A FORWARD-LOOKING LESSON IN LITERATURE(To exemplifyChapter IX)

THE dry bones in the cold print of this lesson are to be galvanized into life by a teacher in constant touch with the class and enlisting the coöperation by questions, by having the passage read aloud, by writing on the board, by interchanges of ideas, by lively disputes between individuals. No mere lecture with passive listeners, no mere study period with a passive overseer, but real teaching, which is a fine conversation, directed upon select subjects and carried to a destined end under expert guidance.

All of the technical terms, apprehension, judgment, inference and the rest are to be omitted. The intelligent use of such terms belongs to college, although the operations and objects which the terms designate belong to all grades. Through simple, untechnical questions the whole truth may be understood by each, and every student may be made to go through operations which are of daily occurrence and which the student must make habitual by repeated exercise to insure a mastery of the art of expression. The teacher is an expert mental director, and, setting before the class a good passage of literature, he will make them think again and put in order again and express again what the author has done; he will make them conceive, arrange and express thoughts of their own with the excellence which teacher and class have noted and appreciated in the passage. The teacher of literature will be no lecturer in history or inphilosophy or in mathematics, but will be like the teacher of music or like the physical trainer, who makes his class go through exercises which he himself has exemplified and which the class immediately practice to acquire bodily skill then and for the future.

A passage of poetry is designedly taken in this lesson to show how poetry can be made to contribute to the art of expression. Literature for some is history, for others philosophy. These center attention on the facts or ideas. Literature for others is a dreamy, mysterious thing, which you must look at with awe, speak about with esoteric rhapsody and carefully lock up again in a glass case. A forward looking lesson in literature must know what the passage means, but is usually not concerned with the origin and past history of the author’s meaning. The forward-looking lesson will not pretend to solve all the mysteries of art and beauty but will take out of the clouds and put clearly before the class some point in the art of expression, a point which will be practical and of everyday use. Such a lesson will be as decidedly vocational as hammering a nail or rigging up a radio set or rushing around a gymnasium.

The purpose ever before the literature teacher’s mind is appreciation, leading to mental action and through repeated action to the art of expression.

THE LESSONThe curfew tolls the knell of parting day,The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

THE LESSON

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

1.Understanding.—The meaning of each word, the meaning of each line, the meaning of the whole stanza. This should not be a mere passive understanding. Students should be made to reëxpress the ideas, not only by paraphrase in other words but especially byimaginative realization. “For instance,” “Justlike what?” are two phrases to be often on the teacher’s lips. “Have you a heard a curfew?” “Have you heard a knell tolling?” “Did you ever see in picture or in reality a lowing herd winding o’er the lea?” A thought illustrated by the thinker’s imagination is realized fully, is felt as well as grasped, and will persist.

2.Judgment.—What is the logical subject and logical predicate of each line and of the whole stanza? That is, what is the author’s chief topic and what does he say about it? This need not always be the grammatical subject of the passage. The art of expression is not only apprehending by vivid understanding, but it is also judging by predication, by affirming or denying something of the subject. There is not a class of any grade which cannot profitably exercise itself in clear and concise judgements. The successive judgements briefly put are: The bell tells the end of day: the cows return to the barn: the ploughman comes home: I am left alone in the darkness.

3.Reasoning.—As as single sentence may be analyzed into a definite subject and a definite predicate for a judgment, so two or more sentences may be compared to grasp the relation between them. Poetry does not go through a process of reasoning. It states thoughts and presents pictures, permitting the mind to infer. The three pictures in the opening lines have a common trait which the mind detects: all three pictures are signs of nightfall. The mind draws an inference which is inductive in nature, and the whole stanza may be briefly stated: The coming of night leaves me alone in darkness.

