THE KINDS OF LITERATURE AND THE ELEMENTS OF LITERATURE SERVICEABLE IN
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
In modern literary study we have been placing much emphasis upon the
kinds or species of literary production. In the light of the aesthetics
of our day and the newer psychology of art we have been learning much
concerning the nature, the function, and one might say the habits of
these species. These studies have coincided in time, most opportunely
for the teacher of literature, with those that have aimed at the
establishing of the needs and tastes of the elementary and adolescent
ages. There is a real satisfaction born of the confidence one feels in
approaching his problem of choosing literature for children from these
two largest points of view--that of the species or fundamental kinds of
literature on the one hand, that of the child's actual needs and tastes
on the other. This method of approach seems to put the whole field
adequately before his view, and to give authority and certainty to his
final choice.
As a matter of fact there are certain characteristics invariable and
inevitable in each of the five species of literature--epic, drama,
lyric, fiction, essay--that tell us at once something of its fitness for
our purpose. The essay, for example in its typical form is by its
essential nature inappropriate. The literary essay, as it is actually
constituted, is in subject-matter too abstract and remote, in mood too
complex and intricate, and in style too allusive and evasive. Its
invitation is to a region for which a child has neither chart nor map.
The essay rests upon old, old presuppositions; these very
presuppositions it is that must be slowly and through many experiences
built into the mental life of the child. To be sure, there are a few
bits called essays--such as certain of Lamb's more anecdotal papers,
some of the narrative numbers of _The Spectator_, nature-studies with
marked literary qualities like some of those of John Burroughs--that the
grades can understand and enjoy. But these are not typical essays, and
they have not the true essay spirit. This spirit, which creates for
itself an atmosphere hard to describe, compounded as it is of universal
knowingness, ironic indirection, delicately intellectual emotion, and
faintly emotional intellectuality--this spirit is quite alien to
childhood.
And as it is actually constituted, the literary drama, too, represents
a life and presents an art-form so complex and so mature as to be beyond
a child's grasp. Not until this period is closing--and with many
children not even then--comes the hour of ripeness for the drama. This
question of the child and dramatic literature has so many conditions and
modifications that it must be discussed at length in another chapter.
But it is evident to every sympathetic student of childhood that this is
not the period to present the complex situations, the difficult
problems, the over-ripe experiences, that prevailingly constitute the
material of literary drama.
The literature we do give the children should correspond to the stage of
their development in matching as nearly as may be, in tone and spirit
their own activities and interests, or should be calculated to arouse in
them those interests and activities they ought legitimately to have. It
should be of that kind that gives a large free sweep of activity; that
reveals character and conduct in their simpler, open aspects; that
exhibits literary art phenomena in their plainer, more striking
varieties. These qualities are to be found in chosen specimens of the
three other species of literature--epic, fiction, lyric. Of course one
must select from each of the three those specimens that do exhibit the
qualities he seeks. He could not offer to children a developed epic in
its entirety; but there are many things of the epic kind--ballads,
hero-tales, fairy-sagas, certain detachable sections of the great epics
themselves--precisely suited to them. We would not introduce them into a
mature novel, but there are _Maerchen_ for them, tales of conquest and
adventure, stories of other children's doings. They would be lost and
bored in the presence of the elegy or the sonnet; but we may find
jingles and songs, and later on odes, fit and right for them.
