The “Types Approach” to Literature 9780231891745

Citation preview

THE "TYPES APPROACH" TO LITERATURE

THE" TYPES APPROACH" TO LITERA TURE IRVIN EHRENPREIS Inquiry into the nature of genres and the boundaries of the arts ramifies out in every direction, and involves one's attitudes not merely toward literature but life— IRVING B A B B I T T , The

New

Laokoon

*

NEW YORK

KING'S

· MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS

CROWN J

945

PRESS

C O P Y R I G H T 1 9 4 5 BY IRVIN

EHRENPREIS

PRINTED IN T H E UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

KING S C R O W N

PRESS

is a division of Columbia University Press organized for the purpose of making certain scholarly material available at minimum cost. Toward that end, the publishers have adopted every reasonable economy except such as would interfere with a legible format. The work is presented substantially as submitted by the author, without the usual editorial attention of Columbia University Press.

FOT E D I T H L I P P M A N EHRENPREIS

and Louis

EHRENPREIS

Foreword T H E SUBJECT of this study grew out of discussions of the co-operative research group in the teaching of the Humanities at Teachers College in 1939· Professor Lennox Grey and others of us saw fairly urgent need for critical investigation of the widespread but disputed "types approach." Under his guidance and with the help of many others at Teachers College and elsewhere, my inquiries reached wide—yet did not, we hope, go wide of the mark. Many of the best things here are their doing. Professor Allan Abbott and Professor Ida A. Jewett of Teachers College were unfailingly generous in helping to clear up countless points of scholarship. Mr. Paul Deutschberger of the Warwick School supplied valuable sources of data. Lieutenant Leon Katz of the United States Army Air Force stimulated the growth of the basic ideas of the work by his creative but unblunted criticism. Dr. Edna Hays of Pine Manor Junior College and Professor Francis Shoemaker of the Colorado State College of Education made the results of their own researches freely available. Dr. Robert S. Brumbaugh, formerly of Teachers College, now of the Signal Corps, gave expert counsel on what Plato meant. Professor Robert H. Fife of Columbia University and Professor Robert Ergang of New York University similarly checked the section on Herder. Professor René Wellek of the University of Iowa pointed out some bibliographical resources without which the study would have been months longer in the preparation. Professor Gieuseppe Prezzolini of Columbia University saved the exposition of Croce's thought from being misleading in several issues. Dr. William Allan Neilson strengthened the essential theses of the third chapter by permitting the publication of these excerpts from correspondence on the subject. Miss Jean Macalister of the Columbia University library extended far beyond the limits of her duty the assistance she gave in obtaining unpublished materials. Sergeant Harold Ehrenpreis of the United States Army checked the translations. Miss Judith Ehre of the Little Red School House showed the way to the materials on Spencer's reputation and read the whole manuscript critically at several stages.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the use of quotations from their copyrighted publications grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers and authors for their books and articles: Allen & Unwin for A History of Aesthetic by Bernard Bosanquet; The American Journal of Philology for "Prof. Child's Ballad Book" by Thomas Davidson; D. Appleton-Century for First Principles by Herbert Spencer, A Study of the Types of Literature by M. I. Rich, and An Experience Curriculum in English and A Correlated Curriculum by the National Council of Teachers of English; Atlantic Monthly for " T h e English and Scottish Popular Ballads," "What is 'Comparative Literature'?" by C. M. Gayley, and "Ferdinand Brunetière" by Irving Babbitt; Baker & Taylor for The Appreciation of Literature by George Woodberry; George Banta for Elizabethan Criticism of Poetry by Guy A. Thompson; Blackie & Son for English Pastorals by Ε. K. Chambers; Books Abroad for "Comparative Literature: Is It Dead?" by F. W . Chandler; Bowes and Bowes for The Outlook by J. M. Manly; Bulletin of the Illinois Association of Teachers of English for "Place of the Chronological Survey" by Blandford Jennings and "Teaching Literature by Types" by Isabelle Duffey; University of California Press for The Issue in Literary Criticism by Myron Brightfìeld; Cambridge University Press for The Arte of English Poesie by George Puttenham; University of Chicago Press for The Modern Study of Literature by R. G. Moulton; Clarendon Press for The Life and Philosophy of J. G. Herder by F. E. McEachran; College English for " T h e English Major" by W . C. De Vane; Columbia University Press for A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance by J. E. Spingarn, Natural Science in German Romanticism by A. G. Gode-von Aesch, English Institute Annual, 1940; Constable 8c Company for Convention and Revolt in Poetry by J. L. Lowes; Thomas Y. Crowell for The Evolution of Literature by A. S. Mackenzie; J. M. Dent for A Translation of the Latin Works of Dante Alighieri by Howell and Wicksteed; Duell, Sloan 8c Pearce for Art and Freedom by Horace Kallen; E. P. Dutton for English Epic and Heroic Poetry by W . M. Dixon; Education for "Conversion to Types" by A. B. Wesenberg; The English Journal for " T h e Introduction to English Literature" by R . P. Boas, "Varied Patterns of Approach in the Teaching of Literature" by R. C. Pooley; Farrar 8c Rinehart for Introduction to Cultural Anthropology by R. H. Lowie; Ginn 8c Company for Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism by Gayley and Scott and Anniversary Papers by the colleagues and pupils of George Lyman Kittredge; Harcourt, Brace for Creative Criticism by J. E. Spingarn, The Teaching of Literature by L. L. LaBrant, Adven-

tures in Literature edited by J . M. Ross, Adventures in Prose and Poetry edited by H. A. Miller and others, Adventures in American Literature edited by H. C. Schweikert and others, Adventures in World Literature edited by Inglis and Stewart, and Challenge to Grow edited by L. B. Cook and others; Harvard University Press for the Republic by Plato, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology xxix, Essays in Memory of Barrett Wendell by his assistants, the Holmes-Pollock Letters, and Ballad Books and Ballad Men by S. B. Hustvedt; D. C. Heath for General Anthropology by Franz Boas; Henry Holt for A History of German Literature by Kuno Francke and Narrative and Lyric Poems for Students edited by S. S. Seward; Houghton Mifflin for Congress of Arts and Science edited by H. J . Rogers, Poetry and Democracy by F. B. Gummere, The New Laokoon by Irving Babbitt, The Popular Ballad by F. B. Gummere, The Literature of Roguery by F. W. Chandler, Tragedy by A. H. Thorndike, Saints' Legends by G. H. Gerould, And Gladly Teach by Bliss Perry, The Higher Study of English by A. S. Cook, Teaching Literature by E. M. Bolenius, and The Teaching of Literature in the Secondary School by C. S. Thomas; Journal of American Folk-Lore for " T h e Relation of Balladry to Folk-Lore" by H. M. Beiden, "Literary Types and Dissemination of Myth" by Gladys Reichard, and "Tribal Culture in Crow Mythology" by Clara Ehrlich; The Journal of Philosophy for the review of Babbitt's The Masters of Modern French Criticism by J . E. Spingarn; Kegan, Paul for New Studies in Literature by Edward Dowden; Macmillan for The Beginnings of Poetry by F. B. Gummere, The Principles and Progress of English Poetry by C. M. Gayley and C. C. Young, The Evolution of the English Novel by F. H. Stoddard, Aesthetic by Benedetto Croce, The Development of the English Novel by W. L. Cross, and The Teaching of English by Percival Chubb; Modern Language Notes for the review of Spingarn's Creative Criticism by J . W. Bright and "The Factor of Generation in German Literary History" by H. S. Jantz; The Modern Language Review for "Types in Literature" by H. E. Mantz; Modern Philology for "Primitive Poetry and the Ballad" by F. B. Gummere, "Literary Forms and the Origin of Species" by J . M. Manly, and "Biological Analogy in Literary Criticism" by J . P. Hoskins; J . Murray for Dramatic Criticism by A. B. Walkley; The Nation for "Genius and Taste" by Irving Babbitt; University of North Carolina Press for Literary Scholarship by Norman Foerster and others; Oxford University Press for Autobiography with Letters by W. L. Phelps; Publications of the Modern Language Association for "Professor Child and the Ballad" by W. M. Hart; The Pacific Review for "Croce and Criticism" by E. G. Cox; Eric Partridge for A Critical Medley by Eric

Partridge and Literary Sessions by Eric Partridge; Rand McNally for Interesting Friends edited by L. W . Payne and others; Scott, Foresman for Literature and Lije, Book One edited by Edwin Greenlaw and others and Literature and Life in America edited by Dudley Miles and R. C. Pooley; Scribner for From These Roots by M. M. Colum, Essays Speculative and Suggestive by J. A. Symonds, and These Many Years by Brander Matthews; Silver, Burdett for The Teaching of Literature by C. C. Fries and others; L. W . Singer for Prose and Poetry for Appreciation edited by H. W . McGraw; G. E. Stechert for Johann Gottfried Herder as an Educator by J. M. Andress and Anthropology in North America by Franz Boas and others; Teachers College, Columbia University, for An Evaluation of Extensive and Intensive Teaching of Literature by Nancy G. Coryell and Comprehension Difficulties of Ninth Grade Students by T . W . H. Irion; Teachers College Record for "Reorganization of the High School Course in Literature" by J. F. Hosic; University of Wisconsin for Ferdinand Brunetiire by Elton Hocking; Yale Review for "Literary Criticism in American Periodicals" by Bliss Perry and "Croce and the Philosophy of Flux" by Irving Babbitt; and Yale University Press for The Greek Genius and Its Influence edited by Lane Cooper.

Editor's Introduction of the "types approach" was originally intended as the third in a series of studies in the teaching of the Humanities. T h e first was Patricia Beesley's The Revival of the Humanities in American Education (1940), tracing the origins of modern Humanities courses and their development since the first of these syntheses of literature and the arts appeared in 1931. T h e second was Francis Shoemaker's Aesthetic Experience and the Humanities (1942), showing how Humanities courses were coming more and rçiore to stress concepts of aesthetic experience based on modern psychology and anthropology. Dr. Ehrenpreis's study still qualifies for the first Humanities series. It is intent on ways of teaching World Literature, Comparative Literature, and the Humanities, for which world war and the quest for world peace will have brought increasing demand. But it has come to serve another purpose—to introduce another series of co-ordinated studies, Critical Approaches to the Teaching of Literature. These are intended to serve not only as contributions to general professional scholarship but as immediately needed handbooks or texts for students in the graduate courses in the teaching of literature at Teachers College, Columbia University, and wherever else students want to know the relation between critical or scholarly methods and teaching methods. T o cut the cost to students the new studies will be published in a format less expensive than the very attractive earlier books published by the Columbia University Press. Dr. Ehrenpreis and I are regretfully aware, in these times of great educational uneasiness and consequent touchiness in matters of professional vocabulary, that the title of the study will be distasteful at first to some of our academic colleagues whose good opinions we value. In Teacher in America, Jacques Barzun reveals this academic sensitiveness, which sometimes I share, when he says at one point, "my blood begins to curdle . . . at the preparatory jargon and 'methods' " and speaks at another point of a " 'method' . . . a system—I am afraid I have heard it called 'an approach'—designed for all books." A t least one T H I S STUDY

other respected colleague has asked if the title here couldn't be changed to "The Study of Literature by Types." Unfortunately it is not a study of literature, as such a title would suggest—we wish it could be that also— but rather a study of a way of going at literature. No wilfulness holds us to the professional idiom, then, but a difference between academic and professional vocabulary akin to the difference between Matthew Arnold's use of the world culture and Franz Boas's. "Types approach" is what teachers commonly say. It is what they mean. They do not say "method" because they do not think of it as method. They think of it as a way of coming up to literature, or as a gateway to literature. Once inside, they may use a variety of methods, both critical and instructional, in which "types" may be only a point of departure. The same is often true of the historical, the biographical, the social, the psychological, the aesthetic, the symbolic, and the thematic ways of going at literature. This is not to deny that one can use method. One can use a comparative method in the study of types, just as one can use historical method in the study of history. Yet few courses in literature or history adhere strictly to these methods. More often we find "approaches" than "methods." The new series, in which co-ordinated studies in social, regional, historical, and symbolic approaches to literature are now under way, will seek to make clear such relations between critical methods and professional approaches and methods. As our professional field has grown older we have taken more and more things for granted. Too often, we have lost sight of the original spirit of inquiry which made one or another procedure exciting. Or we have lost sight of notable advances made from the originals. Many high school and college instructors and their students take the formulas without analyzing their critical assumptions and methods. Such lack of imagination results in blind repetition. Blind repetition in time brings revolt. In the ensuing reform the good often goes out with the bad. Both the types approach and the historical approach are so threatened. Before long the very modern "experience" and "themes" approaches will be so threatened. Our aim here is to help the teacher to rebel intelligently against the bad and keep the good. Dr. Ehrenpreis's study begins with a quotation from Babbitt's New Laokoon: Inquiry into the nature of genres and the boundaries of the arts ramifies out in every direction, and involves one's attitudes not merely toward literature but life. . . . We might add that philosophies of types can affect lives seriously. The experience of an instructor in a Midwestern university fifteen years ago comes to mind. He was asked to prepare a syllabus for the freshman-sophomore course in Poetry. Fresh from exciting graduate courses in Comparative Literature and anthro-

pologically based aesthetics, and inspired by the success of some of these fresh materials with freshmen, he wanted to show how comparative method could not only define types and subtypes but, using types as foils, could reveal the distinctive quality of the individual poet. In five years of teaching types he had discovered that more and more students, and presently most students, came from high schools with long fixed and often arbitrary definitions. It was time to move a step ahead. So he introduced the syllabus with a comparison of famous definitions of poetry with which the students were not commonly acquainted, and went on to show how the main conventions were played upon or departed from by the poet, and how thus the listener or reader could discern his individuality. After a summer's work the instructor took the syllabus to the head of the department. Something had gone wrong in the linguistics laboratory that day. T h e great man got no farther than the comparative definitions. "This is no,way to introduce students to poetry. Throw out those definitions. Get at types inductively—through questions. Get them to define poetry." There was no chance to protest that the students had done that already in high schools, that the course was no longer the novelty it had been when he had first introduced it. So the instructor did as he was told, painfully aware how accidents of time and mood can wreck summers, and how scholars are not always scholarly. Everyone hated the resulting syllabus, the author most of all. So after meetings with the staff, he rewrote it according to suggestions of the staff—more or less as it had been first written except for suppression of the original enthusiasm and except for the comparative definitions which had been explicitly banned. T h e revised syllabus went fairly well. T o cap the story, two other members of tfye department did an anthology of poetry, and had their own happy thought of offering comparative definitions. Dr. Ehrenpreis's study shows clearly how such differences in judgment between the older and younger generations of teachers could arise. It shows also, I believe, that we still have not sufficiently developed the study of types as a means for revealing the individuality of a given poem or poet. Such a development might even help to reconcile the differences between a Brunetière and a Croce, or between a Babbitt and a Spingarn— differences which have undermined our confidence in the types approach—and so might take us out of our present uncertainty, when we can neither take up types wholeheartedly nor let them alone. LENNOX GREY

Teachers College Columbia University April 21, 1945

Table of Contents Foreword

vii

Acknowledgments

viii

Editor's Introduction

xi

PART O N E : GENOLOGY

1. T h e Kinds of L i t e r a t u r e I. The Problem

of Kinds

II. An Introductory III.

Trends

3 3

Philosophy

in Literary

of Kinds

5

Criticism

9

2. G e n o l o g y Ascendant I. Germanic

17

Origins

II. Some American

17

Genologists

III.

Comparative

IV.

The Rise and Decline

Literature

27

and Genology of the Biological

35 Analogy

3. T h e Mutations of G e n o l o g y I. A Philosophical II. Anthropological Trends

38 43

Controversy

43

Answers

49

of Opinion

53

III.

Recent

IV.

Series of Genre Studies

55

PART-Two: T H E "TYPES APPROACH"

4. I n Colleges and Universities I. Summary

View

63 63

II. Michigan

66

III. North Carolina

68

IV. California

69

V. Harvard

72

VI. Yale VII. Princeton Vili.

Columbia

IX. Chicago 5. In High Schools I. Survey with Illustrations II. Writings on Method

74 77 79 81 83 83 86

III. Textbooks

100

IV. Courses of Study

107

6. Conclusion

112

Notes

116

Bibliography

133

Index

148

PART

ONE

GENOLOGY or Scholarship in Genres

1 The Kinds of Literature I. T H E PROBLEM OF KINDS T H E IMPULSE to classify things and experiences according to type is everywhere. Boys and girls know, as surely as football isn't baseball, that "poetry" is not "prose." If asked for the difference, they would say that one has rhyme and meter while the other has neither. Confusion is there, certainly, but also awareness, curiosity, the beginnings of an understanding of types and their meaning. Although their definition is wrong, they realize that a distinction can be made. 1 In other forms of literary art they show more expertness. What have they seen at Radio City Music Hall? Not a motion picture about sudden death, but a "murder mystery." What kind of show will they take their girls to? Not syntheses of dance, music, and spectacle with a story of romantic love, but "musical comedies." What are their favorite radio programs? "Variety hours." Are these classifications simply the result of impulse to get experiences in order, without regard to further useful purposes? Or do they have meanings in themselves? Such questions are important for teachers of literature today. Many teachers, reacting against the popularity of the types approach, are seriously questioning its value. Others, seeking an approach to world literature which can readily cross national boundaries, assume that study by types will do the trick. Forty years ago, when English was a comparatively new subject in the high schools, teachers were reaching out for the most suitable materials and methods of instruction in literature. W h a t books should they use? How long should each be studied? What would be the best order? What aspects of literature should be stressed? As the study of any literature develops, the first steps are likely to be biographical and historical. T h e first questions are who wrote the work and when, as well as what it is about. Ultimately one asks why. In the critical apparatus of school "classics" developed late in the 19th century,

4

The "Types Approach" to Literature

answers to such questions were brought together, providing philological explanations, social backgrounds, a life of the author, and miscellaneous analyses. Sometimes a chronological scheme unified the year's work. Most schools simply taught in any convenient order the books listed by the College Entrance Examination Board, originally as a basis for composition exercises. But when the data were sufficient, broader patterns became possible, covering the whole field of literature. The vigorous application of the types approach was heralded by such experiments in the teaching of types as that which Allan Abbott, recently from Harvard, carried on at the Horace Mann School soon after the turn of the century. "Such a course," Abbott reported in 1904, "is more effective than the usual minute study of a few books in stimulating interest in literature and in broadening the pupil's character."2* Today the investigator finds some English courses in every grade from the seventh through the twelfth arranged by types. In recent years the types approach has often been so formalized that teachers have lost sight of most of its basis and original purposes as conceived by those who first used it. With the growing demand for world literature courses in high schools in tune with modern "global" thinking, and the obvious utility of a types organization for them, it is time to re-examine the question and the questioning. What is the types approach? What have been its origins, its contributions, its unused possibilities? In the light of the developments reviewed here, what should be the teacher's concept of types and of the values of the types approach? This study seeks to answer those queries. TRADITIONAL LITERARY CRITICISM and the scholarship of the last hundred years are the two sources for most ideas on such problems. Critics and scholars both commonly accept the assumption that works of literature can be classified not only by chronology, author, subject, nation, but also by such aspects of "types" as literary traditions, recognizable rhythmic pattern, mode of presentation, emotional tone. Today the novel, the short story, the play, the lyric poem, are called types. Early English critics called them kinds. In an effort to be precise and to escape confusion of terms, many scholars have adopted the French term, genre, and scholarship in genres is sometimes known as genology. Out of respect to these shades of differing usage it seems desir• A word should be said about the numbering of the notes. Single quotations like this one are individually numbered. In an uninterrupted series of quotations from a single work only the last of the series is numbered. T h e note corresponding to this number lists the sources of all the quotations in order. This procedure is designed for ease in reading and economy of format.

