Short history of Herbert Marshall Mcluhan ( 1911-1980)

By Charles kulwa n reg no 42688

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Marshall was a family name: his maternal grandmother's surname. Both of his parents were born in Canada. His mother was a Baptist school teacher who later became an actress. His father was Methodist and had a real estate business in Edmonton. When World War I broke out, the business failed, and McLuhan's father enlisted in the Canadian army after a year of service he contracted influenza and remained in Canada, away from the front. After Herbert's discharge from the army in 1915, the McLuhan family moved to Winnipeg Manitoba, where Marshall grew up and went to school, attending Kelvin Technical School before enrolling in the University of Manitoba in 1928.

At Manitoba, McLuhan explored his conflicted relationship with religion and turned to literature to "gratify his soul's hunger for truth and beauty, later referring to this stage as agnosticism After studying for one year as an engineering student, McLuhan changed majors and earned a BA (1933) winning a University Gold Medal in Arts and Sciences and later, in 1934, an MA (1934) in English from the University of Manitoba He had long desired to pursue graduate studies in England and, having failed to secure a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, he was accepted to the University of Cambridge

Although he had already earned a BA and an MA degree at Manitoba, Cambridge required him to enrol as an undergraduate "affiliated" student, with one year's credit towards a three-year bachelor's degree, before entering any doctoral studies. He entered Trinity Hall Cambridge in the autumn of 1934, where he studied under I. A. Richards and F. R. Levis and was influenced by New Criticism Upon reflection years afterward, he credited the faculty there with influencing the direction of his later work because of their emphasis on the training of perception and such concepts as Richards's notion of feed forward These studies formed an important precursor to his later ideas on technological forms. He received the required bachelor's degree from Cambridge in 1936 and entered their graduate program. Later, he returned from England to take a job as a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin–Madison that he held for the 1936–37 academic year, being unable to find a suitable job in Canada.

While studying the trivium at Cambridge he took the first steps toward his eventual conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1937, founded on his reading of G. K. Chesterton In 1935 he wrote to his mother: Had I not encountered Chesterton, I would have remained agnostic for many years at least, At the end of March 1937, McLuhan completed what was a slow, but total conversion process, when he was formally received into the Roman Catholic Church. After consulting a minister, his father accepted the decision to convert. His mother, however, felt that his conversion would hurt his career and was inconsolable. McLuhan was devout throughout his life, but his religion remained a private matter. He had a lifelong interest the trivium.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Marshall was a family name: his maternal grandmother's surname. Both of his parents were born in Canada. His mother was a Baptist school teacher who later became an actress. His father was Methodist and had a real estate business in Edmonton. When World War I broke out, the business failed, and McLuhan's father enlisted in the Canadian army after a year of service he contracted influenza and remained in Canada, away from the front. After Herbert's discharge from the army in 1915, the McLuhan family moved to Winnipeg Manitoba, where Marshall grew up and went to school, attending Kelvin Technical School before enrolling in the University of Manitoba in 1928.

At Manitoba, McLuhan explored his conflicted relationship with religion and turned to literature to "gratify his soul's hunger for truth and beauty, later referring to this stage as agnosticism After studying for one year as an engineering student, McLuhan changed majors and earned a BA (1933) winning a University Gold Medal in Arts and Sciences and later, in 1934, an MA (1934) in English from the University of Manitoba He had long desired to pursue graduate studies in England and, having failed to secure a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, he was accepted to the University of Cambridge

Although he had already earned a BA and an MA degree at Manitoba, Cambridge required him to enrol as an undergraduate "affiliated" student, with one year's credit towards a three-year bachelor's degree, before entering any doctoral studies. He entered Trinity Hall Cambridge in the autumn of 1934, where he studied under I. A. Richards and F. R. Levis and was influenced by New Criticism Upon reflection years afterward, he credited the faculty there with influencing the direction of his later work because of their emphasis on the training of perception and such concepts as Richards's notion of feed forward These studies formed an important precursor to his later ideas on technological forms. He received the required bachelor's degree from Cambridge in 1936 and entered their graduate program. Later, he returned from England to take a job as a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin–Madison that he held for the 1936–37 academic year, being unable to find a suitable job in Canada.

While studying the trivium at Cambridge he took the first steps toward his eventual conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1937, founded on his reading of G. K. Chesterton In 1935 he wrote to his mother: Had I not encountered Chesterton, I would have remained agnostic for many years at least, At the end of March 1937, McLuhan completed what was a slow, but total conversion process, when he was formally received into the Roman Catholic Church. After consulting a minister, his father accepted the decision to convert. His mother, however, felt that his conversion would hurt his career and was inconsolable. McLuhan was devout throughout his life, but his religion remained a private matter. He had a lifelong interest in trivium.