In the epic kind of literature we include not only the epic, but all
those other poetic compositions whose principles of organization is
narrative--ballad, pastoral, idyll, etc. The presupposition in favor of
them as good for the children (and it is borne out by the demonstration)
lies in these two facts: they are concerned with events and
achievements, and are therefore likely to be active and objective; they
proceed by the method of story--the easiest and most helpful for the
child to follow and to grasp. It seems necessary to say again that the
members of the epic group must be scanned as narrowly with reference to
their fitness in subject-matter and suitability in form as those of any
other group. There is a fallacy in the assumption that epic is a
childlike thing, the product of the childhood of the race. This is akin
to the amusing opinion that myth--Greek myth, for example--is a
childlike accumulation of childish inventions. Nay, epic poetry, even
those epics that seem most nearly folk-poetry--the _Beowulf_, for
example--are built upon hoary civilizations, each of them having behind
it an art-tradition already old. And if there is an unwarranted
assumption in the theory that epic is childlike, there is an
unwarrantable presumption in the theory that the mature person outgrows
it--that its appeal is only to a primitive and undeveloped taste. The
value to the child of the epic is in its objectivity and activity, its
large horizons and big spaces. The taste for these things should survive
and grow stronger, as should every good taste planted and fostered in
childhood. The mature person but adds to his enjoyment of these things a
deeper enjoyment as he grows to appreciate the finer details and subtler
meanings hidden from the child. The merest primary child can love and
enjoy the heroic or amusing adventures of Odysseus; he should enjoy them
equally when he is forty; but by that time he will have added the
ability to appreciate also the wealth of artistic detail, the profound
knowledge of human nature, the large mental and religious atmosphere of
the poem. For most of this added enjoyment the child has and should
have no intellectual welcome, no space yet ready.
Therefore, in giving the great epics, the teacher must know what
aspects, details, and episodes to pass by or to pass lightly over. And
he must look carefully to the fitness of any piece of this kind he may
consider. It is not sufficient that it have a story. For example _Sohrab
and Rustum_ is a little epic which fits perfectly certain seventh or
eighth grades, because, in addition to a sufficiently good story, it has
an atmosphere of vast spaces and large movements, a wealth of broad,
noble details; and above all, it handles and evokes a simple, primitive
emotion, a sorrow which is as impersonal as the sorrows of Odysseus--a
true epic sorrow. In contrast, _Enoch Arden_, another piece of the epic
kind, is not adapted to children of any age, because it displays a
complex domestic and psychic situation which no child ought to be called
upon to realize, while the emotion called for is both in kind and amount
the sentimentality of adults. Even among the folk-ballads the same
discrimination must guide us. _Sir Patrick Spens_ is the boy's own;
while the poignant pathos of _Young Waters_, true and piercing as it is,
is not for the boy to feel.
So, as will be said many times, but always with meaning, we choose,
when we are sane, not the novel, complex in plot, involved in motive,
overcharged in emotional atmosphere, but the simple, direct-moving
romance, the hero-tale, whose subject-matter and method are so broad and
universal as to fit even the child. We can welcome, for example, the
hearty boyishness of _Quentin Durward_ or _Kidnapped_, where we could
not pilot our elementary class safe through the social and ethical
sophistications of _The Heart of Midlothian_, nor steer them
intelligently through the involved structure and difficult narrative
medium of _The Master of Ballantrae_.
So with the lyric form. If one's choice of a lyric lay between "The
splendor falls on castle walls" and "Tears, idle tears," he would
renounce the complex mature moods, the figures and allusions for which
the child's experience has given him no preparation, the pervading tone
of rich melancholy of the one, in favor of the buoyant objectivity and
more obvious emotional mood of the other.
Through all the earlier years of the elementary school with some
classes, and in some communities throughout the period, the literary
experience of the children may best be made up from specimens of these
three species. It may be, however, that certain seventh or eighth grades
(merely to name the older children) will be found mature enough to
profit by the study of certain of the more heroic literary dramas. The
same tests of objectivity and simplicity must be applied in selecting
these. We should choose, for example, the obvious, and boisterous fun of
_The Comedy of Errors_, rather than the half-hidden satire of _A
Midsummer-Night's Dream_; _Julius Caesar_, since it may fitly be taught
as a heroic tragedy; _Macbeth_, which, however violent in motive and
method, is still direct and simple enough to be within the child's
imaginative realization.
In most schools also, we may count upon finding in these oldest children
in the elementary grades some power of meditation, some interest in
abstract questions, some appreciation of humor and wit, much love of
eloquence; so that in this last year they may profitably read in class
some essays. To be sure, we will choose, not Montaigne, but Bacon; not
Pater, but John Burroughs; not _Dream Children_, but _A Dissertation on
Roast Pig_. In short, we will avoid the critical and the mystical in
essays, and give them objective out-of-door essays like _Wake-Robin_,
humorous anecdotal essays like _Old China_, eloquent oratorical essays
like Gladstone's _Kin Beyond Sea_.
