Analytics of literature, a manual for the objective study of English prose and poetry

Front matter

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THE GIFT OF

Preface

The manner in which I was led to develop and use in teaching English Literature the method outlined in the following pages is too long a story to tell here. For a long time I had been convinced that an objective plan was best, but failed in attempts to devise one until some six years ago. Finding then a substantial principle on which a system of analysis might be based, I ventured several experiments with it upon classes in the advanced study of prose authors. The results were extraordinary. Students not only learned much more of the subject proper than I had ever expected or required in former years, but in a few weeks radically altered their own styles. Those accustomed to write in a lumbering awkward fashion began to express themselves in strong, clear phrases, and with a large preponderance of simple sentences. After the analysis contained essentially in the prose chapters of this volume had been worked out, the poetic side of literature was taken up. Would the objective method answer as well here ?- With considerable confidence of its success I began experimenting as before. The results were even more surprising. Students apparently without taste for reading, or capacity to discern common literary excellencies, were enabled to appreciate and enjoy poetry as well as the best. Bright scholars were also in their way benefited not less than the undiscerning. Things vague were made definite. Grounds of judgment before indeterminate or hidden were made plain. Criticism was rendered confident ; and no little enthusiasm was aroused. On account of unqualified sue-

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cess with the mode, and not only in my own teaching but of others who have tried it in ways different from mine, the resolution was formed to prepare this manual, — primarily for personal use, and also for others who may wish to try the plan. 1

With a little theorizing, the results just described were seen to be in no way either singular or remarkable. They were simply what they should be, and just such as had been and were being achieved abundantly elsewhere. Twenty years ago the college study of Physics and Chemistry consisted of recitations in assigned pages from a text-book, just as in Greek Grammar and Metaphysics. At times the students were called together to witness experiments carried on by the professor, while the class remained on the other side of the laboratory table. Of course this instruction, if of some value to the best scholars, who could by imagination supplement and deepen the impressions derived, was of no use to slower minds, — we can all see why. It assumed that it was possible to make the laboratory experiences of the "instructor answer for the laboratory experiences of the student. Little by little this assumption has been given up. Not only Physics and Chemistry and Botany, but also Zoology and Geology, and, following their lead, History and Economics and Psychology, have gone over from theoretical and dogmatic to experimental modes of teaching. The results have more than justified the change. Plodding, ungifted students, by taking pains, and by being led through all the consecutive processes, have been enabled to acquire the scientific consciousness like their betters, and, indeed, to become practically just as good analysts and electricians and assayers as their instructors themselves. It is no longer a question of gifts o/ genius, except in theoretical lines and in dealing with unsolved problems. Science has, in its method of substituting experiments and experiences for second-hand knowledge, found a means of bridging the chasm between exceptionally endowed and mediocre minds.

i Those interested to know more concerning the genesis of the method will find the main facts told in the University Studies of the University of Nebraska issue for July, 1892.

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For reasons identical with the above, various other subjects as History, Mathematics, and Economics have come to be taught in the same way as the sciences. The scientific method has in each case been found to be the best, simply because it is nature's way, and the parent's way, and the way men learn their trades and crafts and callings in practical life. The professors of Chemistry and Physics and Geology, considering the closeness of their contact with the industrial world, have been slow in recognizing and appropriating its advantages. The earliest scientists were as scholastic and professional as college fellows. Hence it has happened that subjects farthest removed from the common touch have lingered longest in purely academic methods. There can be little question that literature remains at the end of the list, though there have been material advances. In a general way it has long been recognized, even by those not specialists in the subject, that there is little profit in requiring students to memorize observations from text-books about literature, or biographies of authors, or circumstances under which masterpieces have been composed. Clearly they must go to literature itself; they must get their acquaintance with books and authors and circumstances as nearly as possible at first hand. They are therefore sent into the library to find out things for themselves, — as they should be. But, among students set thus to study literature in its pure forms, only those quick to perceive principles and merits intuitively have thus far consciously or unconsciously gotten much from the subject. The slower of perception are not helped to find the implied processes. Especially has this been true of poetry. There has been little success in teaching this except to such as have already felt its power, and, so far as my observation goes, little attempt to teach it otherwise than intellectually. In average college classes, hardly more than fifty per cent of the students have any taste for poetry beyond a burlesque ^neid or the Hans Breitmann Ballads. All their training has been essentially intellectual. The theory of higher education assumes that there is no direct means of reaching the sensibilities, but that through addressing the understanding directly they may be aroused viii PREFACE.

to some exercise indirectly. Hence, of all young men in the world of equal privileges and knowledge the academic undergraduate, except for causes outside of the curriculum, is most elementary in his emotional culture. Every day of his residence at the university contributes to the disproportion between the intellectual and the emotional powers of his mind. But polite literature is in the last analysis emotional ; and all its charms and message must be spiritually discerned.