ι: The Kinds of Literature

5

able to distinguish among the terms. For this study, classifications of literary works by literary traditions will be termed "kinds" in literary criticism, "genres" in literary scholarship, and "types" in the teaching of literature. I I . A N INTRODUCTORY PHILOSOPHY OF KINDS

are fairly well agreed today that there is no one definition of a kind of literature. Any shared characteristics are sufficient basis for putting two or more works together, provided that the works are considered as belonging together only in respect of these characteristics. A few similarities between two different poems are not enough to make them both lyrics in the same sense. T o speak of a poem as lyric is to bring to mind certain characteristics of European poetry. "Novel," "satire," "pastoral," "masque" also imply European traditions. Though literatures outside the western culture may show similar traits at points, these hints are not proof of the same "lyric," "satirical," or "pastoral" traditions. Unless the classifier steadfastly keeps in mind the basis for his system, he is likely to confuse more than he clarifies. SCHOLARS

Tradition is generally the basis for grouping literary works. A novel is a work written in the traditions of the novel. T o the degree that the precise traditions followed by a work can be ascertained, its classification is sure. Traditions may be based on many different elements: plot, subject matter, versification, author's attitude, or any combination of these and other attributes. A single work rarely embodies all the conventions which, through the centuries, have characterized one or another of the many examples of a kind. (Mere stylistic devices, such as the heroic couplet or periodic sentence structure, must be distinguished from kinds, which are patterns of complete pieces of literature. 3 ) Sometimes it would be impossible for a later specimen to repeat all the traits of an earlier: because of the nature of the two languages, an English elegy cannot reproduce the meter of the Greek elegy. Usually, however, it is not necessary for a literary work to follow more than a few traditions to gain membership in the group of a single kind. Perhaps only one is needed: for most people a song is no more than words set to music; a play is merely a story acted out. But it is not very common for only one tradition to determine the kind. Terentian comedy developed conventional characters as well as conventional mistaken-identity plots. Robinsonaden—German stories patterned after Robinson Crusoe—had typical situations as well as typical materials. T h e limerick of today is not only a scheme of rhymes and meters in doggerel, but also an expression of jauntiness and broad wit.

6

The "Types Approach" to Literature

Contempory satire, in addition to its mocking or ironical intent, tends to concentrate on political and institutional absurdities rather than on the follies of mankind. T h e complex of conventions of which a kind consists is not at all stable. From time to time some elements may be changed, dropped, or added. One of the least constant ingredients is the name of the kind, as the terms elegy and movies suggest. On the one hand, a kind may have had as many different names (signifying variously the form, the medium, and the place of performance) as the movies, photoplay, screenplay, cinema, film, motion picture, or nickelodeon. On the other hand, a single name, the elegy, may have been attached to such different kinds as all poems in the elegiac meter; reflective poems in a serious mood, regardless of meter; poems on death; or musical compositions of pensive or mournful mood. Irene Behrens has shown that while epic, drama, and lyric may have existed from antiquity, none of them has retained the same name for the same kind.4 T h e strictness of the classification will vary with the traditional criteria which the classifier assigns to each division within it. T h e realm of the sonnet, for example, is restricted or expanded as one does or does not require a special relationship between the octave and the sestet—or between the three quatrains and the couplet. Whether the limits of a kind are to be severe or flexible depends on the general reason for using the arrangement. If a biographer is considering the effect of the epic tradition upon Milton, he will probably adopt Milton's own interpretation of that tradition. If a historian of the drama finds that the classical drama of France followed a set of very precise rules, he will modify his own terms in dealing with French plays and not assume Greek or Roman standards. Here the teacher faces a major problem. Students want things "definite." Can one say for certain whether a type has existence per se or is primarily an idea in the mind? Some critics and scholars call it an idea. So with H. M. Beiden. He follows W. P. Ker in considering a kind a "generalization, a type, derived by the critical student from many individual instances, and existing in his mind as a standard by which to judge and classify new individuals that present themselves."5 Since a kind is an unsteady cluster of changing traditions, it can be exactly defined only for a specific purpose. The tendencies and preferences which are codified into kinds first come into play through the influence which traditions have upon an author in the act of creation, as he shapes his materials. Within that process of codification the traditions represent social and cultural forces at work on the artist's individual imagination and intentions.

/ : The Kinds of Literature

η

It is usually easier for the public to understand and appreciate forms to which it has become accustomed than to accept novel modes of expression. Yet poets react against over-rigid demands of convention, and the public may become bored by repetition of the same pattern. John Livingston Lowes says that there are two major factors in the development of poetry. These are the plasticity of conventions, while the life still runs in their veins; and their tendency . . . to harden into empty shells, like abandoned chrysalids when the informing life has flown. And through these two opposing characteristics of convention, it comes about that art moves from stage to stage by two divergent paths: on the one hand, by moulding the still ductile forms; on the other, by shattering the empty shells—the way of constructive acceptance, and the way of revolt.® Teacher and scholar, recognizing this interactive development, find in it keys to authors' intentions in works of past eras and thus to interpretations of difficult texts. O. J . Campbell, for example, has explained Troilus and Cressida in terms of "comicall satyre," a kind of literature in which Shakespeare may have tried to duplicate the effects of banished satire.7 Critics who watch this process during a short period of time in a narrow cultural area may see too much in the end-product, the traditional form, and mistake it for a fixed goal toward which earlier authors had been tending. By an extension of this reasoning they may feel that the whole process is imitative of a supra-human "kind" which writers may approach but which they cannot fully achieve. They may even attempt to sketch the heavenly pattern by abstracting common details from the works in the same traditions. When such thinking goes far enough, it leads to the Platonic archetype, the pure idea of a kind of literature, perfect, unchanging, and ethereal, of which the.genius has a vision, toward which he strives, but at which he never wholly arrives. Neo-classicism is generally blamed for this error. In it three fallacies are pointed out. First, each kind of literature is taken to be fixed in conventions, so that no major changes may be made. This rigidity confuses tradition with propriety, what has been done with what shouldt»e done. Not only are the rules made unchangeable; it is insisted that a work, to be acceptable, must follow them. Second, the existing kinds are assumed to be the only possible ones and any new kinds are considered improper. All literature is thus limited to a certain fixed number of known kinds. Third, the kinds are ranked, for it is felt that one must be better than the rest and that the others must follow it in some declining order of value. Similarly, the specimens within each are fitted into a

8

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

hierarchy of approximations to the ideal. Thus, the epic has been considered one of the set kinds of literature, placed on the highest level of value, with the other kinds below it, and bounded by special rules of plot, character, scene, etc., to which any new writer must submit for the achievement of a genuine example of the kind. T h e one thing that most commentators agree on, however, is that whether kinds are taken as ideas, traditions, or measurable facts, they must not be thought of as eternal and immutable modes of expression with immutable criteria of judgment. T h e opposite of this sort of dogmatism is an excess of stress upon the process of change undergone by any kind and the cultural factors which guide it. Here the illusion is that universal laws govern the growth of human institutions; that these laws can be learned from data already known; that literature, as a social institution, is subject to such laws; and that there is a close parallel between the history of literary kinds and that of kinds of society, both proceeding gradually from the simple to the complex. It is almost half a century since Franz Boas refuted this fallacy. 8 By objecting to both dogmas, the English teacher may be misled into denying completely that literature can be divided into kinds—for scholarship, for criticism, or for teaching. T h e "types" principle may seem useless for the mid-twentieth century. As disproof of such an inference, however, it is enough to re-examine the fresh literary products peculiar to our own era. Among them are several strict kinds, not known till now, but flourishing today in spite of rigid rules of composition: the detective story, the radio sketch, the vaudeville revue. These are as narrowly conventional as any kind, from the Book of the Dead to the sonnets of Edna Millay. Each of them makes both author and public keep to formulae quite as limiting as the three unities. In our generation, however, each has provided an enlivening "kind" of popular entertainment, and is evidence that the cultural process which makes for kinds is still working in literature. 9 T h e critical teacher is likely to put it this way: While a kind of literature is not merely a method of classification, neither is it an expression of universal law. T h e development of a kind cannot be predicted by formulae, nor the value of a literary work determined by its adherence to traditional patterns. But kinds do exist, and they are determined by cultural, historical processes, though not by processess of biological evolution. These statements have been proved by anthropological investigators. However, they were largely disregarded in discussions of kinds until the time of the romantic movement. In defining kinds, one must deny many things while affirming a few.

ι: The Kinds of Literature

9

I I I . T R E N D S IN L I T E R A R Y CRITICISM IRENE BEHRENS

has shown that the current practice of accepting lyric,

epic, and drama as the three major kinds originated in Germany little more than a century and a half ago. 10 T h e variety in doctrines of kinds up to the eighteenth century can be reviewed in a few pages. With almost every critic, the number of the kinds, their names, or their relative rankings (in addition to other factors) have changed. Representatives from the ancients, from the Middle Ages, from the Renaissance, and from more modern times will show the range in doctrine and dogma. Should "sources" for belief in kinds be demanded of most scholars, they would say that Plato's belief in archetypical ideas is recurrently pervasive, 11 that Aristotle is the commonest authority of those who promulgate schemes of literary divisions after the fifteenth century, 12 and that Graeco-Roman classics are usually the models for imitation within each division. But if one begins with Plato (c. 428 B.C.-c. 348 B.C.), his "broad context" approach immediately causes trouble. 13 Since he does not accept poetics as a self-sufficient system of inquiry, his classifications by kinds are, perhaps, orderly lists of examples rather than definitive patterns. A passage in the Republic apparently divides narrative poetry into three kinds: . . . one kind of poetry and tale-telling which works wholly through imitation, as you remarked, tragedy and comedy; and another which employs the recital of the poet himself, best exemplified, I presume, in the dithyramb; and there is again that which employs both, in epic poetry and in many other places, if you apprehend me. 14 And in Laws, the "Athenian" states what could be considered Plato's exaltation of the epic: "For in our opinion epic poetry is by far the best to be found nowadays anywhere in any state in the world." 16 O n e might tend to receive these as direct answers to the questions concerning the number, names, and rankings of Plato's literary kinds. And yet, as Atkins explains, the purpose of the classification quoted is not literary at all, but moral. Plato is simplifying his task of denouncing the whole of poetry by first condemning each part. 16 Not aesthetic criticism, but ethics is the basis of the classification. These are not literary, but moral, ethical, or psychological kinds. "Plato begins by defining the types of literature according to their use of imitation; but then asks, not which is the best type, but . . . what sort of human nature ought to be imitated." 17 T o these arguments Irene Behrens adds three more: that Platp here,

io

The "Types 18

Approach"

to Literature

as elsewhere, is merely listing examples, not laying down a system; that the names used do not at all correspond to our terms lyric, epic, and dramatic; and that Plato is always using kinds as points in very broad philosophic reasoning, with no concern for narrowly literary utility.19 The preference for epic, finally, when read in context, appears to be stated quite inconclusively, as simply one of several tastes, all equally undemonstrable. In Plato's philosophy, therefore, the number, names, and ranks of the kinds are uncertain. Aristotle (384 B.C.-322 B.C.) does not seem to have accepted or noticed any three-fold scheme of kinds in Plato, though he worked with Plato. He uses an entirely different approach.20 In Aristotle's criticism, poetry is unthinkable apart from distinct kinds of poems. For him poetry is a genus, composed of species. Illustrating this definition by analogies between poems and living organisms, he recognizes the kinds by formal elements abstracted from many instances.21 Yet Aristotle nowhere makes a direct classification of the kinds of poetry.22 One can only infer, from his discussions of epic, tragedy, and comedy, that he regarded them as the three main species.23 (He scarcely more than mentions dithyrambic poetry, and then, perhaps, simply as a kind of music.24) Of the three the greatest is tragedy; the epic is inferior to tragedy; and comedy is inferior to both. Aristotle laid down no absolute rules. Cicero (106 B.C.-43 B.C.), among the Romans, is linked with Platonic theory by his assumption that every kind is copied from an unchanging pattern in the realm of ideas.26 The nearest he comes to a formal listing of the kinds is apparently his remark that in poetry there are a great many divisions, "tragic, comic, epic, lyric, and dithyrambic."2® Out of the hierarchy of broader departments, however, he gives chief rank to none of these five—indeed, not to poetry at all—but to oratory, which was loftiest of the kinds among his contemporaries. Cicero, incidentally, stated the law of the exclusiveness of the kinds, which became an important tenet of the poetic creed during the Renaissance.27 His sketch of the rise of oratory makes him one of the earliest historians of a type.28 Without, again, ever giving a straightforward classification of literature, Horace (65 B.C.-8 B.C.) recognizes at least seven kinds—epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric, satire, elegy, and pastoral poetry. He might be interpreted as making tragedy the greatest, but he clearly expresses the awe of the epic which characterized his age.29 Horace also makes a two-fold distinction of literature, between poetry which is enacted and poetry which is narrated.30 Decorum, hierarchy, and imitation are the points he emphasizes in treating of kinds. 31

ι:

The Kinds of Literature

11

It was from the work of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. c. 10 B.C.) On Imitation that Quintilian (c. 35 A.D.-g5 A.D.) derived his quadruple division of literature into poetry, oratory, history, and philosophy. Included in his minor divisions of poetry are tragic, comic, epic, lyric, elegiac, and satiric poetry. To all these his approach assumes that each branch of literature has its own rules and its own virtues.82 Rather than arrange the six subdivisions themselves in a hierarchy, he is concerned with the relative standing of the poets within each. For his own purposes, of course, oratory is the major kind of literature.83 During the Middle Ages the terminology of the ancients gradually became unintelligible, as the meanings of words changed and as a growing vernacular literature introduced new kinds with new names.84 When kinds were enumerated, it was more as styles (e.g., lofty, vulgar) than in terms of structure. This was the period in which the classification by Diomedes (fl. c. 390 A.D.) was, according to Charles Sears Baldwin, so "often repeated."35 Under Diomedes' system there are three chief kinds of poetry: active (dramatic), narrative, and mixed (narrative with dialogue).36 No one of these is explicitly considered superior to the others. Behrens observes: Almost throughout the Middle Ages, indeed, Diomedes' system is handed down as the most important method of classifying poetry. It is scarcely known for a while, however, both because the names of his three groups are changed and because the kinds which are used to illustrate them no longer correspond to the patterns of the fourth century . . . in Byzantine writing, drama means the novel) in the West, however, it means philosophical disputation made up of questions and answers in prose; tragedy and comedy become verse or prose narratives with sad or happy endings respectively. . . . The name of the epic is completely lost, although the kind itself remains well known to the Middle Ages in the form of Vergil's Aeneid.8T Isidore of Seville (c. 570-656), following Diomedes, makes three divisions: that in which the poft himself speaks—"as in the books of Vergil's Georgics"·, that in which the poet never speaks—the dramatic; and the mixed—"as in the Aeneid."38 He does not rank these three. Vincent of Beau vais (c. 1190-c. 1264) names seven species of poetry, which probably correspond to comedy, tragedy, invective, satire, fable, history, and argument.39 He too offers no hierarchy of kinds. Following the characteristic medieval tendency, Dante (1265-1321), in De vulgari eloquentia, interprets the three great classifications he makes of literature as three styles. "By tragedy we bring in . . . the

