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ful writing. And the student will often give a better proof of intelligent appreciation by reading aloud, "with good accent and discretion," than by any more elaborate form of examination.

Knowledge life and art and of ideals

of author's

of the times necessary for comprehension and

Some varieties of literature can best be approached indirectly, through a study of the life of the author, or of the age in which he lived. As any great work of pure literature must come out of the author's deepest life, it is evident that any knowledge of that life gained from other sources may be an important aid in the appreciation of his work. appreciation It is true that in the case of a writer of supreme and almost impartial dramatic genius, such knowledge may be of comparatively little value; though few of us will admit that it is merely an idle curiosity that would be gratified by a fuller knowledge even of the man William Shakespeare. But all the more subjective forms of literature, such as the lyric and the essay, can hardly be studied intelligently without some biographical introduction. Still more obvious is the need in many instances of some accurate knowledge of the period in which a given work is produced. For all such writing as grows directly out of political or social conditions, as oratory, or political satire, or various forms of the essay, this is clearly necessary. It would be folly to attempt to read the speeches of Edmund Burke or the political writings of Swift without historical introduction and comment. But the historical setting is hardly less important in many other forms of literature. For the whole cast of an author's mind, the habitual tone of his feeling on most important matters, is often largely decided by his environment. It is only a very inadequate appreciation, for example, of the work not only of Carlyle and Ruskin but of Tennyson, Browning, and Matthew Arnold, that is possible without some correct knowledge of the varying attitude of these men toward important movements in English thought, social, economic, religious, between 1830 and 1880. It must always be an important part of the duty of the college teacher of literature to provide such biographical and historical information.

Knowledge

of an author's style to be result of appreciative study

of his works and not gathered from texts on literary criticism

Careful attention to critical analysis

Content of college course in literature

All careful study of literature must involve some attention to manner or style-not so much, however, for its own sake, as a means for the fuller appreciation of what is read. In strictness, style has only one virtue, clearness; only one vice, obscurity. A perfect style is a transparent medium through which we plainly see the thought and feeling of the writer. Such a style may, indeed, often have striking peculiarities, but these are really the marks of the writer's personality, which his style reveals without exaggerating. All rhetorical study ought, therefore, to accompany or follow, not to precede, the careful reading for appreciation. No good book ought ever to be considered a mere corpus vile for rhetorical praxis.

Of much greater value is that distinctively critical analysis which endeavors to discover the different elements, intellectual, imaginative, emotional, that enter into any work of literature, and to determine their relative amount and importance. Such analysis may well form the subject of classroom discussion, and advanced students should often be required to put the conclusions they have drawn from such discussion into the form of a finished critical essay. All exercises of this kind presuppose, of course, that the work criticized has been read with interest and intelligence; but no form of literary study is more stimulating or tends more directly to the formation of original and accurate critical judgments. It affords the best test of real literary appreciation.

Obviously it is impossible with this method of study to cover the entire field of English literature in the four college years. It is wiser to read a few great books well than to read many smaller ones hurriedly. It becomes, therefore, an important question on what principle these books should be selected and grouped in courses. In the opinion of the present writer, it is well to begin with a brief outline sketch of the history of the literature given either in a textbook or by lectures, and illustrated by a few representative works, read carefully but without much detailed or intensive study. Such an

introductory course may have little cultural value; but it
furnishes that knowledge of the chronological succession
of English writers, and the varieties of literature dominant
in each period, that is necessary for further intelligent
study. This knowledge should, indeed, be given in the
preparatory schools, but unfortunately it usually is not.
When given in college, the course should, if possible, be
assigned to the freshman year. In the later years, the
works selected for study will best be grouped either by
period or by subject. Both plans have their advantages,
but in most instances the first will be found the better.
The study of a group of contemporary writers always gains
in interest as we see how they all, with striking individual
differences in temper and subject, yet reflect the social and
moral life of their age. Sometimes the two plans may be
united; a particular form of literature may be studied
as the best representative of a period, as the political
pamphlet for the age of Queen Anne or the extended essay
for the first quarter of the nineteenth century. And in some
rare instances a single writer is at once the highest repre-
sentative of the age in which he lived and the supreme
master of the form in which he wrote as Shakespeare
for the drama and Milton for the epic.
These courses should all in the judgment of the
present writer-be elective, but should be arranged in
some natural sequence, those assigned to a lower year
being preparatory to those of a higher. This sequence
need not always be historical; the simpler course may well
precede those which for any reason are more difficult.
Methods of instruction will also naturally change, becom-
ing less narrowly didactic with the advancement of the
student. In the senior year the teacher will usually prefer
to meet his classes in small sections, on the seminar plan,
for informal discussion and the criticism of papers written
by his pupils on questions suggested by their reading. Of
such questions, students who for four years have been read-
ing the masterpieces of English literature will surely find
no lack.

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Gradation and adapta

of courses

methods to growing ca

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pacities of students

Undergraduate vs. graduate teaching of English literature

The number of courses that can be offered in the department will depend in some cases upon the relative size of the faculty and the student body. For in no other subject is it more important, especially in the later years, that the classes or sections should be small enough to allow some intimate personal touch between professor and student. It may be safely said that no college department of English literature is well officered or equipped that does not furnish at least four or five year-long courses of instruction. And certainly no student can maintain for four years such an acquaintance with the best specimens of a great literature without gaining something of that broad intelligence, heightened imagination, and just appreciation of whatever is best in nature and in human life, which combine in what we call culture.

Throughout this paper it has been assumed that what has been termed appreciation - that is, the ability to understand and enjoy the best things in literature - is the one central purpose to which all efforts must be subservient, in the teaching of English literature. But it should be remembered, as stated at the outset, that this paper has to do with the college undergraduate only, the candidate for the bachelor's degree. In the university, and to some extent in the graduate courses of the college leading to the master's degree, the subjects and methods of teaching may well be very different. Studies in comparative literature, studies of literary origins, the investigation of perplexed or controverted questions in the life or work of an author, the study and elucidation of the work of an unknown or little-known writer all these and other similar many matters may very properly be the subjects of specialized graduate study. But they will rarely be found of most profit to undergraduate classes.

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CALEB T. WINCHESTER

Wesleyan University

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XIX

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION 1

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and calls that truth. It is absurd to imply, as does this velopment old truism, that we may never judge a man by his words. Words are often the most convenient indices of education, of cultivation, and of intellectual power. And what is more, a man's speech, a man's writing, when properly interpreted, may sometimes measure the potentialities of the mind more thoroughly, more accurately, than the deeds which environment, opportunity, or luck permit. It is hard enough to take the intellectual measure even of the makers of history by their acts, so rapidly does the apparent value of their accomplishments vary with changing conceptions of what is and what is not worth doing. It is infinitely more difficult to judge in advance of youths just going out into the world by what they do. Their words, which reveal what they are thinking and how they are thinking, give almost the only vision of their minds; and "by their words ye shall know them" becomes not a perversion, but an adaptation of the old text. Would you judge of a boy just graduated entirely by the acts he had performed in college? If you did, you would make some profound and illuminating mistakes.

This explains, I think, why parents, and teachers, and college presidents, and even undergraduates, are exercised over the study of writing English which is, after all, just the study of the proper putting together of words. They may believe, all of them, that their concern is merely for the results of the power to write well- the ability to compose a good letter, to speak forcibly on occasion, to offer the amount of literacy required for most "jobs."

1 Reprinted in revised form from College Sons and College Fathers, Harper and Brothers.

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