The first requisite, therefore, in teaching literature, would seem to be some certain means of reaching and engaging the sensibilities more directly. So far as their exercise is called for in teaching science the method in general use assures it. By it each student acquires not only systematic knowledge concerning the aspects and nature of the phenomena considered, — which is of the understanding, but also experimental knowledge of each quality and process, — which is of the feelings and becomes a part of himself. All this is of course trite enough to teachers well-versed in the theories of their work. I take it the most of us, who have been trying to interest young men and women in the masterpieces of our literature, know well enough wherein our methods fail. It is no wonder that the most eminent teachers in this department throughout the country are by no means agreed as to how better results may be secured. New suggestions and expedients are put forth constantly by enthusiastic and progressive instructors, all no doubt of value, but wanting that major principle which they might supplement or assist. The method generally in use in our best colleges is a combination of the philologic and the scientific, the one adapted from the study of the classics, the other borrowed from the laboratories. Both are excellent as far as they go, but neither reaches further than the intellect. It is well and necessary to study into the forms and language an author uses, but only as the means to an end, and not an end it is to be taken for granted the student must or will compass of himself. I have never found pupils capable of doing anything of the sort, and do not believe that such exist. As to the influence and worth of a given author, students

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are set to find what has been thought and written concerning him, just as concerning questions of fact in a German seminar of History. There is not the slightest question that such work and much of it has its use in the study of literature, but not as the means of finding out the quality and power of a Browning or an Emerson. That is not a question of fact to be made out through other men's observations and judgments, as of historical happenings ages ago. It is a matter of personal discernment, and all the data are present in the pages of the author himself. What the critics say about proportions and kinds of excellence is like what the professor of Chemistry used to say when he talked to his classes from over the experimenting table. The students must be called in to get their own experiences of each degree and quality in some way for themselves. No other man's impressions may take the place of ours. We may weigh, compare, and accept or reject, but must first have impressions or judgments of our own, or we shall be dealing with unknown quantities. The paramount business in the teaching of literature is to enable the student to have first impressions, to develop in him the power of independent observation and judgment ; to show him how to discern and interpret every manner of excellence and beauty for himself.

With the scientific method, as most of us have used it, there is apparently another defect. In our literary laboratory there is no talk about elements. Organic compounds are taken for granted and treated as ultimate phenomena, without much recognition that there may be ' inorganic ' or less complicated forms of the same kind, as well as constant ultimate elements whose presence in new proportions and new combinations make up all differences observed. It is as if there had once been, or should be, an effort to teach Chemistry without recognition of the unlike molecular Constitution, we will say, of spring water and coal tar. In other words, Chaucer and Shakespeare are considered simply as Chaucer and Shakespeare, with no reference to the fact that there must be in both common constituents and factors which, in different frequency and degrees of potency, make up the very diverse x PREFACE.

effects of their respective poetry. The same must be true also of our prosaists. The differences between the style of Newman and De Quincey can be analyzed out through inventorying all points of sentence structure, as also each element or item in the character of their respective terms, phrases, and figures.

The aim of the present manual is simply to remedy, so far as may be, the seeming defects in the teaching of literature just considered. It is in no sense a substitute for the various text-books on the subject now in use. Its purpose, more particularly, is not only to render somewhat of the higher interpretation of literature possible to such as have little normal bent towards letters, but likewise to enable the better gifted to understand more definitely and confidently their own processes. It essays to make criticism begin on less vague and more exact foundations. There is no desire or expectation to render the art of criticism a popular accomplishment, but to recognize and distinguish its objective from its subjective aspects. The first judgments of an expert critic depend on observation, often unconscious, of certain outer and material characteristics. The commonest student can be taught to do thus much through proper comprehension of first principles. He may never tread the higher walks of subjective criticism, — though he may do even that, — but he will at least appreciate the work of those who render this rare service, and his culture will be vastly enriched and broadened withal. This is not a volume, moreover, to be merely read. Each topic and point must be diligently and thoroughly worked out to a personal solution. The discussion in each chapter is in the nature of a condensed lecture preparatory to experiment and verification in the given analysis, and should be carefully expanded and if need be further elucidated by the teacher. It seemed unnecessary to swell the contents of the volume by treating the various topics more diffusely. The text-pages of the volume proper are adapted alike to students of higher or lower grade, and the discussion so far as left incomplete is continued in Notes provided in an appendix. To aid teachers not acquainted with laboratory methods,

