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 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.
I. ANALYSIS OF THOUGHT
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 by _imaginative realization_.
“For instance,” “Just like 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]
II. ANALYSIS OF FORM
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. After this 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.
_Imagination._—Suppose the teacher is giving a lesson in imagination
(“Model English,” Chap. X). If one of the _General Methods_, say
_Reflecting_ (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
be _dramatized_. 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 they would 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 a _particular 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
ingenious _tour 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’s _Etymological 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.
This _jeu d’esprit_ has 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, see _Model English_, bk. II, chap. X, by F.
P. Donnelly, S. J. Allyn and Bacon: Boston, New York and Chicago.