18

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

higher style, by comedy the lower style, by elegy we understand the style of the wretched." When he discusses the "many different forms" of poetry, however, such as canzoni, ballate, sonnets, and "other illegitimate and irregular forms," he decides that the canzone is most excellent, and links it with the tragic style. "If our subject appears fit to be sung in the tragic style, we must then assume the illustrious vernacular language, and consequently bind up a canzone."40 Marco Girolamo Vida (c. 1489-1566) is among the foremost of those Italian Renaissance critics who were important in the development of Elizabethan critical doctrine. 41 Although he mentions several kinds, such as epic; tragedy, elegy, and pastoral,42 he never defines a specific number of kinds as comprising all the divisions of poetry.43 But since his De arte poetica derives from Horace's "Ars Poetica," and his "exemplar" is Vergil, 44 -he does decide that of all kinds the epic is the greatest.45 Three classes of writers in verse are distinguished by Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558): the theological poets; the philosophical poets, including natural poets and moral poets (who again are either political, economic, or common); and the ordinary poets, imitating human life. For the last he revives the old system of Diomedes and divides poetry proper into the three major modes of simple narration, conversation, and mixed. He adds many subdivisions, "in order of excellence": hymns and paeans; songs, odes, and scolia; the epic; tragedy; comedy; satires, exodia, interludes, jests, nuptial songs, elegies, monodies, incantations, and epigrams. Explicitly, however, he names the epic as the sovereign kind. 46 Scaliger is called by Joel Elias Spingarn "one of the first modern critics to affirm that there is a standard of perfection for each specific form of literature, to show that this standard may be arrived at a priori through the reason, and to attempt a formulation of such standard for each literary form." 47 In his commentary on Aristotle, Lodovico Castel vetro (c. 1505-1571), following his guide, concentrates on three kinds, tragedy, comedy, and epic, neglecting the lyric and claiming the highest value for tragedy.48 In Elizabethan criticism the practise of dividing literature into kinds was, according to G. Gregory Smith, generally a method of carrying on the great project of justifying imaginative literature "against the attacks of a vigorous Puritanism." 49 T h e defenders' aim was to show that poetry is useful and moral. Since these qualities are functions of content and effect, or intention, their definitions, as Guy Andrew Thompson has pointed out, were necessarily in terms of purpose and subject-matter:

ι: The Kinds of Literature

ι3

Often, therefore, discussions ostensibly of forms are essentially discussions of different kinds of subjects and purposes therein involvedattempts to show the various applications of poetry to life and conduct,—content taking precedence over execution, matter over manner.50 Various manners of speaking are the basis on which Roger Ascham (c. 1515-1568), using Quintilian's scheme,61 proposes four great classes, poetry, history, philosophy, and oratory, each with its own lesser classes; poetry may be comic, tragic, epic, or lyric. He treats tragedy as the highest form of poetry. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) takes over Scaliger's three groups of poets: religious, philosophical, and "indeed right Poets." These last comprise "the Heroick [epic], Lirick, Tragic, Comick, Satirick, Iambick, Elegiack, Pastorall, and certaine others." Of these eight, the Heroicall, or epic, is ranked highest.52 Although William Webbe (fl. c. 1586-c. 1591) largely depends upon Horace, his division of poetry is his own. 53 He includes all kinds under comedy, tragedy, and history: the first for happy poems, the second for sad poems, and the third for "all such matters which is indifferent betweene the other two." However, his choice of the best of all kinds is made independently of these, and is the epic.64 In an apparently original account, George Puttenham (d. 1590) names ten kinds: epic, lyric, elegy, comedy, tragedy, eclogue, satire, epigram, mime, and pantomime. He includes many more in another section of his Arte of English Poesie (1589), where he relates the larger kinds, "(Tragedy, Comedy, Epic, Pastoral, etc.) to various phases in a logical, rather than historical, evolution of human culture, and the smaller kinds (Epithalamia, Dirae, Genethliaca, etc.) to the turning-points in individual existence and the varying moods and passions of men." 66 Yet he nowhere appears to argue for the intrinsic superiority of any one over the others. T h e patterns of Elizabethan poetics generally conform with those of the ancients. Except in Sidney's Apology, native kinds are seldom enumerated.66 In the seventeenth century the tendency to distinguish rigidly the various kinds of poetry from one another becomes more noticeable. Particularly in the latter part of the century one finds an insistence on strict adherence to the rules derived for each species from the works of the ancients. A few extremists even deny any merit to those who fail to accept these precepts consistently.67 While there is no more unity in the division of poetry among seventeenth-century critics than in those of

14

The "Types Approach" to Literature

the previous era, almost all authors continue the high valuation of the epic characteristic of the Elizabethans.58 In the period during which these tendencies are ascendant, foreign influences, especially from France, are unusually significant. Three critics are typical of the French influences. In the sixteenth century Joachim du Bellay (c. 1528-1560) stressed "the epic as the genre of genres, conferring immortal glory as does no other form." 69 Urging the renunciation of medieval kinds for new ones, imitative of the ancient,60 he also listed the chanson (song), epigram, sonnet, elegy, eclogue, satire, epistle, tragedy, and comedy. When added to the epic (or long poem, as he calls it), these make eight acceptable kinds of poems.61 Among the leading French critics of the seventeenth century, René Rapin (1621-1687) follows Horace in separating acted from narrated poetry. He reduces the kinds of "perfect" poems to two, dramatic and epic (heroic). T h e epic poem, for him, is greatest and noblest. He discusses divers varieties of poetry: comedy, including satire, is grouped with tragedy under the dramatic kind; ode and eclogue are placed with the epic under the heroic kind; elegy, epigram, madrigal, sonnet, and ballade are all "onely a sort of imperfect Poems." 62 Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711) separates the secondary kinds —idyl, elegy, ode, sonnet, epigram, rondeau, ballade, satire, and vaudeville (popular song)—from the three great kinds—tragedy, epic, and comedy. T h e epic is his choice for the greatest kind. 63 In seventeenth-century England, Ben Jonson (c. 1573-1637), though the earliest thoroughgoing English classicist,64 assembles the kinds of poetry in only a passing and indefinitive manner. Without explicitly choosing a supreme kind, he simply remarks that among the ancients, "what ever Sentence was express'd, were it much or little, it was call'd an Epick, Dramatick, Lirike, Elegiake, or Epigrammatike Poeme." John Milton (1608-1674), who relies on both the ancients and the Italian commentaries, uses the three-fold plan which is common nowadays: lyric, epic, and drama. He selects tragedy as superior to all other poems. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) arranges the kinds in a system which Spingarn finds a logical outcome of his philosophy. Heroic, comic, and pastoral correspond to court, city, and country, so that man simply arranges what Nature gives in forms of his own speech, narrative or dramatic. Poetry of the court is epic or tragedy; poetry of the city, satire or comedy; poetry of the country, bucolics or pastoral comedy. Lyrical forms are but part of longer poems. Hobbes takes it for granted that the epic is the greatest and noblest of the kinds.65

ι: The Kinds of Literature

15

Greatly influenced by such French critics as Rapin and Boileau, John Dryden (1631-1700) nevertheless seems to accept the three kinds, drama, lyric, and epic as the major classification of poetry. Like Rapin, he judges the epic the greatest.66 T h e third Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671-1713), writes that "to each species of poetry, there are natural proportions and limits assigned." This pronouncement, in an essay that, Benjamin Rand asserts, deeply influenced eighteenth-century European aesthetics,67 is typical of that veneration for the dogmatic doctrine of kinds which persisted from Pope to Johnson. In the latter part of the century only Henry Home (Lord Kames, 1696-1782), among the major critics, understood that there are no insuperable barriers among literary kinds.68 Shaftesbury himself recognizes a variety of kinds, but fully considers only the epic and the dramatic, 69 the latter including tragedy and comedy.70 Apparently, he did not choose between the two competitors, tragedy and epic. In poetic theory Alexander Pope (1688-1744) never formally classifies literature, but his criticism is concentrated upon the three major kinds of his time: epic, tragedy, and pastoral. He agrees with contemporary traditions that the epic is the supreme kind. 71 Although Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) does oppose the routine imitation of established literary models, he also opposes "new or irregular poetic forms." 72 Without ever attempting to list all the kinds, he implicitly acknowledges that the epic poet deserves the highest praise.78 T H E T W O MILLENIA of critics from whom these twenty-six examples of lists, names, and rankings of kinds have been chosen, show remarkable inconsistency. Agreement on one factor rarely precludes disagreement on others. Some traditions are continuous over many centuries, but these are general critical attitudes, which are reflected in interpretations of kinds. Imitation, for example, either of ideal models or of the ancients who supposedly embodied those ideals in their works,74 seems to have dominated concepts of kinds since the Renaissance. Aristotle and Horace, in distorted versions, may appear the ultimate authorities for dogmatic belief in kinds. Both of these alliances, however, are characteristic of all neo-classicism rather than of the particular problem under consideration here.

T h e need for empirical classifications in studying literature is bound up with no one period or school, but may be part of any. It has often been assumed that the use of such classifications implies adherence to patterns already established in them. Yet many teachers feel that the

i6

The "Types Approach"

to

Literature

great value of recognizing kinds is to use them, not as bases of dogmatic judgments, but as aids to understanding the individual author in relation both to his social context and to literary techniques which he has used, modified or opposed. T h e present popular adoption of lyric, epic, and drama as the three major kinds did not come, Miss Behrens insists, until the German roman ticists^exaltation of the lyric made it worthy of being ranked beside the other two kinds. 75 Even while the three-fold system was being established, moreover, it was being re-interpreted, as based on more than reason or tradition. Herder foreshadows, and Goethe develops, the conception of these kinds as the three "natural modes" of poetry, which can be united in any one poem; they thus become creative approaches which can characterize the several aspects of· a single piece of literature. 76 Accepted by critics and scholars, the three kinds were adopted by the influential German estheticians of the nineteenth century, especially Hegel, and given dialectical foundation. 7 7 They became part of the inheritance of scientific scholarship, and are now so completely undisputed that they are usually supposed to be descended from the Greeks. For in the new appreciation of Greek classical literature in the early nineteenth century, as von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff points out, the origin of Greek literature and its types was identified with the absolutely normal and natural, the gaps in historical knowledge were bridged with philosophical abstractions, and what had been effected by definite, concrete conditions, and by the individual will of important men, became the product of immanent natural laws. T h e types of Greek poetry and artistic prose—epic, elegy, ode, tragedy, comedy, epigram, history, dialogue, oration, epistle—appeared as natural forms in the arts of discourse. 78 Thus, the framework of nineteenth-century theorizing concerning kinds—or genres, as they are usually called in literary scholarship—combined several tendencies. T h e multiplicity of genres was recognized, but the various species were grouped under three headings, the three "only possible moulds or channels of communication," 79 each of which could also be considered a specific kind in itself. Within this framework, scholars developed the concepts which will be analyzed in the next chapter.

2 Genology Ascendant I . G E R M A N I C ORIGINS W H Y

DO CERTAIN

LITERARY

FORMS

and ideas persist from generation to generation, or recur at intervals? . . . Is there any law governing the times of such recurrence? . . . What signs accompany the rise, the maturity, and the obsolescence of a given type? . . . Does one literary type, as epic, ever pass into another, as drama, by a definite process of transformation? and if so, what are the modifying influences which effect such a metamorphosis? . . . Why are certain literary forms missing from certain literatures? 1 Charles Mills Gayley, then of the University of California, asked this series of questions more than forty years ago. No one had asked them in precisely this way before the nineteenth century. Johnson had compared examples of the kinds with the principles by which they should have been guided, and had passed sentence accordingly. 2 Dryden had assumed that every kind had its own rules of creation and had tried to define those for the drama. Sidney had shown how each of the kinds of poetry fulfilled the aim of instructing and pleasing. At the end of the eighteenth century, however, a new range of mountains appeared on the map of criticism and scholarship, heights from which literature seemed divided, not into static kinds, but into developing genres. Eric Partridge puts it in these words: T h e most important difference between eighteenth and nineteenth century criticism is that the latter was related to and consonant with history. If criticism set history at nought with some impunity in the earlier centuries, it looked to history in the nineteenth century. Criticism became an interpretation of society and nature as seen in books. But think of most eighteenth and nearly all sixteenth and seventeenth century criticism: was it not a priori and according to certain predetermined rules? T h e critics applied general laws to literature and enclosed the genres within narrow limits; they judged literary works as

i8

The "Types Approach" to Literature

entities, things apart in time and space, and, by the light of their ideal, they gave sentence on those works without reference to circumstance or locality. 8 Until the end of the eighteenth century the common view of genres was that they were established patterns to which authors conformed. T h e historical, evolutionary attitude characteristic of the nineteenth century changed this. Literature, for some, took on the aspect of a vast evolving organism composed of many units. These units, the particular works of art, were grouped as species in the various genres already accepted under the three main headings of lyric, epic, and drama. And just as basic similarity of structure among animals was recognized as proving a common ancestry, so the obvious relation in make-up of one ballad, say, to others was taken to show that all ballads had a common origin and were part of the same corpus. In biology the method of tracing likeness was to compare specimens and to point out the similarities by such sciences as comparative anatomy. In literature, by analogy, a "science" of "comparative literature" developed with similar aims and methods.4 Little by little, premises like these were deeply implanted in European literary studies. Sainte-Beuve went so far as to compose a kind of comparative human psychology, classifying types of minds in families like plants and animals. 5 T H E CONCEPT of literature as an evolving organism, with genres as species, is not American in origin. Like the concept of the lyric, it can be traced back to Germany more than a hundred and fifty years ago, particularly to Johann Gottfried Herder, to whom, in Norman Foerster's opinion, "our modern literary history owes more than to any other thinker." 6 A range of philosophers which includes Vico, Spinoza, Kant, Lessing, and Hamann, contributed to form Herder's mind and anticipated his theories. He has been proposed as a starting point, however, by many— among them, Charles Mills Gayley7—and opposed by practically none. T h e influence of his philosophy on scholarship since his time is hard to assess, but Mary Colum affirms that "all those later critical theories explaining literature by the time and place, or accounting for it is an expression of society, are to be found in germ in Herder's work." 8 His spirit has guided the movement of literary research for over a hundred years and is especially important in connection with theories of genres. Within the growth of German literature 9 Herder's place is in some ways like that of Wordsworth in the British romantic movement. Herder's ideology was of great importance for the philosophy of German

2: Genology Ascendant

19

romanticism, and peculiarly effective in stimulating the rise of a national literature based on that philosophy. In his youth a domestic servant, son of an humble schoolteacher, he became, within a life-span of fifty-seven years (1744-1803), the influential friend of Goethe and of the foremost writers and scholars of his age. Herder was a man who "revolutionized the literature of his country, w h o found it a dreary wilderness of shallow phrase and frigid imitation, and left it as one of the six or seven greatest literatures the world has ever known." 1 0 T h r e e elements in the philosophy represented by Herder led to a new interpretation of literary genres. These are the belief in the organic gradation or evolution of nature as a whole, the insistence that literature must be founded on national character, and the use of comparative, international methods of criticizing literature. Herder did not pluck these concepts out of the void. He was not the only one to spread them. Doubtless they would have developed and found welcome (though later) if he had not lived. Yet his situation is so convenient in chronology and geography, and he applied these ideas so thoroughly that his work is the logical springboard for a history of "genology," or scholarship in genres. First, independently of Herder, the notion of evolution in itself emphasizes genres; theories of literary evolution must by their very nature imply such classifications. If two words in Sully's definition are italicized, evolution can be said to include all theories respecting the origin and order of the world which regard the higher or more complex forms of existence as following and depending on the lower and simple forms, which represent the course of the world as a gradual transition from the indeterminate to the determinate, from the uniform to the varied, . . . look upon the development of organic life as conditioned by that of the inorganic world, and view the course of mental life both of the individual and of the race as correlated with a material process. 11 Paraphrasing this definition in the terms of literary history, an evolutionist in scholarship would regard the higher or more complex genres of literature as following and depending on the lower and simpler genres, would represent the course of literature as a gradual transition from the indeterminate to the determinate, from the uniform to the varied, and would look upon the development of literature as conditioned by that of human society. A scholar under the influence of an evolutionary philosophy would presumably give some such interpretation of genres. He would certainly consider problems of genres carefully.