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hints and suggestions how to set the student at work for himself are appended to many chapters. The usual manual study of literature alone is presupposed; and classes that have not yet undertaken so much as this, if of the ninth or any higher grade, may very profitably be given, in a more or less simplified form, the earlier prose as well as poetic chapters. Indeed, there is no lack of evidence that the first school work in literature should be solely of this objective kind.

In the study of literature perhaps more than in most subjects besides the teacher must first get the sympathies, the feelings of his class aroused. The students will then do anything he may require, and much more that is not asked for. If a minute study of references is to be exacted, or the English of some author to be looked into, the pupils can be held to enthusiastic work after they have felt his power, but not before. There must in no case be omission or abbreviation of steps. Though some scholars may learn the knack of analysis by merely observing others, it will be best, as is insisted on in all experimental subjects, that they do each process formally. Thework laid out in the last of the book may seem too tedious to beginners with the mode, and the ' Suggestions to the Teacher' have been prepared rather to meet the wants of those that will wish to compass the book in a general way than for such as may prefer to go through a few topics exhaustively. Chapters VI., VIII., X., and XIII. might alone furnish a year's work. The book is intended, if used in a connected survey of the subject with classes of college rank, to furnish three exercises per week through two semesters. That in itself seems much, but is no more than is given to laboratory practice in elementary Chemistry or Physics, and that but introductory to two or four semesters of undergraduate study in these subjects. The use of curves in the exhibition of results is strongly recommended. With average classes the teacher will find them of great advantage not only in making a passing difficulty easier, but also in developing in the student a quick sense of forms and qualities, or what one might call the literary consciousness. It xil PREFACE.

will be found convenient to have a blackboard painted into squares, after the fashion of profile paper, that the several curves for a given passage may be exhibited together.

It is a common notion that the average boy or girl of the earlier high-school grades can have little understanding or appreciation of the phrases and turns of poetry. This so far as figures are concerned is doubtless true, but it is by no means true of poetic expressions proper. Pupils of those years have not yet learned to carry the sense quickly of the common-prose they read aloud in school exercises. The fault is not with the imaging faculty as such, which is never more active in later life than now, but with the power to use it at another's instance. In other words, phantasy is at first chiefly spontaneous, and they have not yet learned well how to use it determinatively. In the first exercises of this volume the teacher will find that young pupils will begin distinguishing poetic from prose words by mere intellectual inference. In their use of books they are accustomed to deal chiefly with logical terms, and readily detect such as are not of that sort. A few days' practice will enable them to test directly by the emotional intension of words ; and through exercising this species of discernment they will grow rapidly in taste and power to respond to poetic quality. The secret of the process, so far as there is any secret, is in thus using the element of consciousness. Any impression communicated to the sensibilities will be very vague and ineffective until brought definitely to the notice of the mind. In general, the method, if tried intelligently and fairly, will discover to those who suppose they have no taste for the best literature that they have such taste ; and it will make those who have never found anything in poetry both feel and know something of its power.

At various times in the development and first use of the present method it seemed to me beset with manifold objections, some of which will no doubt offer serious trouble to many to whom the idea is new. Will not the mind, through such analyses, become too conscious of ' associational words,' or 'tropes,' or 'effects,' or other elements, for best enjoyment of poetry as a whole ? Here

