Refr 10-24-1935 INTRODUCTION THE AIM OF THIS BOOK Progressive teachers are no longer satisfied with teaching English literature either as a mass of facts or as a series of isolated masterpieces. The course in the history of English literature from which so much was once expected is now felt by many teachers to be useless, unless students have a far greater background of reading than most high school students can have. The teaching of unrelated masterpieces is no longer defensible on any ground. The comprehensive type of college examination no longer stresses mere fact and mechanical analysis, and all experience has shown that the oldfashioned dissection of the "classics" kills the very thing it is supposed to stimulate, a living interest and love for literature. Progressive teachers have come to believe that literature ought to be taught as literature, the revelation in artistic form of an author's vision of life, be that vision expressed in prose or poetry, lyric or epic, drama or essay, novel or satire. When students leave school they do not read bits of English literature or "classics" with notes and introductions. They read literature as they find it and where they find it. What they need for an understanding of literature, an appreciation of literature, an impulse toward good literature, is a knowledge of the literary forms as they will meet them outside the schoolroom. An interest in the history of literature, in the biographies of authors, and in the other impedimenta of scholarship is indispensable to the scholar, but of secondary importance to the man or woman who reads for what is commonly called the pleasure of reading. This book has been prepared to meet the needs of progressive teachers of English who desire to place in the hands of their students a book which tries to teach how to read with understanding and appreciation, and which relates literature to the normal interests of young people. We have subordinated literary history and technical facts to an informal analysis of the common forms. We have provided a large variety of exercises and reading lists, so that the student may be encouraged to work for himself. We have, in general, confined our illustrative material to literature which is well known and commonly studied, in order that the book may build up on the foundation which the student is likely to possess. Our fundamental ideas are that literature itself is the important thing, not individual works; and that a student best comes to appreciate literature if he realizes what the author is trying to do, and how he is trying to do it. HOW TO USE THIS BOOK This book may be used as a text in a direct course in appreciation. Regular assignments may be given and illustrative reading may be outlined as in any course. This book may be used for collateral reading in the regular course. When Macbeth, for example, is being studied, the chapter on drama may be read for direct application to Macbeth. Or portions of the book which bear directly upon the matter in hand may be assigned. If the question of suspense arises, for example, in The House of the Seven Gables, helpful material will be found in the chapter on prose fiction. In studying the Idylls of the King, the question of sound in poetry, or images, or tone color may arise. Material may easily be found on these points in the chapter on poetry. The book may be used as a review in the senior year after |