20

The "Types

Approach"

to

Literature

T h e acknowledged evolutionary emphasis of scholarship in the nineteenth century 1 2 led inevitably to great stress upon these problems. "Evolution" customarily means Darwin. But Darwin, as is well known, really assembled, tested, and extended ideas which many thinkers before him had expressed. 13 A n d while Darwin worked within the science of biology only, some of the earlier men had extended the meaning of their conclusions to cover many fields. Herder, one of these predecessors, 14 saw all the universe as evolving. Nature, to him, is a unity, developing endlessly in divers forms which always retain an underlying likeness. T h i s indivisibility of life is his major premise. 15 A l l his other assertions rest upon the feeling of "the Unity of Nature in her infinite development, the Continuity of Phenomena." 1 6 T h e interdependence and continuity are temporal as well as essential. T h a t is, the infinitely complex W h o l e evolves in time, developing into more and more complex forms. "Nature pursues her grand course, and produces the greatest variety from an infinitely progressive simplicity." 1 7 Herder's kind of "evolution" must not be thought the same as Darwin's, however. T h e modern idea of the fluidity of the species themselves —changing, with time, into new species—was not grasped by Herder, nor was it general among his contemporaries. He was more impressed by the continuous gradation of existence, from the lowest, simplest, and least animated, to the highest, most complex, and most spiritual. A. G. F. Gode-von Aesch characterizes Herder's vision as "a progressively ascending hierarchy of nature, which he described as moving 'from the stone to the crystal, from the crystal to the metals, from these to the realm of plants and from there to man,' " w h o signifies both the peak of this chain and " 'the beginning of a higher species of creatures as its lowest link.' " 1 8 McEachran explains that for Herder the origin of life was due to "a separate, although not contemporaneous, creation of species. W h e n the earth was ready for it, then the plants, by some means unknown but not unnatural, appeared, later the animals, and lastly man." 1 9 T h u s , there are three axioms in Herder's philosophy of evolution (abstufung): all nature is one; all nature is changing; all nature advances from simple forms to complex. From these three statements, it follows that every phenomenon depends upon earlier, simpler, larger classes of phenomena, and can be understood only in terms of them. How does this reasoning affect the criticism of literature? T h e antecedent phenomenon from which literature develops is, of course, mankind. W i t h o u t men there could be no culture at all. Just as nature is one, so all mankind is one. T o understand the literature of

2: Genology Ascendant

21

any one language, it is necessary to know the lives of the men who made it, the nation speaking that language. "All the great achievements of human civilization—language, religion, law, custom, poetry, art—he considered as the natural products of collective human life, as the necessary outgrowth of national instincts and conditions," says Kuno Francke. 2 0 If literature is " a manifestation of national culture," and the nation is evolving, literature will show that evolution. And to understand any step in the evolution of literature, what is needed is not to put one's own limitations upon the writings read, but to see them "at home," as it were. In this way, J . M. Andress points out, great creators of literature "could not be understood by observing whether or not they followed out certain fixed rules of . . . composition. T h e y must be regarded as reflections of certain stages of national culture and feeling." 2 1 As "the evolutionary product of national conditions," 2 2 to use Calvin T h o m a s ' rephrasing of Herder, literature must not only be understood, but also judged historically. 2 3 W h i l e all the arts are vital only when expressing the spirit of the nation or race, criticism, to be valuable, must be catholic, international, and socio-historical. 24 A foreign writer, or one of another time, speaks, not for himself, but for a people; the frank critic knows this, and treats a poem as composed, not for his own prejudices, but for the poet's countrymen—in fact, out of them. "Such a philosophy dealt a death blow to the theory that poetry was the private property of a few refined and cultivated individuals," Andress concludes. "Poetry to him [Herder] was the common gift of all mankind." 2 6 T H A T VISION of the evolving unity of literature and the unity of all mankind was the basis for comparative researches in the literatures of various nationalities. From such a vision, methodized by the morphological,2® historical, and scientific tendencies of nineteenth-century scholars, 27 the study of comparative literature developed. T h i s branch of literary history does not confine itself either to separate nations or to individual authors, but goes beyond both. O. J . Campbell gives its aims as

in the first place, to discover general laws which transcend any one literature, such as the development of types and forms under the progressive relationships of different literatures. In the second place, it seeks to reveal relations of affinity within two or more literatures. Finally, through the discovery of similarities and differences by means of comparison, it endeavors to explain the inception and growth of individual works. 2 8

ss

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

Stated simply and in generalized fashion, these ideas must now be extended to include other writers and at the same time narrowed to focus on genres. First, though Herder explored these thoughts with particular thoroughness and stated them with peculiar ardor, it is essential to realize that almost all the poets and scholars of the following generation 29 adopted and assumed them. His kind of philosophy, developed and greatly modified, was characteristic of a whole era, not only of German, but also of European, and, finally, of American creative and research activity. As Norman Foerster reviews the events, Herder's most illustrious successors were A. W. Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel, who, with the zeal of Renaissance humanists, turned in every direction for new light. German thought, literary art, and scholarship were brought to France by Mme. de Stael, to England by Taylor, Coleridge, and Carlyle, to America by Ticknor, Hedge, Longfellow, and Lowell. 30 Spreading through German belletristic thought, the doctrine thus quickly found welcome in France, England, and America. 31 A L T H O U G H THE GENERAL EFFECT of such evolutionary ideas upon nineteenth-century scholarship is fully appreciated, it is not easy to decide just how much of their diffusion through literary theory was due to the influence of individuals: Herbert Spencer, Hippolyte Taine, Auguste Comte, Sir Henry Maine. They were all, as Oliver Wendell Holmes remarks of Maine, more important for "imparting a ferment" than for "any specific discoveries of importance." 32 Pósnett, Gummere, Mackenzie, and others name Spencer and Maine as important influences. In France, Myron Brightfield finds, Comte "prepared a fertile soil" 33 for the reception of Darwin's Origin of Species. And Spencer himself, rather unwillingly, acknowledged Comte's influence in England "on some literary people and historians."34 T o Americans, Spencer represented the same forces as Comte.

William James called Herbert Spencer "an ignoramus as well as a charlatan," 35 he had to admit that the latter's philosophy was triumphant in 1872.36 Spencer's materialism and faith in progress, as Merle Curti shows, fitted the requirements of the Gilded Age. 37 For scholars after the Civil War, Spencer's main significance was as champion of evolution and of scientific methods. His work, like that of his friends, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, T . H. Huxley, and John Tyndall, ostensibly exemplified the victory of inductive reasoning ALTHOUGH

2: Genoîogy

Ascendant

23

based on physical facts. In one American review of First Principles (edition of 1864), a rhapsodic admirer applauded him for having supposedly discovered the ideas which Herder and others had expressed decades earlier: 'It was reserved for Herbert Spencer to discover this all-comprehensive law which is found to explain alike all the phenomena of man's history and those of external nature. This sublime discovery, that the universe is in a continuous process of evolution from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, with which only Newton's law of gravitation is at all worthy to be compared, underlies not only physics, but also history. 38 Spencer's widest influence came from the exposition of his doctrines in First Principles and the application of it to sociology in The Principles of Sociology. He based his philosophy on matter and motion. From the indestructibility of the one and the continuity of the other, joined in the concept of the persistence of force, he deduced what he called the uniformity of law. This essence of his synthetic philosophy was the theory of evolution which he derived from the German philosopher, Karl Ernst von Baer: 39 Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from the relatively indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a relatively definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the contained motion undergoes a parallel transformation. 40 When Spencer worked out this proposition for sociology, he produced an opus which inspired literary scholars by its method. He apparently began with masses of objective data and induced from them grand evolutionary generalizations on the links between social progress and institutional change. It was not so much the "Ghost Theory," his belief that primitive religions were developments of ancestor-worship, that aroused emulation, as the skill with which he blocked out that theory from colorless mounds of fact. T h e same is true of Spencer's analogy between society and living organisms and his distinction between militant society, based on status, and industrial society, based on contract. Not his conclusions, but the way he reached them, was what professors of literature learned from Spencer. A writer who seldom read a serious book through, a philosopher who was unacquainted with the classics of philosophy, 41 a ljterary influence who said he "would rather give a large sum" than finish the Iliad,,*2 Spencer gained his tremendous dominion by an adroit

24

The "Types Approach"

to

Literature

mastery of a difficult technique. Oliver Wendell Holmes stated the paradox half a century ago: H e is dull. He writes an ugly uncharming style, his ideals are those of a lower middle class British Philistine. And yet after all abatements 1 doubt if any other writer of English except Darwin has done so much to affect our whole way of thinking about the universe. 43 IN THE DISSEMINATION of Herder's ideas, Hippolyte T a i n e , as Mary M . C o l u m says,44 was a prime mover. A m o n g English-speaking scholars his position was established by his impressive History of English Literature. " T a i n e ' s philosophy of art," according to Horace Kallen, "gave the academic cachet to the dominant trend of his generation; in it the various aspects of mechanistic esthetics converged and came to their classical expression." 40 Similar to Spencer in his outlook, T a i n e formulated his principles under the influence of G. W . F. Hegel, Charles Sainte-Beuve, Auguste Comte, and Ε. Β. Condillac. 4 6 He summarized his critical procedures in a series of lectures to the art students of the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1864. For the first five of eighteen lectures, T a i n e unfolded, by inductive progressions, a definition of art. T h e end of a work of art is to manifest some essential, salient character, consequently some important idea, clearer and more completely than is attainable from real objects. Art accomplishes this end by employing a group (ensemble) of connected parts, the relationships of which she systematically modifies. In the three imitative arts of sculpture, painting, and poetry, these groups correspond to real objects. Most of the remaining lectures were an exposition of the doctrine of race, milieu, and moment which he received from Hegel, and by which he is best known. These factors control artistic creation, T a i n e insisted. "A work of art is determined by a condition of things, combining all surrounding social and intellectual influences." T o comprehend the work, the critic must know the nation it came from, the occasion of its production, and the environment of the artist. These elements decide which art will dominate a civilization and what sort of person will be its characteristic type. T h e former, in T a i n e ' s system, focuses on the latter. As one example of his method, T a i n e analyzed a genre, classical French tragedy at the time of Louis X I V . 4 7 H e traced its characters, style, and popularity to the race, milieu, and moment of its formation. From the leadership of the king, the importance of the salon, and the glorification of the courtier, he derived the elegant structure, the polished lan-

2: Genology Ascendant

25

guage, the aristocratic dramatis personae, and the dignified action of the dramas of Corneille and Racine. Taine's significance for the history of literary research is extremely broad. Lecturing on French criticism in 1889, Edward Dowden estimated the effect of the man and his work as beyond measure: Since the publication of M. Taine's "History of English Literature" some twenty-five years ago, all students of literature and art have been more or less under the spell of that triple charm—the race, the milieu, and the moment, and every critic has found it needful to get the magic formula by heart. 48 T a i n e and Spencer, Sir Henry Maine is more significant here for his method than for his facts. Several scholars, including Gummere and Posnett, kept his Ancient Law (first edition, 1861) in mind as they planned their studies of genres. Through this book Maine tried to establish regular principles of legal evolution. His thesis was that institutions of law have undergone a set sequence of stages, passing from the paternal clan, through the paternal kingdom, tribal feudalism, and feudalism, into the state. T w o powers regulated this development: within the family, the patriarch; among families, the kingship. From his investigation, Maine drew three general conclusions. First, in the progress of juristic procedures, judgments come earliest, then custom, and finally statute law. Second, the forces effecting changes in law have been fictions, equity, and legislation, which occur invariably in that order. T h i r d , "the movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract."49 LIKE

Maine learned how to apply the theory of evolution to human institutions from the German historical school which followed in the wake of K. F. Eichorn and F. K. von Savigny. 60 His reliance on scientific observation and his desire to formulate general laws are in the temper of his milieu, and Sir Frederick Pollock's summary suggests the aspect of his work which was most striking to students of literature. He showed . . . that legal ideas and institutions have a real course of development as much as the genera and species of living creatures, and in every stage of that development have their moral characters. . . . 5 1 W H A T P L A C E would the division of literature into genres have in the setting of these concepts? In general, the approach would be historical and evolutionary. Each type would be determined by its history, not by

s6

The "Types Approach" to Literature

abstracted formulae. T h e later, more complex forms would be expected to develop out of larger, simpler, and earlier ones. This evolution would be understood to depend, not on a succession of individual creators, but on the development of a society. Categories previously considered absolute and authoritative now came to be understood as historical, and contingent for their validity upon extra-literary factors. T h e establishment of a hierarchy within genres and among genres was no longer the aim of the classifications. It became, instead, the comprehension of the traditions behind the work of art and the relating of them to social changes. This transformation broke down the earlier concept of genres as pre-determined art-forms and emphasized the dependence of changes in a genre upon many influences. T h e acceptance of a fixed order or rank for genres and the use of them to establish eternal standards of judgment gave way. Scholars used their knowledge of genre development to understand and appreciate a work within its tradition. In these new concepts of genres some scholars stressed the comparative method of studying literature and some the evolutionary interpretation of the history of literature. These are not the same thing, but they are commonly merged, rather uncritically, in teaching practices. Or too often in modern teaching they are both lost sight of and only a dogmatic classification by types remains. T h e scientific theory of evolution was established by the comparative method, and the comparative method became especially important in the study of intellectual phenomena when it seemed 52 successful in proving biological evolution. 63 As J . A. Symonds put it, W e have accepted the evolutionary theory for geology. . . . We have accepted it for biology. . . . T h e next question is, how \ve can apply it to the history of the human mind in social institutions, religions, morality, literature, art, language. 54 T h e mediating agency through which the idea of evolution was applied to literature was the concept of the evolution of society and social institutions. Some scholars made thoroughgoing attempts to relate the evolution of literary species to the growth of society as a whole. 66 T h e result was that intermingling of literary history with the social sciences and ethnology which led Mackenzie to regard literary studies as a "branch of anthropology." 66 T h e biological analogy in literary criticism was formulated by combining evolutionism and "comparativism." T h e theory of the evolution of literary species, or genres, seems to have resulted naturally from the

2: Genology Ascendant

27

synthesis of these two scientific tendencies with categories already accepted in scholarship. Specialized study of genres could take any of a number of turns: the genesis of a genre, the relation between dominance of certain genres and social developments, the evolution (youth, maturity, and old age) or— more simply—the history, of a genre. When Darwin's scientific theory of biological evolution was made public,BT the trend sharpened,68 and the theories became dogmatized.69 An over-simplified biological analogy became popular, in which all literature was considered a tremendous class, evolving through species, the separate genres of literature. Questions of parallels with biological theory were then prominent.90 Could one genre evolve into another? Was there a law of survival of the fittest among the genres? What was the origin of literary species? This point of the development is best exemplified, not in any American, but in two Europeans: John Addington Symonds of England and Ferdinand Brunetière of France. Unreasonable stress upon the biological analogy brought the whole evolutionary theory of genres to a head about the turn of the century, and the collapse was signalized by the equally extreme reaction of Benedetto Croce, who denounced the very concept of literary genres. These will be considered in the closing section of this chapter, on "The Rise and Decline of the Biological Analogy." The sketch of some American genologists which follows seeks to make clear the underlying direction of the various American genre scholars (or "genologists" 61 ) whom teachers and critics will want to consider first. If this account of origins is accurate, their major interests in genres should prove to be historical as well as scientific, and to include evidence (often indirect) of three factors. First, they should show the inspiration of German scholarship.62 Second, they should use evolutionary patterns, such as the assumption that complex forms have developed out of earlier, simpler, larger forms, and that literary evolution is closely related to national, or socio-political, evolution. Third, they should apply comparative methods of literary study, such as the understanding that literature is international, the attempt by inductive reasoning to find general laws of literature, and still the recognition throughout of the common human values embodied in literature. I I . S O M E AMERICAN GENOLOGISTS FRANCIS J A M E S CHILD, almost a legend now, was the first great American scholar to make an exhaustive scientific study of a literary genre. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads is his own most monumental

28

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

single achievement in literary scholarship and perhaps America's. In his career the tendencies under discussion are crystallized and put to work. Child studied in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century, just when literary research had developed into a science. T h e training he received there—as S. B. Hustvedt summarizes it—guided him for the rest of his life. From 1849 to 1851 he carried on his studies in Europe, particularly in the universities of Göttingen and Berlin, where he devoted his attention in great part to branches of philology. There can be no doubt that his stay in Germany had a determining influence on his later career. T h e r e he found the linguistic disciplines, not least in the Germanic field, in a state of forwardness which may be defined by the mere mention of the name of J a k o b Grimm. He found folklore, just becoming known in Europe under that title, in a place of honor won through decades of searching investigation, in which again the Grimm brothers had taken a signal part. He found medieval studies contesting for preeminence with the older humanities. German scholars, critics, and men of letters had for a long time been, and still were, occupied with the collection and the poetical use of their native tales, ballads, and songs. 63 Child's definitive collection of ballads, assembling all available English and Scottish popular ballads in all significant versions, was, in the words of G. L . Kittredge, "the fruits of these years in Germany." 6 4 It shows no superficial signs of following a pattern determined by evolutionary hypotheses. But even at the time of publication, Thomas Davidson (who had, in talking and writing, discussed Child's work with him 68 ) pointed out incisively that this canon of balladry was established "according to essential resemblances due to evolutionary connection" of the separate poems. " T h e author nowhere attempts to work out a science or theory of ballads, or to trace them to their source in the natural faculties of the human mind," Davidson admitted, in an analysis that was probably read by Child in manuscript. He does not even discuss the nature of the ballad, as distinguished from other species of popular literature, and rarely does he try to look for the origin of a ballad in an actual event. In spite of this, as we read the volume through, there grows upon us the conviction that, if what the author is doing for the ballads of Scotland and England . . . were done for the ballads of other countries, it would not be difficult to construct a theory, and a profoundly interesting one, of ballads.

2: Genology Ascendant

29

It was by comparative methods that Child carried out what Davidson called his "attempt to collect and classify, according to principles of evolution, a distinct portion of the folk-lore of a great people, and to show its connection with the corresponding portion of the folk-lore of other peoples." 6 6 His earlier edition of ballads 6 7 had already been distinguished by "the beginnings of that method of comparative study," Kittredge says, which was so fully developed in the final work. For Child's ultimate aim was to "determine, in the fullest manner, the history and foreign relations of every piece included in his collection. 6 8 " T h e result was what has been, perhaps too mildly, termed "a notable exemplar of the comparative study of literature." 6 9 W i t h o u t óvertly inducing general laws from his researches, C h i l d did amass materials from as widespread an area as possible. He undertook "to give every existing version of every popular English ballad, together with its comparative history, including an analysis of all forms in which the songs may appear on the continent of Europe, and an account of such traditions as may illustrate its principle traits." 70 T h e labors that these objectives demanded seem superhuman. Familiarity with previous collections of ballads was only the first requisite. T o Child, comparative study meant, as Hustvedt says, a detailed study of hundreds of versions and the painful collation of large numbers of them. It involved a careful study of the critical comments of preceding editors. It entailed an acquaintance with practically everything of pertinence that had appeared in print in some form or other, often in the remoter corners of little-known books and periodicals. It required exploration of the constantly broadening reaches of general folklore, of history, of ancient and modern literatures in many tongues. 7 1 O n l y the collection itself can be considered of greater significance than the variants, historical data, and other material which was gathered by these comparative techniques. 72 Child's concept of genres (insofar as a ballad is one) cannot be explicitly ascertained. 73 Yet from the one essay in which he discussed the topic directly 7 4 and from a synthesis, 76 not entirely successful, 76 of his more scattered remarks, his general position may be indicated. O r i g i n and history, as well as metrical structure and content, were essentials in Child's idea of a genre. A l t h o u g h he gave no definite answers to questions of authorship, transmission, and classification, he was plainly concerned, in matters of theory, more with these questions than with any others.