PREFACE. X1I1

would seem to be an objection indeed, and I must confess I expected some such results with matter-of-fact minds. But quite to the cqntrary I have seen no instance in which literal logical intellects have not been spiritually quickened like the rest. I di/1 not remember I had known eminent chemists who, one might naturally suppose, were as conscious of the chemical constitution of things as Bunsen himself, yet never appeared to b e interfered with in appropriating toothsome morsels by any thought of the intricate carbon compounds they were swallowing. There are always theoretic objections, like the New England farmers' opposition to the introduction of locomotives, that are practically of not the slightest moment. There is a very natural antipathy to treating aesthetics by scientific methods. Yet there is in the nature qf things no reason why we may not as well analyze the tissues of human speech and thought as the tissues of the human bqdy. Within a generation science has been broadened by the use of imagination, and there is no good reason why aesthetics in turn should not have the material aid of facts and statistics. Both are equally modes of search for truth, but truth is always first found in applied and concrete forms. Not that one man's figures can be weighed against another's, for one word in the one may be equal to a volume of the other ; not that one man's force can be expressed in terms of another man's force. It makes little difference what proportion of elements is found in any author, so far as other authors are concerned. It is the experience of the finding that makes the student expert in judgment. No poem can in any sense be equal to another poem, for everything of worth in art is wholly unique. But that is no reason why we may not study out stroke by stroke, in somewhat of a scientific spirit, the purpose and meaning of great paintings, as has been done for ages. Even the sources of power in music are beginning to be inquired into through like analytic means. I have noticed with pleasure essentially the same course of interpretation in a series of papers on 'Impressions of Beethoven's Sonatas,' by Frederick Horace Clark, in Vol. I. of Music.

XIV PREFACE.

Perhaps some excuse will be expected for introducing the chapters on Shakespeare and Browning. Of course there are those who do not believe that any minds worth considering ever meet with difficulty in comprehending or interpreting the art of Shakespeare. On the contrary, I must beg to believe that there are nowhere either teachers or students not alike in need, from every quarter, of all the helps they can command. The subject is so complex and vast that there is small hope of knowing Shakespeare even a little save by the co-operation of all who can contribute even single hints. As to the other point, I have known hundreds of students who could never have understood anything of Shakespeare's art without prolonged and systematic help, who yet, interpreting him with help, have taken into their minds new influence and inspiration. Some of these through the occasion of Shakespeare's types have derived new ideals, and in accordance with them changed their lives and character. I do not believe the business of teaching Shakespeare's art unworthy of any teacher, or the time it may require, in college classes or out of them, illspent. The paramount evils of the day in cultured circles are intellectualism and sentimentality. I do not see how they are to be reached and corrected save by the study of literature ; and in literature I do not think there is other such speedy or effective means of cure as a complete and thorough study of the great plays of Shakespeare. The chapter on Browning was added, not to take the place of handbooks introductory to his poetry, but to supplement these, as I believed, in needful ways.

The lack of a consistent and quotable system of aesthetics has forced me from time to time to lay down principles of my own. These I find I have been led little by little and unconsciously to expand or enlarge, until at the end of the volume I find myself committed much further to my own theories than I should have been willing at first to contemplate. For this there seems now no remedy. If the doctrine advanced prove unacceptable, its positions can be rejected without integral disuse of any chapter or paragraph. In keeping with the new movement in philosophy I

PREFACE. xv

have treated imagination as a mode of mental action, not as a gift or faculty. It has, of course, been necessary to devise or appropriate various terms, some of which may require a word of explanation. As is well known, the new psychology has discarded the use of ' mind ' and ' soul ' as designations of the conscious principle. Needing a name for this that should be free from the suggestions of faculties or attainments that attach to the former of those terms, and wishing to avoid the experiential associations belonging to the latter, also finding it impracticable to use the • consciousness ' of the new psychologists in their sense of the word, I was forced to take up with the neutral, colorless ' ego.' ' Experimental,' as in ' experimental religion,' pace the scientists, is resuscitated. ' Spiritual ' also has been taken, in the absence of a more available designation, to indicate the general exercise of refined feeling. I have in particular avoided giving definitions, except provisionally until they shall have been lodged potentially in the student's consciousness. Considerable summarizing and other repetition has been permitted, chiefly to ensure consideration of principal conclusions from several points of view. So far as. able I have not hesitated to introduce from art and other outside subjects any illustrations that seemed likely to be helpful to junior learners, and particularly such as may study the book without a teacher. Literature is not the thing immature thinkers are apt to regard it ; and I have felt bound to lay special stress everywhere upon its practical aspects, and treat the question of its influence and moral uses with some fulness. As to the inconstant character of the Notes, the purpose is generally either to extend a discussion, or to give references, or to stimulate the student to further thought and reading.

The work is based throughout upon abundant statistics and other data, soon to be published, concerning the development of form in prose and poetry, both in English and out of it. Several monographs upon investigations in this line are finished or in progress. Two ~of these, by former pupils, — The Decrease of Predication and of Sentence Weight, by Mr. G. W. Gerwig, and The Progress in Figures from Piers Plowman to Spenser, by Mr. H. C.