Indeed, during this seventh and eighth grade period begins the child's
hour of ripeness for eloquence and oratory. And it is wise and easy to
meet and supply his interest with essays of the address variety, which
do for him the characteristic services performed by the literary essay,
at the same time that they satisfy his awakening hunger for the rolling
music of the oratorical form, answer to his dawning interest in the big
world and great questions, and help to build a bridge for him into the
public speaking and dramatic aspects of his literary work that he will
find, or ought to find, in the secondary school.
For want of a good term, I have used, in the title to this chapter, the
word "elements" to designate all the details that go to make up the
literary work of art. Into this term we cover, for mere convenience, and
to avoid cumbering ourselves with a tiresome and profitless bit of
syllabus-making, these and such matters: structure, story, plot,
incident, character, verse, image, figure, epithet, and many other
details used to produce the total effect of a bit of literature. It
becomes necessary to inquire which among these elements we shall expect
to find serviceable for our purpose. Of course, they are all valuable
even for a child in the sense that they all contribute to the general
effect upon his consciousness; but certain of them may profitably be
brought into high light and deliberately impressed upon the class;
others would best be left lying by for his adult appreciation.
Take for example, the matter of structure, by which we mean the larger
plan or composition by virtue of which the bit of art--poem or
story--has a beginning a middle and an end; by virtue of which it starts
somewhere, proceeds in an orderly manner, and reaches a destination; as,
for example, in our ever admirable _The Old Woman Who Found the
Sixpence_, where you have the sixpence found, the pig bought, the
obstacles on the road home, the acquiescence of the cat, the unraveling
of the difficulties, the safe return home--a most orderly
interdependence and sequence of incidents; or, as an example of a
different kind of structure, Stevenson's _Foreign Lands_: the child
climbing the cherry tree sees his own garden at his feet, his neighbor's
garden over the wall, follows the white road to its disappearance,
traces the river to its vanishment, follows it in his mind's eye to its
fall into the far-away sea, and then strays on and on into the
other-world of his own fancy--a perfect vanishing perspective; or
examine with this matter of structure in mind Tennyson's _Bugle-Song_,
where you will find a balanced, orderly composition--the horn, the
actual echo, the spiritual echo.
Nothing in literature has a higher educational value than this element
of orderly structure, of good "composition." It should be unobtrusively
present in practically everything the class learns, and should be
deliberately brought to notice, and should be provided for in everything
the children produce. It stands to reason that the story is the form
which will most constantly and most easily present this element of
structure, and that in their study of stories the children can best be
impressed with a sense of their bit of art as a whole made up of parts.
This aspect of story, as well as the consideration of plot, incident,
and character, will receive a more extended treatment than can be given
here, in the special chapter on story.
As to the smaller elements of literature, it is rather contrary to the
best educational thinking of our day to expect the elementary child to
show much appreciation of them. It would be a mistake to place any
emphasis in teaching him upon delicate or obscure phases of these
elements; though there will be, naturally, within the period a growing
fineness of appreciation and quickness of perception in these matters.
Among the youngest children the elements to be emphasized are chiefly
those concerned with the musical effects of speech. The teacher will do
everything possible to develop and cultivate in the child a love of
rhythm--the musical flow of language, whether of verse or prose. In the
verse he will try to awaken an enjoyment of rhyme and of meter, of any
specially musical collocation of words, of instances of tone-color or
other poetic harmony. This cultivation of the child's ear for literature
should go on through his whole school life. It should be one of the
considerations that weigh in choosing the material for his literary
training even throughout his college experience, in order that his ear
for musical speech may grow ever more subtle, more responsive to the
delicate and noble cadences of poetry and of beautiful prose. Beautiful
and musical speech is the crowning quality of literature, and the final
note of distinction in style, and no amount of originality in image or
figure, no degree of delicate fitness in word or phrase, no perfection
of skill in logical coherence and arrangement, should persuade us to
forgo it.
In a class of the younger children the teacher may hope to get attention
to an occasional image or larger picture; he may even occasionally
secure some deliberate consideration of a figure. And he may be sure,
whether their interest in these minor matters be steady and deliberate
or not, that he is at least helping them all the while to new and
useful words, and to a constantly improved sentence-form.