go

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

He regarded the ballad, in W. M. Hart's synthetic paraphrase, as a distinct species of poetry, which precedes the poetry of art, as the product of a homogeneous people, the expression of our common human nature, of the mind and heart of the people, never of the personality of an individual man, devoid, therefore, of all subjectivity and self-consciousness.77 That the more complicated forms of poetry were preceded by the simpler, less differentiated forms, and that the evolution from the earlier to the later paralleled developments in national civilization, were assumptions which are implied in many of Child's statements. It is undeniable that he believed in the existence of genres, depending, in origin and history, upon the development of the people as a nation, yet expressing what all nations have in common—in his own words, "what is permanent and universal in the heart of man." 78 CHILD'S DISCIPLE, Francis Barton Gummere, studied in Germany from 1878 to 1881. His teachers included Curtius, Warnke, T e n Brink, and Hermann Grimm. T h e doctoral dissertation he wrote for the University of Freiburg applied, he said, the "rigorously inductive method of examination" 79 which Gummere, instinctively scientific, pursued in all his later work. It was, however, Child's influence, J. M. Manly indicates, that guided his studies.80 T h e handbook of poetics which Gummere published five years after his doctorate (1886) also stressed "scientific" investigation. One reviewer, J. M. Hart, complained that the author spent too much space on a problem of comparative literature. 81 But in allying himself with German scholarship and in adopting a comparative literature approach, Gummere indicated special sources for the pattern that any book on poetics was likely to take: division by genres. A t this time, he seems to have considered lyric, epic, and drama as classifications which were based on subject-matter. All the other genres he made subdivisions of these.82 In Germanic Origins (1892) Gummere gave a better idea of what he would be known for in the future—those problems of the relationship between literature and society which are now more often investigated by anthropologists and ethnologists than by English teachers. This analysis of the cultural descent of the English people was followed in two years by Old English Ballads, in which he told still more about his concept of a genre. Setting aside romantic views on the ballad in favor of the findings of scientific German philology, he announced as the task of

2: Genology Ascendant

31

modern poetics "the question of what poetry was and where it began." Preoccupied with that subject, he found the essential gauge of a genre in its genesis. T h i s he sought in social developments. 83 Gummere soon attempted, by comparative methods, to trace the evolution of lyric, drama, and epic in their earliest manifestations, and to correlate their growth with that of society. Surveying the whole human field of primitive poetic production, he observed the facts in common, recorded them, classified and compared them, to arrive at essential laws of literary evolution. Subject-matter was still Gummere's basis for dividing literature into three main classes. Each subdivision was interpreted as embodying some particular characteristic of human nature and as understandable only by tracing expressions of that characteristic back to the time of their disappearance in larger, less differentiated phenomena. T h e charted curve of the data thus obtained would show loss or gain in any given form by which this characteristic has made itself known. . . . T h e way to treat the ballad for historic, comparative, and genetic purposes is to separate it into its elements, and to follow these elements back to the point where they vanish in the mists of unrecorded time. 84 When he did discuss the ballad "as a distinct literary type," 86 therefore, Gummere tried to gain a formula of difference for poetic evolution, from the simple communal type to the more artistic and complicated structure of today, mainly in terms of the growth of sentiment and of suggestive imagination, two passions that maintain a joint sovereignty in modern verse. 96 Similarly, his translations of examples of the epic are accompanied by references to the nature of the epic, to poems as expressions of culture, and to conjectures on origins. 87 Such methods were meant to be methods of research, not of criticism. Gummere was careful to keep the duties of scholarship distinct from those of judgment. T h e dispute about literary types, not yet lulled to rest, [he warned in 1904] loses its seeming contradictions as soon as we separate critical from scholarly interests. . . . T h e critic is right when he insists that the sense of values in a work of art should not be merged into mere questions of environment; the scholar is right when he protests that

32

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

discussions of artistic value, of personality, shall not close his view of cause and effect working in long ranges of literary evolution. 88 T h e importance of the genre idea in scholarship, however, Gummere continued to maintain. He based his concept on three premises: scientific, inductive, comparative methods; acceptance of the biological analogy in the evolution of literature; and the assertion that each genre of literature expresses "a distinct emotion common to mankind under certain conditions and experience of life." From these axioms Gummere drew his conclusion that investigations of the growth of poetry are far more fruitful when they do not merely classify by matter and subject, but take one of two directions. T h e first is to follow the function of poetry in expressing the "distinct emotion." T h e second is to study "a definite poetic or rather rhythmic form, irrespective of its emotional origins and of its emotional appeal," because "form and structure of verse survive in poetry, while the actual matter of it changes with the shifts and doublings of human interest from generation to generation." 89 BEFORE STUDYING in Germany in 1886-87, Charles Mills Gayley taught Latin at his alma mater, the University of Michigan. When he returned from Giessen and Halle in 1887, he became Assistant Professor of English and began presenting a course which "dealt with the laws of the great divisions of literature, and with the application of these laws to the great examples of epic, tragedy, etc., in all times and in all languages."90 For Gayley the study of genres depended on the idea of literary evolution and scientific, inductive methods of comparison. His aim, similar to Gummere's, was to observe and to register the characteristics and evolution of the genre. "In time, by systematization of results, and induction to the common and therefore essential characteristics of the phenomenon, to the laws governing its origin, growth, and differentiation, may be made. . . ." In the field of literary research he eagerly included folklore. Like Gummere, Gayley had anthropological interests. "The specific principles of technical (or typical) criticism must be based upon the characteristics of the type not only in well-known but in less-known literatures, among aboriginal as well as civilized peoples, and in all stages of its evolution." 91 T h e "genre" played a more important part in Gayley's concept of comparative literature than in Gummere's. He considered it one of the three major topics of investigation under comparative literature. T h e other two were movements and themes. In The Classic Myths in English Literature and Art (1893)92 the link between anthropology and genres

2: Genology Ascendant

33

in his attitude appeared as a result of his knowledge of Latin archaeology and his training in Germany philology. Both seem to have led him to a study of mythology in which he considered myths as genres and as anthropological data. Gayley was continually re-stating and expanding his ideas. T h e i r basic elements did not change essentially after this (1893), but he was willing to question their values. T h e evolutionary concept of literature, which he felt to be subsumed under the term "comparative literature," underlay Gayley's definition of genres. For him they were determined by their origin and evolution, according to scientific principles, correlated with sociological (or anthropological) progress and interpreted by the biological, Darwinian analogy. Ultimately, his basis for genres was psychological, " f o r the epic, lyric, and dramatic forms of expression have psychological reason for distinct organic existence." T h e major drawback to this approach in literary history, as Gayley saw it, was its inclination "to the emphasis of one type at a time, out of relation to others, to a repetition of historical and biographical material, and to neglect of the influence of synchronistic literature." 9 3 T h e study of genres as a subdivision of the comparative study of all literature was an idea which Gayley stressed later (1903). Writing for Atlantic Monthly on "What is 'Comparative Literature?' " he reiterated his hope that scientific induction might yield the secret of genres and of literature in general, by principles on which could be built a universal system for objectively appraising works of literature. He based this study and evaluation on a concept of literature as possessing determining elements of universal and timeless validity: By a constant factor are fixed the only possible moulds or channels of expression, and, therefore, the integral and primary types, as, for instance, within the realm of poetry, the lyric, narrative, and dramatic. By the presence of other factors, both inconstant, these types are themselves liable to modification. I refer, of course, to environment, that is to say, to the antecedent and contemporary condition of thought, social tendency, and artistic fashion; and to the associational congeries called the author. 94 T h e underlying rigidity apparent here was also indicated in the following year (1904), in his matured exposition of the genres: T h e different kinds of poetry . . . are determined by differences of subject-matter and of the channels through which that matter must pass in order to issue in expression. T h e subject-matter may be of objects, events, feelings, actions, or thoughts; and if these five dictated

34

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

each its special poetical form, we should have to say that there were respectively these kinds of poetry: the descriptive, the narrative, the presentative or lyrical, the dramatic, and the reflective. But since we can express ourselves only by one or more of three ways,—singing, saying, and acting,—it follows that no matter how many kinds of subject there may be, the main divisions of literary expression are, and must always be, Song (the early or the modern lyric, especially of feeling), Recital (the poem of events in time, narrative; or of objects in space, descriptive; or of thoughts, reflective), and Drama. T h e ballad, the pastoral, and the idyll combine qualities of two or more of these kinds. As for satirical, didactic, and philosophical verse, they are on the border line between poetry and practical literature. 95 Gayley may have been prompted thus to provide logical justification for what are, after all, empirical categories, by the post-Hegelian German aestheticians.96 Twenty years later (1920), although tending to modify his position, Gayley still believed that "types of a sort do exist." Repeating the quotation above on the possible channels of expression, he added, "The idea of a process by evolution may be unproved; but that some process, as by permutation, must obtain is recognized." 97 Finally, he published (with collaborators) English Poetry, Its Principles and Progress (1922). For this extensively annotated anthology, the selections were arranged chronologically but interpreted as types. Gayley organized his introduction by genres and preceded it with a preface in which he still maintained his original division of all literature into three parts: lyric, narrative, and drama.98 W H I L E Child, Gummere, and Gayley present nearly all the elements of the dominant theories of genres originated in the nineteenth century, other prominent scholars differed in their emphasis. Alastair St. Clair Mackenzie (then Head of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the State University of Kentucky), for example, in his Evolution of Literature (1911), agreed with these three major figures (and with Europeans like Taine and Symonds) in ascribing the origin and evolution of literature to social phenomena. Like Gummere, he stressed evolution and anthropology in his interpretation of comparative literature. Striving to make the study of literature scientific, he even called it a "branch of anthropology." Like Gayley, he thought of tracing "the evolution of a single literary type," and considered psychological factors among the criteria for genres:

2: Genology Ascendant

35

If we accept the time-honored division of mental phenomena as feeling, k n o w i n g or thinking, and volition, literature is ultimately reducible to three corresponding types, namely, lyric, narrative, and dramatic, the second of which usually dominates the two others in prose composition. O n c e again, there was the call for a more scientific criticism and the familiar reference to Brunetière. T h e issues of literary genres were, as we expect, among the foci of the book. Mackenzie's avowed technique for solving such problems was the comparative method, on a foundation of anthropology, "to investigate similar ethnic facts, apart from their historical c o n n e c t i o n . " " R i c h a r d G r e e n Moulton's The Modern Study of Literature100 (1915) discloses the principles which had supported his own conviction, twenty years earlier, that literary study (specifically, of the Bible) means study of genres. 1 0 1 In d o i n g so, it once more sums u p the general assumptions of American genology. Compare the following propositions, Moulton's basic ideas, with Herder's outlook: 1. T h e unity of literature: "an ever growing sense that the Nature which is being examined from so many points of view is one and the same." 2. T h e inductive or scientific method: the "instinct of verification by observation of the subject-matter." 3. T h e theory of evolution: "the differentiation by gradual process of specific varieties out of what was more general, and the reunion of species in new combinations." 1 0 2 M o u l t o n thus confirms the conclusions already demonstrated in the work of other men. L i k e them, he based universal assertions on limited evidence, simplified most diverse materials into an evolutionary pattern, and assumed a one-to-one correspondence in the development of literature and society. 108 III.

C O M P A R A T I V E L I T E R A T U R E AND G E N O L O G Y

AUTHORS, reviewers, and general theorizers of scholarly research have often insisted that genres cannot be studied except by the methods of comparative literature. Genre research has always been one of the chief techniques of the larger study. 104 O f t e n it has been called its most important technique. A t times the two have been completely identified w i t h each other. T h e relation between them demands detailed analysis. T h e first step is to examine the importance of comparative methods in

36

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

studying genres. T h e second is to see how genology may serve as an instrument for the comparative literature scholars. Sometimes it is the scholar himself who, like S. M. Tucker, concludes that "the comparative method forms the only sure guide" for studying "the evolution of literary types." 105 But reviewers of the piece of research may also criticize it from this point of view, either derogating it for not treating a genre as a problem of comparative literature, or praising it for having done so. Thus, one author is censured for not recognizing "the types method of treatment" as a "problem in comparative literature;" 106 another is regretfully admitted to have fallen short of "anything like a comparative point of view;" 107 a third is described as practically useless "to the student who wishes accurate information upon the development of the essay as a type," because he has not used the comparative method. 108 Others are commended for achieving "something of the comparative outlook that is so essential to the proper understanding of literary types," 109 or for making a genre study "a study in comparative literature and, as such, of great value for its comprehensive treatment." 110 Beyond the treatment of particular specimens, at the level of general theory, H. V. Routh has argued that "the forces and influences which, in different epochs, bring different genres into existence" can be investigated "only by a method of comparative study." 111 And F. W. Chandler has agreed that "any student engaged in tracing the similarities of works within a certain genre, or the process of evolution of a genre . . . is practicing the comparative study of literature." 112 Conversely, genology may deeply affect comparative literature. Arthur Richmond Marsh, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard, discussed definitions of comparative literature in 1896 and recognized that one widely accepted interpretation of the subject limited it wholly to genology, or "the investigation and classification of the different forms which literary or imaginative themes or motives have assumed in the literatures of various peoples." He himself preferred the wider view that literary origins, development, and diffusion were the materials of his field.113 Genology, of course, would cut across all three of these. A few have actually adopted the conception which Marsh merely recognized. Among those who have seen no difference between genre research and comparative literature as a whole, H. V. Routh discusses the "Future of Comparative Literature" as though genology were the sole approach to the subject. 114 More general is the view that the study of genres is only one of the principles and methods of comparative literature, though perhaps the

2: Genology Ascendant

37

most important. T w o broad tendencies of comparative literature have been distinguished since 1900, when they were defined by Gaston Paris. 1 1 6 From about 1880, we see the comparative study of literature moving in two different directions. T h e one strove to ascertain the elements and themes common to all literatures and to reduce them to their simplest terms, the sole variety being due to combination; that study allied itself closely with folklore and mythology. T h e other direction lay in the attempt to understand, describe and clarify the relations visible between the works of one nation and those of another; in the evolution of taste, expression, genres and sentiments, it discovered phenomena of borrowing. . . . 1 1 β Genology, however, seems really to cut across this dichotomy, since it relies both upon folklore and upon international movements. Within comparative literature the study of genres has been otherwise estimated as being variously the most important method, one of the most important methods, or merely one of many methods. J . S. Will bases his argument for the supremacy of genology as a technique of comparative literature on the assumption that "Only in the form does the significance of the terms of the great work of art become recognizable." He concludes that form is "the field in which the comparative method may be the most humanely effective in its results." 1 1 1 Without rating genology so highly as Will, Gayley is fully aware of its importance, placing it with themes and movements among the three main approaches to comparative literature. 1 1 8 He exemplifies the "comparatists" who makes genology not just one among many problems, and not, on the other hand, the major problem, but one of the few dominant problems. Others, not giving the study any special rank, simply include it among various concerns. Oscar James Campbell, for instance, lists, among the "typical comparisons of comparative literature," several questions on the laws, fortunes, and evolution of genres. 119 Even from within the comparative literature framework, there is more than one way of interpreting genres. Although George E. Woodberry and Joel Elias Spingarn were both editors of the Journal of Comparative Literature, their attitudes were not in harmony with Gayley's, or with one another's. Spingarn's full-face attack on the concept of genres, using an idealistic aesthetic, will be discussed later. Woodberry included, among five objects of attention for comparative literature, a generalized notion of form, not limited to genres as patterns of whole

38

The "Types

Approach"

to

Literature

works, but involving the details of style.120 When he did analyze the traditional genres, Woodberry worked from a conviction that "literature represents life in certain formal ways," and that therefore "some acquaintance with its traditionary forms is indispensable to the appreciation of its contents, while, besides, the pleasure of the forms themselves is a part of its real value." Woodberry combines these elements of his approach to literature in an exposition of genres as expressions of the common channels of l i f e emotion, action, thought: Emotion had thus prepared for it in the lyric poetry of all lands a ritual already written and established. Action, likewise, whose poetic form is epic and dramatic poetry, has a literature of war and passion that passes current everywhere; and thought, the third great form of experience, which is set forth in philosophy or science, sums up its formulas of knowledge and wisdom which serve equally in all languages. 121 I V . T H E R I S E AND D E C L I N E OF THE B I O L O G I C A L A N A L O G Y

the other leitmotiv which is recurrent throughout genology and which demands further analysis is the biological analogy. No American shows so clearly the effect of Darwinian evolution on studies of genres as do two European scholars, John Addington Symonds and Ferdinand Brunetière. Symonds, writing in the last decade of the nineteenth century, acknowledged continental origins for his theories and repeatedly suggested that they had been constructed by analogy with other scientific applications of evolution. 122 For Symonds, whom René Wellek declares "the most consistent 'evolutionist' in England," 123 the evolution of genres was the equivalent of the evolution of literature. He worked out a kind of inevitability for his concept of this evolution by associating it in the most direct way with the growth of the nation. The genre develops from elements of the national character. Since it appears to emerge spontaneously out of the nature of the people, it will move only with that. " T o create a new type, while the old one is existent, baffles human ingenuity, because the type is an expression of the people's mind, and has its roots deep down in the stuff of national character." 124 Symonds therefore charted the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of a genre as exactly parallel with similar events in the nation's history. BESIDES COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

He defined three stages in the evolution of a genre: emergence, ma-

2: Genology Ascendant

39

turity, and decline. A long period of vegetation precedes the brief blooming into masterpieces, which is succeeded by an inevitable decay. Symonds adopted this attractive metaphor, the biological analogy, for his study of the Elizabethan drama, "a rare specimen of literary evolution circumscribed within well-defined limits of time and place, confined to the conditions of a single nation at a certain moment of its growth." 1 2 6 Less widely know than Symonds, but influential in his day, Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, in Comparative Literature (1886), made the parallel between socio-political development and that of genres even closer than Symonds had: . . . with the development of the social unit in which the individual is placed, this author finds a corresponding differentiation of the literary medium from the primitive homogeneity of communal art, a gradual individualizing of the literary occasion and an evolution of literary forms. 1 2 8 T h e literature of the clan, for example, is supposed typically to be the choral song; the city commonwealth produces the dramatic spectacle; etc. Ferdinand Brunetière went further than anyone else in pressing the biological analogy. T h e tendencies his work represent were so extreme 1 2 7 that they ultimately provoked a violent response which completely denied the truth of genres. In the first of a series of lectures given in November and December of 1889 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris, Brunetière explained his program. Since applications of the theory of evolution had been successful in natural history, philosophy, and history, he wished to show its usefulness for literary history and criticism. In this attempt he considered five major problems: the existence of genres; the differentiation of genres; the stability of genres; the modification of genres; and the transformation of genres into other genres. H e tried to prove that genres must exist, because of the variety of literary media, aims, and personalities; that genres are differentiated by a process similar to that which differentiates species in nature, moving from the unified, simple, and homogeneous to the multiple, complex, and heterogeneous by the principle of the divergence of characters; that each genre has a period of maturity or perfection, towards which it rises and from which it declines; that genres are modified by factors of race, environment (geographical, social, historical), ^nd personality; and,