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Peterson, — have been depended upon in the preparation of several chapters. The latter gentleman has further assisted by compiling, from exercises used in his own teaching, the questions on the art of Macbeth, which succeed the Notes. That the book will prove a complete treatment of the topics considered, I do not in the least expect. Any attempt of the kind even in a field like this, only partly new, must be supplemented and amended by many scores of hands. If it serve merely as the basis or beginning of a system of objective study for English Literature, the author will feel amply repaid for the labor and perplexities undergone in putting it together.

I am under obligation to many friends for assistance and encouragement in various ways. Among these I am peculiarly indebted for suggestions in the proofs or otherwise, to Professor Cook of Yale University, and Professor Corson of Cornell, and to Professor Wolfe and Professor McMillan of my own college.

L. A. S.

Lincoln, Neb., December 29, 1892.

Chapter I. Literature And Its Departments

In a certain sense the chief object of the whole study here undertaken is to find out what literature is. There is enough of mystery attaching to the subject, even with those who should "know it best, to warrant an attempt at analyzing its elements, so far as possible, from the very bottom. But before the task is undertaken there should be some general notion of the scope and the limitations of literature, and of the ends it serves. We should in the main be clear, both as to what it is in nature, and what it accomplishes for society.

Stopford Brooke's observations at the opening of his Primer of English Literature have helped so much first thinking upon the subject that it may be well to begin with them here. " By literature," he says in substance, "we mean the written thoughts and feelings of intelligent men and women arranged in a way which will give pleasure to the reader. As to its form, it has two large divisions, one of which is called prose literature, and the other poetical literature. But we must not think that everything that is called prose is literature. We cannot say, for instance, that a ship's log, or a catalogue, or the daily journal of a traveller is to be called literature simply because it is written in prose. Writing is not literature unless it gives to the reader a pleasure which arises, not only from the things said, but from the way in which they are said, and that pleasure is only given when the words are carefully, or curiously, or beautifully put together in sentences. To do this in a special way is to have what we call style. As much art must be used in building sentences up out of words as in building houses, if we wish the prose we write to be worthy of the name of literature. Again, in looking at a large building, we see not only the way in which it is built, but also the character and mind of the builder. So also in a prose book which is fit to belong to literature we ought to feel that there is a distinct mind and character who is speaking to us through the style, that is, through the way in which the words are put together. Prose, then, is not literature unless it have style and character, and be written with curious care. Of poetical literature we may say the same thing. Poetry must be tried by rules more severe than those by which we judge prose, and unless it satisfies these rules it does not take rank as literature. There must be more care taken, more beauty, more musical movement in the arrangement of the words than in prose; and the way in which the thoughts and feelings of the poet are put together into words will always be, in true poetry, wholly different from the way in which they would be put together by a prose writer."

Now all these things are true, but fall far short of being the whole truth. Of course Mr. Brooke is not to be understood as implying in these general observations that nothing more than curious care in composition, or the quality of giving pleasure to the reader, is necessary to make a given page, or chapter, or volume literature. Rather is literature the sum of the thoughts and the feelings or experiences of the race that have been recognized as valuable beyond the moment of their first utterance, and hence been treasured up for further use. Anything deemed worth thinking again, or experiencing again, and preserved, no matter how, with such intention or expectation, is literature. It is not essential at all that it be written in books or stored on the shelves of libraries; for the hymns of the Rig Veda, the histories of Moses, and the poems of Homer were preserved for many generations in nothing more enduring than the human memory. The very essence of literature is thus seen to be common service to mankind. No man can perpetuate the thoughts of his mind, or the select and rare experiences of his soul simply because they are good or beautiful. The fact that his thought or sentiment lives after him proves not that it is true, or that he believed it immortal, but simply that it has been of service to other minds, and has been preserved that the service may continue. We must then take care not to suppose that literature is ■ only a something that gives pleasure to the reader, and that skill or nicety of expression is alone sufficient to produce it. The ship's log, or a catalogue, or the daily journal of a traveler does not become literature merely by being written out with "curious care," or by being made to reveal the distinct mind and character of the author, for his may be no personality that one cares to come in contact with. On the other hand, even a ship's log or a catalogue may become literature, if it prove capable of being something to those who read it.