These stages in analyzing the thought are elaborated here. In practice they may be expedited. Before being read, the judgment and inference may be presented as problems for solution: What does the writer say in each line? What one idea is found in the first three lines? What will be the title, the head-line, the summary of each line and of the whole stanza?[5]

Form includes not only the words and sentences, their choice and their arrangement, but also the texture and color of the thoughts and their modification ending in their perfect expression, as contrasted with the bare and limited statements already determined. In the study of literature, words are not merely materials for philologizing, or merely sentences, free opportunities for grammatical anatomizing with all the bones properly numbered and labeled. Such analyses look chiefly backward and are not productive of writers. Language anatomy has its great utility, but literature, or the art of expression, must look to the flesh and blood of the thoughts, to the personality, to the imagination, to the concrete embodiment of the writer’s art. The student will take up, therefore, the thought already analyzed and note and appreciate how his author has clothed the ideas, the judgments, the reasoning. He will reënact the creative process the author went through, and so here, with a view to expression, he will strive to rival the excellence of Gray, but will do so with his own thoughts.

Grading.—At this stage the teacher may point out incidentally many excellences in the art of expression, but will drill and have practice on the particular excellence in expression, proper to his class. The textbook ordinarily determines the grade, but if there is no textbook or prescribed program, the teacher will determine his own order of matter.

Right Word.—Let us suppose the teacher is teaching the art of using the right word (Model English, 3), the word which states the thing exactly in kind. He may center attention on the line:

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.

The class will be drilled in the author’s choice of the right word by considering other possible but less exact combinations, e.g.: A number of noisy cows went reluctantly along. Afterthis drill, the class will appreciate what the right word is and be ready for the expression of their own ideas in right words. They are not to paraphrase Gray’s meaning. That has already been done, but they are to provide subject-matter of their own and express it with a like excellence. Did they continue to speak of cows, they could not better Gray, but if they speak of bees or bloodhounds or cavalry or autumn leaves or rioters or anything else that has come under their experience in life or in reading, they might approach the exactness of Gray in giving the right word for the sound, for the collection, for the action, for the manner and for the place.

Bees: the buzzing swarm of bees circled thickly about the hive.Bloodhounds: the baying pack of hounds followed the trail eagerly.Cavalry: the clattering squadron of cavalry galloped swiftly along the road.Autumn: the heaps of rustling leaves were swept into every corner by autumn winds.Rioters: the yelling mob of rioters rushed wildly towards the jail.

Bees: the buzzing swarm of bees circled thickly about the hive.

Bloodhounds: the baying pack of hounds followed the trail eagerly.

Cavalry: the clattering squadron of cavalry galloped swiftly along the road.

Autumn: the heaps of rustling leaves were swept into every corner by autumn winds.

Rioters: the yelling mob of rioters rushed wildly towards the jail.

Imagination.—Suppose the teacher is giving a lesson in imagination (“Model English,” Chap. X). If one of theGeneral Methods, sayReflecting(No. 69), is to be taught, then the class must vividly picture in their imaginations Gray’s stanza. With the help of books on the desk and with a gesture or two the scene and all its characters may bedramatized. All this suggestively rather than with exact mimicry, unless there is in question a passage that may be reproduced by the class in a miniature pageant or play. To test whether the class is actually imagining, have them quickly number, one after another, the things they see and hear directly by the words and indirectly suggested by the words. Or test in another way. Let each draw an outline of the frame of a picture and show how theywould illustrate any line or the whole stanza, putting numbers on the blank space to locate the details and explaining to the side what the numbers stand for.