4o

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

finally, that genres are transformed by a kind of literary process of natural selection of those best able to survive. His problem was to show how a genre is born, grows up, reaches maturity, decays, and finally dies. 128 He wished to reduce his answer to a law or set of laws 129 governing the development of genres quite as though they were living beings. 130 T h i s was to be done, of course, by the comparative method, as in anatomy, physiology, philology, and mythology. Brunetière argued that each work of literature could be judged only by comparison with the perfect examples of works classified in the same literary tradition, that is, of the same genre. 1 3 1 He summed u p the aim of criticism as the judgment, classification, and explanation of wotks of literature and of art. 132 Each work, he said, is a moment in the evolution of its genre. These theories, woven into a well-defined methodology and applied with recognized success, 133 were used—seldom directly or as a whole system—by many others. 134 Even at first, however, comments on them were of qualified approval. 1 3 5 Under the borrowed scientific terminology,13® it was not easy to see that Brunetière was simply, as Elton Hocking says, "tracing the history of a genre, and 'locating' the various works in this history, by showing what novelties the works contain, what old elements have disappeared, and what permanent acquisitions have befallen the genre by the appearance of one or another work." 1 3 7 Edward Wright remarked the tendency "to encourage pedantry and to introduce a most disastrous confusion between the means and aims of science and the means and aims of art," 1 3 8 in spite of the obvious value of the method for establishing a continuity in literary history. Gayley acknowledged Brunetière's bold statement of the biological analogy, but warned that much more substantiation was needed, and that there was good cause to "become apprehensive lest the parallel be overworked." 1 3 9 Disapproval quickly became more common. As Brightfield traces the events, it did not take long to realize that "the subject matter of biology is entirely different in character from that of literary criticism," and that "in transferring a principle from one field to another there is marked danger of the fallacy of false analogy," for "if the principle is not basically literary, it will not adequately explain a work of literature." 1 4 0 Almost every major critic since 1890, Hocking finds, seems to have "felt called upon to demolish Brunetière's system." 141 AMERICAN SCHOLARS w h o continued to believe in the value of developmental treatment in genre studies repudiated the biological analogy with more and more /orthrightness. T h e y complemented the character-

2: Genology Ascendant

41

istically genetic attitude, which had grown increasingly important through the work of Child, Gummere, Gayley, and others, by a critical and questioning awareness of it. Doubts began to be common early in the twentieth century. As early as 1900, Francis Hovey Stoddard was regretting the complications connected with the use of "evolution" in the title of his The Evolution of the English Novel because it "indicates that we can name the earlier forms out of which the true novel has been evolved; can arrange the novels in existence to illustrate the later development; and can trace the steps of the progress. . . ." This had indeed been, and was to be, at once the hope and axiom of many men; but Stoddard knew that "literature as a whole does not exhibit the regular and sequential development which a theory of literary evolution would imply." 1 4 2 A thoroughgoing criticism of the biological analogy was John Matthews Manly's "Literary Forms and the Origin of Species," published in 1907. "Literature," Manly reminded teachers and scholars, "is not a plant or an animal; it develops in accordance with laws of its own existence." While he did not wish to disregard the importance of the theory of evolution, he thought it "equally undesirable that in our attempts to understand the processes of life we should accept for our own particular problem a formula whose only claim to attention is that it seems to solve another problem." He showed that certain genres could not have "come into existence by insensible gradations" 143 and used the biological theory of mutations, then new, to illustrate his argument, warning that scientific parallels to literary concepts were valuable as stimuli to research, not as explanations: . . . the new combinations of literature are not strictly analogous to those of biology, for they are combinations of previously existing elements; nor to those of chemistry, for they always betray their components; nor to those of physics, for they are after all not merely mixtures of the old elements, but new substances with new qualities and characters.144 Two years later, in 1909, John Preston Hoskins agreed in part with Manly's protest: Not only does the notion of slow and gradual change in the transformation of literary species form the underlying assumption in most historical investigations, but where specific formulations of theory have been attempted, they have been couched, almost without exception, in biological terms.148

42

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

Hoskins wished to retain the evolutionary interpretation of literary history, but to substitute psychological or biological terms. 146 But in 1912 John Erskine, expressing the leanings of a goodly fraction of American scholars, was willing to discard evolution altogether as a means of defining genres. Regarding poetry as an "unchanging function of an unchanging life," Erskine contended that the evolutionary historian had "failed to add to our knowledge of poetry." 1 4 7 T h e desire to preserve the practical value of a genetic and dynamic approach to genres, without submitting to pseudo-scientific formulae copied from anatomy, botany, and biology, is still apparent in an impressive number of scholars. 148 Ashley H. Thorndike's expression of it is representative: We need not press hard the biological analogy that gives . . . literary forms . . . an evolution like that of the physical species, and yet we may still seek to find causes and laws of development for literary phenomena. 149 A less cautious revaluation of the assumptions underlying all attempts to give more than nominal significance to classifications of literature emanated from Italy in 1900, when Benedetto Croce wrote the definitive denunciation, aimed directly at Brunetière and based on philosophical grounds.

3 The Mutations of Genology I . A PHILOSOPHICAL CONTROVERSY T H E O B J E C T I V I T Y of literary kinds is frankly maintained by Ferdinand Brunetière, who looks on literary history as 'the evolution of kinds,' and gives sharply defined form to a superstition which, seldom confessed so truthfully or applied so rigorously, survives to contaminate modern literary history.1

Croce's approach to the problem is exactly the opposite of Brunetière's. The inductive, scientific attitude of empiricism which English literary scholars found in Herbert Spencer, and French scholars in Auguste Comte, Croce opposes with the tradition of Plato, Kant, and Hegel, making mind the reality. From this point of view, he considers art as pure intuition-expression, indivisible and unique. A supreme idealist, Croce admits no compromise. Only two things matter in criticizing a work of literature: . . . its purity, that is to say, its freedom from the presence of practical elements—such for instance as the desire to insinuate into the work motives that have nothing to do with art (hatred, sensuality)— and the uniqueness of the intuition by which it is itself and does not become confounded with any other work of art. There should be no seeking for the type in the work of art, but rather the search for an individual with a world of his own to express. For him, therefore, to use Ainslie's words, "empiricism or the creation of abstract classes for practical ends"2 is an intrusion into aesthetic and literary theory. A book may have more or less intuition-expression, but not a variety of it. Unless works of art are considered as something other than works of art, they cannot be divided into different forms.3 Croce did not evade the implications of his doctrine for research or for criticism. T o study a tragedy apart from the author's individuality— which alone gives it life—would be like considering the vitality of one organ of the body, an arm or a foot, without relation to the rest. Un-

44

The "Types Approach"

to

Literature

restrainedly, he c o n d e m n e d " h i s t o r i a n s of art and literature, so m u c h fascinated w i t h these ideas of kinds, that they c l a i m e d to w r i t e the history, n o t of i n d i v i d u a l and real literary and artistic works, but of those e m p t y p h a n t o m s , their kinds. T h e y h a v e claimed to portray, n o t the e v o l u t i o n of the artistic spirit, b u t the evolution

of kinds." 4

T h e i m p l i c a t i o n s of this thesis w e r e devastating for others as w e l l as for B r u n e t i è r e . It discarded countless literary battles as pointless a n d seemed to abolish w h o l e realms of literary criticism for the a v e r a g e scholar. W h a t , indeed, was left for the teacher and c o m m e n t a t o r ? It was easy to find dissenters a m o n g those w h o read Croce's message. 6 C o x characterized them thus: S o m e reject it f r o m a fear p e r h a p s of seeing their means of l i v e l i h o o d c u r t a i l e d ; others f r o m a fear of b e i n g cast adrift w i t h n o other g u i d e for their course b u t their d e a d r e c k o n i n g w h i c h they must w o r k o u t f o r themselves. C o m p a r t m e n t a l m i n d s will c l i n g to the n o t i o n of genres because they find such terms indispensable to their dialect; b e i n g u n a b l e to conceive of a g i v e n w o r k as content, they must needs r e f e r t o it as a novel, a d r a m a , a lyric.® E c h o e s of C r o c e b e g a n early a n d c o n t i n u e d to reverberate internat i o n a l l y . K a r l Vossler wrote in a M u n i c h newspaper s u p p l e m e n t , at the b e g i n n i n g of September, 1902, that the Italian p h i l o s o p h e r had discovered a n d taken possession of a n e w A m e r i c a of aesthetics. 7 W i t h the heartiest a p p r o v a l he repeated Croce's assertion that the division of art i n t o abstract classes like c o m e d y , idyll, and genre p a i n t i n g , is a purely l o g i c a l process, a n d has n o t h i n g to d o w i t h i n t u i t i o n (—or expression, or artistic creation). H e c o n d e m n e d " t h e error—still

flourishing—of

'the

d o c t r i n e of literary kinds,' w h i c h w o u l d draw u p fixed rules and forms f o r epic, c o m e d y , idyll, and so o n . " 8 L a t e i n F e b r u a r y , 1903, A . B. W a l k l e y , a d r a m a critic w h o m C r o c e influenced,

talked in L o n d o n a b o u t the difference b e t w e e n " d o g m a t i c "

a n d " i m p r e s s i o n i s t i c " critics. H e took B r u n e t i è r e as typical of the first g r o u p , w h i c h he supposed to aim at " u n d e r s t a n d i n g , . . . not f e e l i n g . " T h e pleasure for the critic of this sort is to classify, and to compare. Such-and-such a play belongs to this or that d r a m a t i c f a m i l y , or h o l d s a certain r a n k in the d r a m a t i c hierarchy. . . .

It is always a

classification this critic gives y o u , a classification to accord w i t h general ideas of art, sociology, or ethics. . . .* T h e d o g m a t i c critic, of w h o m W a l k l e y disapproved m u c h m o r e than he d i s a p p r o v e d of the impressionistic critic, c o n t i n u a l l y uses rules, tradi-

The Mutations of Genology

45

tion, to back up his judgments. In spite of this, he cannot deny that "his general classifications are subjective, for the simple reason that no two critics have ever chosen exactly the same set." 1 0 In France, also, heavy artillery was levelled against Brunetière. Albert Schinz, in 1905, wrote (as Croce had written) of the "superstition" of genres. 11 He found that no order at all was preferable to what he called the essentially false arrangement by genres. Although during the classical period of Greek culture and the Middle Ages the correspondence between pattern and materials was such that one might be predicted from the other, Schinz claimed, there has been no such parallel since the Renaissance. He dismissed what evolution Brunetière pretended to see in genres as merely the reflection of general literary history. While one literary form may often express specific artistic tendencies better than another, there will always be plenty of reasons for not being restricted wholly to one genre. T h e origin of the "superstition" he so energetically deplored, Schinz attributed to France herself. Five years later Joel Elias Spingarn blamed it on the Italians of the sixteenth century. Otherwise, however, Spingarn agreed with Schinz. Although in 1902, in the first American review of Croce's Esletica,12 Spingarn had passed over the theory of genres as "idiosyncratic," 1 3 it had taken him little more than a year "to realize the significance of a friend's work." 1 4 But this realization remained with him for decades. His public lecture of March, 1910, on literary criticism, proclaimed We have done with the genres, or literary kinds. Their history is inseparably bound up with that of the classical rules. Certain works of literature have a general resemblance and are loosely classed together (for the sake of convenience) as lyric, comedy, tragedy, epic, pastoral, and the like; the classicists made of each of these divisions a fixed norm governed by inviolable laws. . . . But no sooner was the law enunciated than it was broken by an artist impatient or ignorant of its restraints, and the critics have been obliged to explain away these violations of their laws, or gradually to change the laws themselves. Spingarn admitted that poets might intend to write in special genres, but he denied that the value of their work was in any way dependent on such intentions. They simply "express themselves, and this expression is their only form. There are not, therefore, only three, or ten, or a hundred literary kinds; there are as many kinds as there are individual poets." T h e deadliest confusion is the assumption that the critics' classifications—conveniences as arbitrary as classifications by size of books—

46

The "Types Approach" to Literature

have behind them any law of art to which poets must conform or by which poems may be evaluated. 1 ® Spingarn's negative platform was clear. He consciously opposed not only the idea of genres but all men and concepts associated with it or from which it derived its authority. Like Walkley, he divided criticism into dogmatism and impressionism, associating the idea of genres with dogmatism. He also warned, as his positive program, that true criticism must unite both tendencies, judgment and enjoyment, "judgment erecting its edicts into arbitrary standards and conventions, enjoyment lost in the mazes of its sensuous indecision." 1 6 T h e real critic, he said, first discovers the aim 1 7 of the work of art, and then decides how fully that aim has been achieved. "What has it expressed and how completely?" 18 Conservative American scholars and critics welcomed Spingarn's message no more than Croce's. "His assault on the criticism by genres," Herbert E. Cory protested, "is wantonly destructive of a method that has brought us views penetrating as often as pedantic." 1 9 Less defensively, James Wilson Bright retorted to Spingarn, "But 'the kinds' will persist. T h i s is, in the terms of the biologist, merely the recognition of the persistence of the 'species.' . . . It is sufficient in literary history to note the guidance, control, and stimulation due to the recognition of 'the kinds.' " 2 0 Nor were Spingarn's numerous reiterations of Croce's thesis very effective. " H a v e we done with the study of the genres}" Bliss Perry snapped back in 1914, I should say that the success of series of books like the "Channels of English Literature" or the "Types of English Literature" 2 1 prove [sic] how fertile and stimulating a field for criticism was opened a score of years ago by the talent of Brunetière. 22 Commenting on Perry's comments, a leading editorial in The Dial recalled that Such foolish vaporings as were indulged in a few years ago by Mr. Joel Spingarn met with our vehement 23 denial. When that iconoclastic gentleman asserted that "we have done" with all the old rules and methods, we replied, as Mr. Perry now replies, that "we have done nothing of the sort." 24 Spingarn did not back down. He saw the philosophical system behind the theory of genres and struck out at the man whom he considered Brunetière's American disciple, Irving Babbitt. In Babbitt, as in Brunetière, he discerned "the same confused dualism which attacks scientific

3-· The Mutations of Genology

47

positivism in literature and which in the very same breath defends the wholly positivistic theory of the literary genres." Spingarn analyzed Babbitt's "wailing cry" for "set genres" as part of an unclear complex of traditionalism, moralism, and insensitivity to imaginative creation. " H e is a defender of tradition, an historian of ideas and tendencies, a moralist, a popularizer of general ideas: anything and everything, in fact, except a critic or a student of criticism."2® Babbitt protested that, however valid his designation as an American Brunetière might be (he took it as a compliment), he did not, like Brunetière, ground his attitude primarily on tradition, but on a profound human impulse toward self-discipline. T h i s impulse, deeper than reason or emotion, kept criticism above anarchy, in part—Babbitt implied—through the retention of formal distinctions. 26 T o Spingarn's response that the essence of art is expression, discipline being of secondary importance, 2 7 Babbitt retorted that a complete definition of art must include "the power to curb or control the passion for expression and impose upon it form and symmetry with reference to some adequate end." 2 8 A s early as 1897, Babbitt had expressed these ideas in an essay on the very Brunetière with whom Spingarn, more than fifteen years later, was to identify him. In the Frenchman's work he saw the broader issues which were central to his own use of genres: opposition to formless impressionism, belief in the existence of a disciplined essential self common to all humanity, separation of man from animal, submission of men to intuitive forces superior to mere observation. Keenly critical of both Brunetière's idealism and his evolutionism, Babbitt found the scholar's originality in his attempt to unite these t w o by " a n absolute based on the unity of the human spirit as it has manifested itself in history." 29 T h i s traditionalism and strong historical sense, when combined with Brunetière's scientific leanings, said Babbitt, had led to the attempt to prove that there is an evolution of literary genres very similar to that of biological species. T e n years later Babbitt read his own problems even more clearly into Brunetière's work and was yet more critical. H e now saw the other man searching, like himself, for fixity in a flux, "for a standard and definite discipline that he might oppose to this universal laxity and self-indulgence." T h e principle of restraint which gave rise to his theory of genres, Brunetière had found, Babbitt still said, in tradition alone. But Babbitt rephrased his own, less rigid, standard for distinctions as one like Emerson's, opposing both the pure impressionism of Anatole France and the blind dogmatism of Brunetière:

48

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

Emerson would assert a standard that is both within and without the individual. T h e standard is entirely outside, according to Brunetière. According to M. France, there is no standard at all, but only universal illusion and relativity. 80 T h e clash between Babbitt and Spingarn over the reality of literary genres involved not only opposing theories of literature and esthetics but whole philosophies. " A n inquiry into the nature of the genres and the boundaries of the arts ramifies out in every direction, and involves one's attitude not merely toward literature but life," Babbitt declared. 81 Thus, he supplemented his evaluation of Brunetière and his refutation of Spingarn by an attack on Croce in the same terms. T o Babbitt the problem of the genres was only one aspect of the supreme question in philosophy: permanence versus change, being versus becoming, one versus many. T h e result of Croce's failure to see the One in the Many and so to impose standards upon the flux is a weakening or obliteration of boundaries. In his central trend indeed he may perhaps best be defined as a neo-Hegelian confusionist. He not only denies the validity of genres in literature and art, but finally identifies religion with philosophy and philosophy in turn with history. 32 Where Walkley and Spingarn had contrasted dogmatic with impressionist criticism, Babbitt saw the conflict as judicial against impressionist criticism. 83 T h i s dichotomy, for him, was the same as the battle between judgment and sympathy, or between the masculine principle and the feminine. According to Babbitt it was not enough to know the artist's aim and the success with which that aim had been achieved: the critic must also ask "whether the aim is intrinsically worth while. He must, in other words, rate creation with reference to some standard set both above his own temperament and that of the creator." 34 Babbitt's The New Laokoon; an Essay on the Confusion of the Arts (compare Spingarn's essays on "the Unity of Genius and Taste"35) appeared in 1910, though it had been developing in lectures since 1902. In this book Babbitt's aim was to study confusions of the arts as well as of the genres within each art. He recognized the problem as one of comparative literature, and he therefore used materials from several national literatures (mainly English, German, French, and Italian), classifying and comparing many specific examples to get at some pertinent generalizations. As his study was not meant to be a systematic application of doctrines, 3 ® but rather a survey of leading ideas, Babbitt did not present in