As they grow older, and capable of more attention and patience, they
grow rapidly more able to give conscious consideration to literary
details. The children of fifth and sixth-grade age will linger over
especially beautiful and appropriate words, will stop to realize in
detail the pictures, and will consider figures long enough to
appropriate them artistically. The normal child has an interesting
history with regard to figures of speech. Personification he accepts at
once. Indeed, it is perhaps not a figure to him, but a reality, though
he seems to get out of it a conscious artistic joy. Such personification
as "the daffodil unties her yellow bonnet" he can see and appreciate as
figure. Metaphor is his native speech, and, so long as it involves no
material beyond his power of realization, he has no trouble with it--in
appreciating it or in producing it. Simile is more baffling; it is
easier to go immediately and intuitively to the meaning of a metaphor
than to carry in the mind the two expressed sides of the simile. The
younger children are puzzled and confused by the details of a Homeric
simile. But children old enough to read _Sohrab and Rustum_, if they
have been taught how to hold their minds on an artistic detail, are
willing to stop and appreciate the two groups of details in each of
Arnold's similes. But no elementary child will make a Homeric, or indeed
any simile, except as a _tour de force_. Antithesis as a striking and
obvious figure is easy and illuminating to children, and seems to come
to them quite spontaneously in their own composing. The more subtle
figures they will neither appreciate nor use within our period. The
fable as allegory and the more extended allegories, even those complex
enough to be called symbolistic stories, the seventh and eighth grades
in the average school will read and interpret acceptably. On the whole,
we may expect to give most of the children some knowledge of the
literary nature and function of simple figures, and to awaken in them an
ability to enjoy and understand the figurative and allusive atmosphere
characteristic of literature.
This seems to be the appropriate place to speak of irony, which, while
not, of course, a figure of speech, but rather a way of thinking, does
frequently help to produce the allusive and indirect tone in literature.
It must be the art-playfulness of irony that tempts most people, when
they write for children or talk with them, to adopt some form of this
method of speaking. But this method of communing with little people is
full of dangers; while a pervading and abiding atmosphere of irony is
most unfair to them. Slow children are baffled and stupefied by it;
quick children all too soon catch and adopt the element of insincerity
underlying it. Nevertheless, passages of ironic intent, together with
occasional brief bits in the ironic manner, are educative, quickening
the children artistically and intellectually. A little girl of five
beamed with intellectual delight and artistic triumph when she said to
her mother: "_Now_ I can almost always tell when grown people are
_speaking irons_."
Concerning the whole matter of wit and humor in literature the same
thing may be said that is said of irony. Children are quickened and
stimulated intellectually by frequent calls to understand and appreciate
passages of witty and humorous writing, or by an occasional and short
piece whose whole atmosphere is of this kind. But from the point of view
of their literary training and general appreciation of art, it is better
to awaken in them and maintain a serious appreciation of greatness and
beauty. Besides, the child's out-of-school experience may, in many
communities, be relied upon to give him sufficient contact with the
ironic and humorous forms of art, literary and otherwise.
To sum up, then, may we say that it is safe to conclude that within the
elementary period we will rely for the children's literary experience
upon specimens of the three species--epic, lyric, fiction--introducing,
in the older classes, when the conditions seem to justify it, a few
simple and heroic dramas, and perhaps a few essays, choosing them from
those that exhibit the more direct kind of humor, that are objective in
character, or that serve as an introduction to oratory and eloquence?
We may feel contented if we have succeeded in cultivating an
appreciation of the musical side of speech--among the younger children
an enjoyment of the obvious things of meter and rhyme, reaching in the
older children enjoyment of the rhythm of prose, and many of the more
subtle harmonies of arrangement and tone-color. We may hopefully labor
to impress upon them a sense of structure, an appreciation of
"composition." We may refine and build upon their instinctive love of
story, until we see it taking on within this period the certainty of a
cultivated taste. We may develop in them some power to linger over
epithet and image and figure, thus beginning to build up in them a sense
of craftsmanship, and love of beautiful detail, both of which must enter
into one's appreciation of any art before his judgment is safe and his
appreciation satisfying. And the teacher who knows how may hope to do
all these things joyously and unobtrusively, so that literature may
remain what it should always be--a charming and refined variety of play.