Suppose aparticular method, significant part for the whole(No. 73) be the matter of the lesson, then the whole which is expressed by Gray is “evening,” or “parting day,” pictured by three significant details—curfew, cows and ploughman. Have the class take an opposite situation—not evening in a graveyard in preparation for gloomy thoughts, but morning on the farm looking to a busy, joyous day. Or again, what significant details will suggest the hush of evening in a city or on the sea; noon in a factory, closing of school in the afternoon, coming of winter in December, dawning of spring in April, etc. Interest may be accentuated if one student gives the details and others imagine what is the whole suggested. For example: The cock crows a greeting to the rising sun; the team of horses is hitched to the mowing machine, and soon the clicking knives lay low the waving grass (farm); the crank is whirled about with a swift revolution and jerking stop; the low purr of a hidden engine steals upon the ear and a cloud of dust swallows up the rattling car (a Ford); a sprig of shamrock graces the lapel of the coat; green ribbons flaunt gayly above ruddy cheeks, and down the street steps a band jigging Garryowen (St. Patrick’s Day). In the same way elements of force or interest, metrical charm or poetic thought and many other points could be taught from this stanza, according to the grade of the class before the teacher. Whatever the passage taken, once the grade has been settled, the artistic drill should be carried through the stages of grasping the thought definitely, of appreciating it with discrimination, of repeating the process of creation, of dramatizing the complete product, and finally of self-expression on the part of the student, striving to rival the author in the excellence he has studied.

FOOTNOTES[1]Cf. De Wulf:L’Œuvre d’Art et la Beauté, p. 40.[2]Sandys:History of Classical Scholarship, I, 438.[3]Sandys, III, 54.[4]This “mosaic of etymology” which I offer is not, I think, simply an ingenioustour de force. It has a significance and a practical value. It may illustrate the composite nature of the English language; it may amuse a curious reader; it may enliven a Greek class with the touch of actuality; it may disclose dim vistas into the distant past through the medium of everyday language, exemplifying history through common things. All the words of this phantasy are of Greek origin, except the article, the pronouns, the prepositions and conjunctions, and a few other small words: “so, as, then, home, let, go, do, all” and parts of the verb “to be.” Skeat’sEtymological Dictionary(Student’s edition) is the authority. The exclusively technical words of modern sciences which are almost wholly Greek have not, for the most part, been mentioned. It is needless to remark that the prescriptions of the phantom’s pharmacy are not authoritative.Thisjeu d’esprithas attracted so much attention as to be reprinted by the American Classical Association and to be noticed by several metropolitan editors. That attention is the motive for giving the article permanent position in a book with which a novel plea for Greek has a certain, though remote, connection.[5]For analysis of thought, seeModel English, bk. II, chap. X, by F. P. Donnelly, S. J. Allyn and Bacon: Boston, New York and Chicago.

FOOTNOTES

[1]Cf. De Wulf:L’Œuvre d’Art et la Beauté, p. 40.

[2]Sandys:History of Classical Scholarship, I, 438.

[3]Sandys, III, 54.

[4]This “mosaic of etymology” which I offer is not, I think, simply an ingenioustour de force. It has a significance and a practical value. It may illustrate the composite nature of the English language; it may amuse a curious reader; it may enliven a Greek class with the touch of actuality; it may disclose dim vistas into the distant past through the medium of everyday language, exemplifying history through common things. All the words of this phantasy are of Greek origin, except the article, the pronouns, the prepositions and conjunctions, and a few other small words: “so, as, then, home, let, go, do, all” and parts of the verb “to be.” Skeat’sEtymological Dictionary(Student’s edition) is the authority. The exclusively technical words of modern sciences which are almost wholly Greek have not, for the most part, been mentioned. It is needless to remark that the prescriptions of the phantom’s pharmacy are not authoritative.Thisjeu d’esprithas attracted so much attention as to be reprinted by the American Classical Association and to be noticed by several metropolitan editors. That attention is the motive for giving the article permanent position in a book with which a novel plea for Greek has a certain, though remote, connection.

Thisjeu d’esprithas attracted so much attention as to be reprinted by the American Classical Association and to be noticed by several metropolitan editors. That attention is the motive for giving the article permanent position in a book with which a novel plea for Greek has a certain, though remote, connection.

[5]For analysis of thought, seeModel English, bk. II, chap. X, by F. P. Donnelly, S. J. Allyn and Bacon: Boston, New York and Chicago.

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