_j.· The Mutations of Genology

49

each.87

it a careful chart of the genres with a list of rules for What he did was to focus a preliminary historical survey on Lessing's Laokoön, interpreted as an attempt to resolve confusions of the arts caused by neoclassical esthetic theory, and then to try, on his own, to show that even greater confusion had been caused by the romantic emphasis upon feeling. " T h e neo-classicists confuse the arts objectively (usually in terms of painting), and the romanticists confuse them subjectively (frequently in terms of music)." In modern times, Babbitt saw the extremes as impressionism, or complete disregard of all boundaries, and dogmatism, or willful assertion of arbitrary limits. In another form these poles were represented by romantism and pseudo-science (e.g., Brunetière's évolution des genres). Babbitt wished to rise above both these antitheses and to find a "humane" flexibility which recognized the need for clear distinctions, yet kept them fluid: "a clear-cut type of person, a person who does not live in either an emotional or an intellectual muddle, will normally prefer a clear-cut type of art or literature." Where Spingarn and Croce stressed the need for freedom from rules and genres, to let intuition express itself in art, Babbitt stressed the need for rules and genres, to prevent flux and confusion from depriving us of all standards, in life as in art. In a word, if confusion has crept into the arts, it is merely a special aspect of a more general malady, of that excess of sentimental and scientific naturalism from which, if my diagnosis is correct, the occidental world is now suffering. 38 But what influence The New Laokoon might have had was vitiated, Cory said, by "that judicial faculty which Professor Babbitt would seem to over-emphasize himself in spite of his admirable analysis of its excesses in Brunetière." 39 More important than this, Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas have suggested, was his essential wrongness. As they showed, Babbitt was not precise enough to impress scholars nor simple enough to influence the general public. His generalizations were sloppy, they insisted, and his definitions incorrect. His style was diffuse without being easy, wordy but not accurate. Perhaps, said George Boas, he would have served his aims and his ideals better by silence. 40 II. ANTHROPOLOGICAL

ANSWERS

E N T I R E L Y A P A R T from the arguments of literary men, a scientific answer to the question of genres came from the anthropologist Franz Boas and his pupils. Their conclusions resolved the antitheses of Babbitt,

50

The "Types Approach" to Literature

Spingarn, and earlier scholars by transcending them. The new approach leading to this reconciliation was the scientific study of primitive man from an intra-cultural as well as from a comparative viewpoint. A traditional method in comparative literature and in ethnology had been to compare one literature with another regardless of emotional, social, and economic origins or associations. But when investigators looked into the dependence of each group's literary expression upon other activities of the same group, new facts emerged. Such a cultural analysis of primitive literatures showed, even fifty years ago, that they are as varied as the peoples producing them. So are the genres of literature. For a genre is a shifting complex of shifting traditions, changing as convention, author, and public interact. The epic itself, Bernard Bosanquet insists, is but a name, "taken from the Iliad and Odyssey par excellence, and every subsequent epic has in fact been a new species, differing from these and from all the rest in significance, in national import, and in conditions of genesis."41 T o the anthropologically minded modern teacher, the vast historical interdependence of European civilization does make a few generalizations possible on the nature of genres in western literature. But the worldwide view, which the effects of the second World War have forced upon teachers warns that no single law will fit every chip of the material. The anthropologist, concerned with all cultures, finds that only the broadest categories—epic, lyric—work for more than one literature. ' (To be sure, "one literature" may be as gigantic as the spread from Greece to Sweden or as minute as that of the Australian aborigines.) Literary values are no more general than other values. Least of all is it true that what is great art for one culture will be so for another, or that the origins and histories of similar works of art in different societies need be the same. The genres to which Europeans and Americans are accustomed have no existence independent of their material and background. They are not implicit in the nature either of literature or of the human mind. They cannot be considered as "necessary steps in the development of literary form," says Franz Boas, "but occur only under certain conditions." 42 Anthropologists themselves differ, of course, in their emphasis on diffusion as a factor in the spread of specific forms of literature. But most of them would probably agree with Sapir that the forms of literature in various languages must vary according to the respective characters, structures, and idioms of those languages.43 The best demonstration of this fact is the limited distribution of the genres. In Africa, Asia, and Europe, riddles and proverbs are so common

The Mutations

of Genology

51

as to seem instinctive. Yet neither of these is found—with some extremely rare exceptions—among the Indians of North America. Less striking illustrations could be selected among other genres. If they had any innateness, of course, such genres would be as universal as literature.44 Furthermore, the European categories cannot be imposed upon nonEuropean material. Forcible imposition profoundly distorts the actual condition of the literature. Investigating American Indian myths, Gladys A. Reichard agrees that "it would be helpful if we could take the myth-productions as we find them, and classify them as ballad; as lyric, epic, didactic, or dramatic poetry; as drama, novel, or romance." But she regrets that "the aid which such a classification could give must be denied; for we are dealing with productions differing greatly from our own, the work of minds which think in varied terms. . . . T o master their speech is to revise completely our thought-processes. It will readily be seen, then, how false an English classification of primitive literature would be." Finally, there are no universal laws of literary development. The theory that "the literary phase of cultural development had a universal origin, growth, and purpose . . . could be supported," according to Professor Reichard, "only by the elimination of much material, and hence cannot be accepted."46 All that can be said is that the genres of literature in an area depend upon local circumstances. That each "people and age has not only its peculiar style but its òwn literary types, such as sonnets, odes, lyrics, essays, romances," is the conclusion of Robert Harry Lowie, professor of anthropology at the University of California. He adds that preference for one kind or another cannot be predicted on general principles. Epics might be expected only on higher levels. But though really not found among the simplest Siberians, they are also lacking in China; on the other hand, these elaborate poetical narratives loom large in the literature of Europe and the Asiatic nomads.46 But if there are no universal laws for either the development or the value of genres, what are genres? Genres are cultural phenomena. They can be fully understood and appreciated only within the traditions of which they are a part. The simplest illustration is the immediate matching of a kind to an occasion typical of the culture. Boas gives examples from the Kwakiutl Indians' songs. When the occasions of singing are varied we find commonly distinctive types of song for every one of these . . . children's songs which the

52

The "Types Approach" to Literature

father or mother sings, letting the child dance on the arms; love songs, generally sung in chorus by the young men walking up and down the street; feast songs praising the greatness of the host; war songs; and various types of ritual songs sung in their religious ceremonies. T h e types are clearly distinct and easily recognizable. They are built on a common principle, but each has its own style.4T This use of a specific kind of literature for a specific social function is probably the beginning of all genres. Thus Morris W. Croll speaks of them as "products of social conditions which happen at certain historical moments to converge in a certain manner." 4 8 A pattern of culture is much more pervasive in this regard than the instance of the Kwakiutls might suggest. In narrative it has "a far-reaching effect not only upon the contents but also upon the form. . . . T h e motives of action are determined by the mode of life and the chief interests of the people, and the plots give us a picture of these." Ultimately, Boas adds, that elusive aspect of a genre, its structural form, is involved: " T h e differences of cultural life also influence the form of the narrative, because the incidents are tied together in different ways." 49 Summarizing similar observations, Clara Ehrlich concludes that differences caused by cultural, or tribal, outlook show up "in themes, in mythological concepts, in plot motivation, and the like, and these differences give the folklore of each tribe its unique flavor despite the common use of many identical elements and the common possession of a large number of cultural traits." 50 It is possible to divide the literary products of other people into valid genres, therefore, if preconceptions are completely dismissed. It is impossible, for example, to use the European notion of myth to describe sections of the literature of American Indians. Yet, from the Indians' own point of view, Boas reports, "there exists almost always a clear distinction between two classes of tales. One group relates incidents which happened at a time when the world had not yet assumed its present form, and when mankind was not yet in possession of all the customs and arts that belong to our period. T h e other group contains tales of our modern period. In other words, tales of the first group are considered as myths; those of the other, as history." 61 Thus, as historical phenomena, kinds can be determined, but only within their cultural context. T h a t is the answer of modern anthropology to the question of genres. None of this conclusion is intended to slight the effects of cultural diffusion, interaction, borrowing, and imitation, of course, in the estab-

y: The

Mutations

of Genology

53

lishing of certain dominant types. Nevertheless, it works to deny universal or pure types and archetypes. Love, anger, loyalty may be universal human emotions, but they do not find the same kinds of expression in all cultures. III.

R E C E N T T R E N D S OF O P I N I O N

Babbitt defended genres with French philosophical criticism, and Spingarn opposed them with Crocean idealism, common academic opinion in America has been represented by such views as Morris W . Croll's agreement with the analysis made above, that "the genres have no natural or necessary character," but are "products of social conditions which happen at certain historical moments to converge in a certain manner." 52 Through the traditions which are embodied in the notion of a genre, the writer makes himself comprehensible to the society which is habituated to them and which would be confused by wholly unexpected patterns. Here, Harold Elmer Mantz points out, WHILE

lies one of the reasons for the existence and for the use of types: the conscious conforming by the artist, on beginning, to a convention which will render his work more readily understood by others, and which, if adhered to, doubtless restricting the free play of his personality, is on the other hand likely to save the whole from futility by putting it into a certain consonance with general experience.®3 That this process is not in one direction, but is an interaction, is explained by Norman Holmes Pearson, for whom forms may be regarded as institutional imperatives which both coerce and are in turn coerced by the writer. He is coerced by form, both through its traditional associations and by the force with which it repels or attracts public approval. That is, the problem of the writer is not only what he would like to do but also what the public insists shall be done. In a wider sense, form has been considered the essence of literature by many scholars. Pearson's declaration that "Literature is form," 64 for example, echoes Joseph T . Shipley's suggestion, which he derives from the Italians of the Renaissance, that form itself is the subject-matter of poetry. 65 T h i s means that the creative writer aims not merely to represent experience, but to give it a particular shape, an order or unity achieved by selecting materials from a unique point of view. T h e techniques for doing so must be accepted or appreciated by the readers. T h u s the social aspect is involved. Each writer, however, makes some minor or major change in the inherited techniques. And thus the process of

54

The "Types Approach" to Literature

interaction is involved. J . Livingston Lowes' formulation of this dynamic relationship between writer and reader has already been reviewed. Some scholars, like Woodberry, have so generalized the notion of genres as traditionally accepted techniques of ordering experience that they have associated a few great genres with divisions of life, and would make each genre the typical expression of specific emotions or acts. Austin Warren, from a non-historical viewpoint, would base the structure of the genres upon "the special emotional attitude" which he intimates each may express and "seek to arouse in the reader." Be Kenneth Burke deals with them as symbolic structures, expressing the adjustment of a society to its universe. Each genre, he believes, "stresses its own peculiar way of building the mental equipment (meanings, attitudes, character) by which one handles the significant factors of his time."" The possibility that the interactive process which changes the complex of traditions embodied in the genre may not be by chance, but may undergo a recognizable evolution, is still not entirely rejected. René Wellek speaks for those investigators who, while repudiating the "analogy of species in nature," believe it may still be possible to describe an orderly history of a genre in terms of ideal forms which an historical series of literary works approaches or from which it recedes.68 Condemnations of the use of genres have become more common in recent years. A. G. Van Rranendonk expressed the attitude of antipathy which a few have for any application of literary "science" in genre research when he ridiculed the notion (which he attributed originally to Moulton) that "nothing is so helpful to the understanding and enjoyment of a work of art as a thorough-going, exhaustive analysis of all its parts."69 If the "science" is literary history, such men sigh with Lewis F. Mott's relief to discover that an author "has no rigid system. Works of literature are not classified like the stuffed animals and fossils of a museum, nor are they made to serve as premises for scientific generalizations. . . ," 60 William T . Brewster (1913) regards many genre studies as bad inductions based on a prejudiced selection of materials.®1 Not unusually, now, the argument becomes still more direct, as in Harold S. Jantz's unmitigated cry of havoc on the "popular make shift method of arrangement according to literary genre, which tends to wrench apart all natural relations between contemporaries. Genre is a non-historical literary factor, and should be treated as such in literary history."62 The change in orientation of genre research since Gayley's questions of 1899 is plain when these are compared with the rather modest prob-

3·· The Mutations

of Genology

55

lems in the literary history of a genre which Archer Taylor poses forty years later: W h a t conventions in form and matter characterize the genre? W h a t are its beginnings? W h a t are its relations to contemporary culture? What periods can we distinguish in its history? W h a t writers are typical representatives of the various periods or of the transitions from one period to another? Can we trace the rise and decline of the the genre or of certain aspects and conventions within it?68 Edwin Greenlaw's casualness in remarking (1931), "Genre studies, once popular, are exhausted" 64 betokens a situation in America similar to that which in Europe provoked Paul Van Tieghem, author of La Littérature comparée (1931), to say that " T h e idea of genre is not in style just now."®5 A comprehensive survey of scholarly tendencies, nevertheless, would show that it is still far too early to close the account of genology, in Europe or in America. 68 I V . SERIES OF G E N R E STUDIES

IT WAS JUST when the doctrine of genres was beginning to be a favorite piece of shatter-practise for iconoclastic scholars that the effects of it on teaching in the colleges and universities became most apparent. Teachers who wished to organize courses of literary history in this way needed books which would synthesize and popularize the results of earlier research. These, in the form of series of genre studies, appeared from about 1895 to 1915· 67 The Types of English Literature, under the general editorship of W i l l i a m Allan Neilson, was announced in 1907.68 T h o u g h similar sets preceded and followed this one, it is the only important American project of its type during this period, and it therefore takes first place in the discussion. It was to include works on the ballad, the literature of roguery, the pastoral, the allegory, the essay, literary criticism, the short story, the masque, tragedy, the lyric, saints' legends, character writing, and the novel. "It is designed to include all the important literary species so that the series as a whole will constitute a fairly comprehensive survey of the contents of our literature." T h e comparative method would be employed, Neilson said, preparatory to "a similar ordering of material . . . in the other European literatures." T h e preface to the first volume ends significantly in this way: So also must we postpone till the work is nearer completion the much debated question of the evolution of genres, and the validity in this discussion of the biological analogy. N o attempt in the present direction has yet been made on a scale sufficiently large to justify dogma-

56

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

tism as to the presence or absence of a clearly definable curve of evolution in the life-history of literary forms in English. A number of terms that seem to imply a belief in such a formal evolution have passed into the language of current criticism, and will doubtless appear in these studies. But the opponents of this theory may regard such terms as merely convenient figures of speech; not committing the writer to a prejudgment of the case for the debating of which he is at present only collecting evidence.89 In a letter Neilson has been more specific, analyzing the impulse behind the series: Without doubt an important part of the background came from the comparative literature movement. It [genre study] was very much in the air and when one came to deal with it in teaching one found the material very scattered. One or two genres were already recognized and had been treated in separate books—the drama, the novel, the epic. But there had been no attempt to classify the whole literature of any country on this principle and that was what I was aiming at. I think it is fair to say that all the participating scholars had a comparative point of view. . . . On the other hand the movement was strongly affected by the biological analogy. I remember that in seeking for a title for the series we discussed the use of "genres" and "species" and I recall consulting a distinguished botanist for the criteria used by the biologists in constituting a species. T h e biological analogy was for a time overstressed and led to a reaction against it. 70 There was some variety in aims among the individual writers, but their inner agreement is easy to establish. Gummere's aims in The Popular Ballad have already been discussed. An earlier draft of Frank Wadleigh Chandler's The Literature of Roguery (1907) had appeared among the Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature in 1899. Chandler had then wished to provide "a detailed or comprehensive view of the growth of the type and an indication of its historical place in the development of modern fiction.'"71 In the new book he had three main aims: first, to exhibit in its origins and organic growth a body of literature of considerable extent and intrinsic interest; secondly, to trace the development of anti-heroism in letters as reflecting the disintegrating play of the forces of evil in society; and thirdly, to exemplify a significant process and tendency in art. 72

3 · The Mutations of Genology

57

T h e underlying conception of the growth and unity of a genre, set in the growth and unity of literature, is plain. T h e comparative method was, of course, his only way of treating the material for the purposes stated. Ashley H. T h o r n d i k e , w h o had already discussed the drama as an evolving genre, 7 3 explained that he intended his Tragedy (1908) to trace the course of English tragedy from its beginnings to the middle of the nineteenth century, and to indicate the part which it has played in the history both of the theatre and of literature. . . . T h e aim of this series has been kept in view, and the discussion, whether of individual plays or of dramatic conditions, has been determined by their importance in the study of a literary type. 74 In 1913 Felix Emmanuel Schelling added The English Lyric to The Types of English Literature. W i t h o u t emphasizing the evolutionary aspect, Schelling did call his book an "account of the English lyric, its origin in early times and its progress through the ages to our day." 7 5 Gordon Hall G e r o u l d introduced Saints' Legends, the last book published in the series, w i t h still less stress upon continuous organic development (1916): . . . I have tried to write the history of saints' legends as one part of the survey of English literature to be presented by the series of which this volume is a member. 7 6 T h e ambitious program of The Types of English Literature was never completed. Of the projected thirteen volumes, only five appeared. " T h e sales of the series disappointed the publishers and the remaining volumes were never finished."77 O f these, Gummerce was omitted in the publisher's catalogue after 1929; the announcement, "Other volumes are in preparation," was dropped in 1931 ; Schelling has not been listed since 1933; and T h o r n d i k e and Chandler were apparently discontinued in 1940. SIMILAR COLLECTIONS were already under way in England and elsewhere, all under the aegis of comparative literature and adopting something of an evolutionary approach. C. H. Herford was general editor of The Warwick Library of English Literature,78 a series of anthologies with long critical introductions. T h e first volume, English Pastorals, edited by E. K. Chambers (1895), w a s prefaced by the general announcement that each member of the series would "be devoted to the history of some single literary g r o w t h " and that the whole set was intended, " a m o n g other things, to facilitate that comparative study of literature

