the common room during vacations, the turmoil caused by the Provost’s terminal illness, scholars engaged, more or less willingly, in college politics and their cordial, yet somewhat patronising, attitude towards an outsider to academia like the narrator himself who is the protagonist’s close friend. The purpose of this paper is to present The Aylwins in terms of stereotypes about life in academia as discussed in The Academic Tribes by Hazard Adams.

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