58

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

whiçh is one of the secrets of critical wisdom and one of the springs of critical delight." 79 Letters, lyric poetry, masques, satires, tales in verse, essays, and criticism were the genres originally planned for. All except the promised English Letter-Writers, by Sir Walter Raleigh, did appear, within ten years. Some of the volumes of The Warwick Library were later reissued in The Casket Library by the same publishers. IN France, half a decade after the printing of Chambers' book, Léon Levrault set himself, almost single-handed, to the production of Les Genres littéraires (The Types of Literature),60 the first number of which, L'Epopée (The Epic), was published in Paris in 1900. Practically all the titles, Comedy, Drama and Tragedy, Eloquence, The Letter, Lyric Poetry, Satire, The Fable, History, Maxims and Characters, Literary Criticism, The Pastoral, The Novel, and Journalism—were qualified by the parenthetical subtitle, "Evolution of the Genre." Lacking the specialized scholarship of Neilson's and Herford's series, this was rather a set of "brochures," each little more than a hundred pages long. Like the American and English books, however, they were expected by the editor to be useful to teachers and students, though it was hoped that readers would not be limited to those two classes. Aided by Marius Roustan (who wrote on letters and eloquence), Levrault seems to have made his books very popular. THE Italian Storia dei generi letterari italiani (History of Italian Literary Genres),81 almost a score of extensive compilations of research, was also begun at this time, the first volume, Il Romanzo (The Novel), by Adolfo Albertazzi, appearing in 1903. T w o subsequent series, less academic in appeal, originated in England, and were also published in America. The Channels of English Literature,82 edited by Oliphant Smeaton, appeared in 1912. All the authors showed consciousness of the difficulty of their tasks, especially in definition. Few offered very profound reasons for attempting them. T h e subjects were the epic, philosophy, the lyric, the novel, the drama, the essay, biography, and satire. Gradual abandonment of the strict procedures which had been followed by such men as Gayley, Symonds, and Brunetière is apparent in William Macneile Dixon's reflections (in English Epic and Heroic Poetry, 1912) on Croce's objections to literary classes: Literary criticism, which partakes of a double character, scientific and

j:

The Mutations of Genology

59

aesthetic, passes continually in the same volume and on the same page from one form of mental activity to another. Recognise that they are different forms, that the classifications or descriptions given have nothing philosophical about them, that nothing in the constitution of nature dictates or justifies their use, and we escape all dangers; we may continue to employ the customary definitions. . . . O n l y if . . . we imagine ourselves in search of an eternal law, imagine the distinction, for example, between epic and romance as something rigid and final, is the warning necessary. 83 Ernest Rhys, w h o wrote on Lyric Poetry (1913), spoke vaguely of " h o w the lyric principle, through all the changes that taught it the literary habit, yet maintained its powers." 84 Schelling, however, still used biological imagery (English Drama, 1914), calling closet dramas, for instance, "a new species of literature, . . . as different from the original parent stock as the novel is different from it." 88 W a l d o H. D u n n (English Biography, 1916) also made an attempt to retain comparative, evolutionary techniques in tracing the "genesis and evolution of English biography," knowing his work w o u l d be incomplete unless he could review briefly the world contribution before the rise of the form in the British Islands; trace the chief influences which have affected English biographers; and glance sufficiently at the work accomplished by the leading modern nations to enable us to estimate the progress made by English biography, and thus form some opinion of its comparative rank. 8 6 LESS ERUDITE, less formulized, and, indeed, less impressive, is The Art and Craft of Letters,87 written mostly by Englishmen, published in both L o n d o n and New York, consisting of rather discursive essays with n o claim to definitiveness, usually voicing the author's own preferences and prejudices. Launched in 1914, the series (only one member of which was more than sixty-four pages long) covered the epic, satire, history, comedy, the ballad, parody, the essay, criticism, the lyric, and the short story. T h e difference in tone between these books, aimed more at the plain book-buyer than at teachers or students, and the earlier series, is blithely illustrated by Lascelles Abercrombie's disclaimer in The Epic (•914): Theories about epic origins were . . . indifferent to my purpose. Besides, I do not see the need for any theories; I think it need only be

6o

The "Types

Approach"

to

Literature

said, of any epic poem whatever, that it was composed by a man and transmitted by men. 88 For the high schools and colleges, by this time, textbooks organized by types were being developed, but they did not become common for another five years. These will be surveyed in their place.89 Meanwhile, the influence of genology on the college curriculum was growing evident.

PART

TWO

THE "TYPES APPROACH"

4 In Colleges and Universities I. SUMMARY V I E W ·

SURVEYING the English programs of American universities in 1894, W i l l i a m Morton Payne chortled over the future of the recently established subject. H e found its popularity waxing, its scholarship deepening, and its pedagogy escaping from "the forbidding barriers erected by historical, linguistic, and metrical science." Literary appreciation had climbed into place beside analytic scholarship as an ideal of instruction. 1 A t practically the same time, T h o m a s Hume, of the University of N o r t h Carolina, was asserting that in his classes works of genius were being studied as such, memorization of background and history being subordinated to knowledge of "literary productions as complete works of art." 2 A t last English literature was openly being taught as literature. Several instructors in the young departments made recommendations which reflected the highlights of scholarship indicated in the preceding chapter. W . T . Hewett, in 1885, demanded more purpose and systematization in literary work, so that students might gain "a complete view of the works of an author or a period, or even of a given class of literary products." 3 In the same year James Morgan Hart declared that the student must become acquainted with all the forms of poetry to be found in English. 4 A n d Theodore W . H u n t urged more "study of the great forms of poetry, of the principles of poetic art, of the leading canons of style as illustrated in English classics." 6 A year later James M. Garnett objected • T h e selection and the order of material in this chapter were determined after a preliminary survey. From the results of an extensive consideration of m a n y college and university offerings, it appeared that the e i g h t selected were representative of the general developments, of the significant variations in trends, and of the broad geographical distribution of higher schools. Since the m a j o r events occurred between 1890 and 1910, that period has been presented in detail. Information concerning other years was included only when it added to the meaning of the whole picture. T h e institutions are discussed in order of their f o u n d i n g , with the exception of the first three. T h e s e precede the others because they best indicate the typical patterns of men and of courses.

64

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

to the exclusive stress upon purely historical studies and asked for increased "study of separate periods of literature, or of separate forms of literature, as the drama."® Many teachers who agreed with Payne and Hume conceived of literature, either overtly or unknowingly, as an evolving phenomenon of changing species. For them, a devotion to literature "as such" involved an interest in literature as types. Writing of the study of types at Columbia about 1895, Brander Matthews described it as an outgrowth of the study of general literature or "literature at large." 7 Scholars who combined these inclinations developed specialized, advanced courses on separate types in the late eighties. At first, such courses were rare and designed more for graduate students than undergraduates. But by 1890 A. Marshall Elliott was cautioning against one-sided research in forms of literature.8 Through the nineties, the types courses increased in number and proportion within the common growth of literature courses, broadening and simplifying themselves into the standard chronological studies of types which we know today. During the first five or ten years of the twentieth century they became stabilized in character and in relative amount. When Frank G. Hubbard investigated the undergraduate curriculum in English in 1908, he reported that out of 410 literature courses at thirty institutions, eighty-seven, or one-fifth, were in types: "drama 30, novel (or prose fiction) 20, epic 4, lyric 6, ballad 5, metrical romance 1, essay 7, biography 2, letter writers 1, miscellaneous . . . II." 9 Since 1910 changes in the fraction, aim, or nature of college or .university courses in individual types have been slight. But the continued expansion of the college population (the increase has been four hundred percent over the last forty years, or ninefold from 189ο10) and the influence of the high schools, among other factors, deeply affected the general introductory courses in literature. As early as 1913, Ralph P. Boas was convinced that the best method of teaching the elementary survey was the one which made literature the most interesting. "That method," he insisted, "is one which is based upon the work itself, the method of classification by types, which emphasizes literary expression and throws the historical and biographical into the background." 11 This has remained the reason most often given for using the types approach in survey courses. In the 1920's and '30's, freshman and sophomore surveys organized by types began to be numerous. But the types pattern was already being discounted. Describing such a course in 1932, W. Wilbur Hatfield of the Chicago Teachers College made it clear that he spent the least possible

4: In Colleges and Universities

65

time on the history or the definition of types. Keeping the intention of the author uppermost, he concentrated the students' efforts on reliving the experience which had evoked the selection. "This simple program seems to add something to our students' power to interpret and appreciate both literature and daily experience," 12 Hatfield summed up. Shields Mcllwaine wrote in 1933: "The real types course makes no pretense to be anything other than an appreciation of literature in terms of form and personality." 13 Reporting and defending her course at Butler University in 1938, Alice B. Wesenberg felt that the types approach enhanced critical insight and appreciation. As she used it, the pattern "directs the student's mind to a book as a work of art, emphasizes the design it presents and the purpose of the author in placing his emphasis, . . . brings out the relation of this work of art to all representations of life in design." 14 Besides the concern with literature as an art to be appreciated, Hatfield approved the types survey as it introduced students to authors and types that they might have missed or avoided under another plan. 18 Wesenberg's and Mcllwaine's articles point to still another value in the parallels which study by literary types often suggests with other forms of expression, thus facilitating expansion into fields like world literature and the humanities. In 1933 Mcllwaine thought the types survey too unpopular. He explained that of sixty post-secondary schools he found "only three used the types method." 1 ® Yet A. R. Carli had different results when he investigated a hundred and fifty first courses in English literature (not world literature or the humanities) offered around 1936 in more than a hundred liberal arts colleges. Twenty-five, or one-sixth, were types surveys, and fifty-two, or one-third, were historical surveys. By far the most common among first courses in individual types were drama courses. J . M. French, in his study of fifty-one introductory courses at about forty colleges in 1940, agreed more with Carli than with Mcllwaine. Fifteen, or almost a third, were types surveys, while twenty-four were historical surveys.17 Today, between a sixth and a third of the courses in literature taught at most colleges and universities are concerned with one or more types of literature. Competing in favor with this approach are that of single author and that of chronology. Some instructors feel that the less the beginning student of literature hears about types, the better.18 But few dissent from De Vane's opinion that students who specialize at all must ultimately reach a "comprehension of the great literary forms, poetry, the drama, prose fiction, and the essay." 18

66

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

Among the many institutions the similarities are as great as the divergences. At the University of Chicago, even from the establishment of the English Department in 1892, the study of "species of literature" was recognized as one of the "three phases of literary discipline." Author and period were the other two. T h e freshman literature survey included "a distinct conception of the nature of literature, of lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetry, of the novel and the essay."20 A t the same institution a large student body and a "quarterly" division of courses, when taught by a newly organized, vigorous group of specialists, resulted in a unique multitude of courses changing rapidly. T h e University of North Carolina, more traditional and smaller, had fewer but more lasting courses in types. Yet at both schools, as at most, the courses emerged at the same time and with the same basic emphases in method. Both encouraged the comparative and historical attitudes. Both were further representative of the general trends in that their earliest and most enduring types courses were on the drama and on fiction. T h e drama was pre-eminent partly because it is intrinsically the most individual of the types,21 possessing the most peculiar traditions, and partly because Shakespeare was a dramatist. Courses in the drama were often meant to lead up to or out from the study of Shakespeare.22 Fiction courses have been next most frequent on account of the incomparable popularity of fiction against all other types of literature since the early nineteenth century. Behind the history we have just reviewed, the personal forces are prominent. Of Child's power in shaping approaches to literature throughout American higher education, Henry W. Simon remarks that the Harvard scholar "set the essential pattern that is still dominating . . . study in all but the more progressive institutions." 23 T h e Columbia literary curriculum took on a striking number of types courses when Brander Matthews joined the faculty. Precisely the opposite kind of transformation occurred at Princeton when Bliss Perry left. Phelps at Yale, Moulton at Chicago, Schofield at Harvard, Gayley at California all had the same effect in arousing interest in studies of types.24 I I . MICHIGAN* FOR MORE THAN three decades, from twenty-five to thirty-five percent of the literature courses at the University of Michigan have been in types. T h e progression ending at this balance began in 1880 with Moses • Each date in parentheses is the first academic year the course was given according to the Calendar of the University of Michigan.

4'· In Colleges and Universities

67

Coit Tyler's lectures on the principal prose and verse forms of English literature and with his history of the drama. 2 8 A seminar in criticism begun by B. C. Burt in 1886 was revised the following year by C. M. Gayley (graduated from the university a decade earlier). Under his guidance, the class studied the principles of the major types of literafure, using Aristotle's Poetics as the main text and world literature of all periods for illustrations of the principles. T h e class met twice a week, once for an hour's lecture on the philosophical basis of literary criticism, and again for a two-hour session, one-half of which was occupied by essays, and the other half by general discussions on the points brought out in the essays and additional points presented by members of the class. T h e heavier subjects usually required two evenings, sometimes more—one for the discussion of laws, and one or more for their application. O n . . . these latter evenings . . . a collegiate course of study in a world-literature was approximately realized. Certain particular examples were always assigned, but the work was by no means confined to these, as the course was given for advanced students w h o had read widely. A l t h o u g h a good proportion of the class was familiar with the masterpieces of literature in their original settings, the course, being literary and not philological, was open to those who knew them chiefly through translations. . . . Other topics, such as the lyric and the novel, were considered, and throughout there was no lack of minute dividing and subdividing, of building of theories, of hotly contested arguments; and in a class of twenty or thereabouts the illustrations were perhaps only too apt to range from Dan to Beersheba. 26 Gayley would certainly have widened his influence at Michigan if he had not accepted a call to the University of California in 1889. During the year after he left, Gayley's course was taught by George Hempl. It was then taken in hand by Fred Newton Scott until 1893-94, when I. N. Demmon accepted it, entitled it "Principles of Literary Criticism," and taught it for ten years. Rhetorical theories were Scott's interest, and he gave courses in the principles of style (1890-91), the development of rhetorical theory (189495), the theory of prose fiction (1902-03), the basic critical principles of literature and art (1903-04), and associated subjects. I. N. Demmon taught the history of the English drama (1892-93), the principles of literary criticism (1893-94), the principles of the epic, the lyric, and the drama (1904-05), and a survey of the major types of nineteenth-century poetry (1907-08).

68

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

During the decade following 1895-96, special courses were arranged for advanced students in such subjects as the history of the novel, English satire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the preShakesperean drama. But in 1905 only a tenth of the literature courses were in types. Louis A. Strauss gave two courses in the drama (1907-08, 1908-09), two in fiction (1906-07, 1907-08), and one research course in modern literature which at various times concentrated on special types of literature. Additional drama courses were taught by M. P. Tilley (1907-08, 191 δι 6). T h e first separate study of the essay as a literary type was initiated by W. E. Bohn in 1908-09. By this time, a quarter of the literature courses were in types, and although their number has practically doubled since then, the proportion has not shifted significantly. In 1934-35, the undergraduate catalogue began to list courses in literary types as a separate group under English literature. I I I . NORTH CAROLINA*

the presidency of Norfolk Female College in 1885, Reverend Thomas Hume, a Virginian, joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina. Almost single-handed, he offered a whole curriculum of types courses for fifteen years. He also sponsored a short-lived Seminary of Literature and Philology which, freshly formed in 1887, announced on its program for the following year such topics as lyric poetry, the historians, the drama, and epic poetry, all to be treated in terms of origin and development. Subjects for 1889-90 included Roman satire and the Anglo-Saxon epic. Using as texts the works of men like J. A. Symonds and C. M. Gayley, Hume taught early English drama (1885-86), poetics (1886-87), development of fiction (1893-94), a survey of the forms of poetry (1893-94), and a comparative study of the drama (1900-01). He proposed to approach all these from the comparative, evolutionary point of view. LEAVING

In 1901-02 C. A. Smith introduced a discussion of the origin and development of the historical novel in English. At the same time, he developed a course in composition exercises, which had been required as far back as the early eighties, into a series of lectures on the essay and the oration. T o these he added, in 1905-06, the short story. A l l three of the graduate literature courses and two of the six undergraduate literature courses in 1905-06 were studies of types. Five years • Each date in parentheses is the first academic year the course was given according to the Catalogue of the University of North Carolina.

4'. In Colleges and Universities

69

later both of the two graduate literature courses were chronological, but four of the seven undergraduate were in types: one in the drama, one in fiction, one in essays and orations, and one a survey of literature by types. In 1915-16 there were four types courses among the eleven literature courses: two in the drama, one in the novel, and one survey. By ig2o-2i the catalogue listed four drama courses and one course in the novel among twenty-three literature courses. In 1930-31 twice as many of the types courses were in the drama as were in all other types combined (novel, medieval romance, criticism, and ballad). Together these twelve were almost a third of the literary curriculum. Nine of the twenty-two courses in the Department of General and Comparative Literature, the same year, were in types. After ten more years the situation in the English department was about the same, except for a slightly increased total number of offerings. But the proportion in the Department of General and Comparative Literature had declined to less than a third. For undergraduates, in 1940-41, the catalogue also listed a survey of, modern literature introducing the students to the various literary types.

IV.

CALIFORNIA*

AT THE University of California (Berkeley) the most important early event of concern here was the departure of A. S. Cook in 1889 to head the English department at Yale and his replacement by Gayley from Michigan. Before that transfer occurred, there were few signs of concern with types. T h e English literature studied by the senior class had been divided, until 1882, into prose and poetry. Frances Hovey Stoddard had taught the history of the English drama (1887-88). C. B. Bradley had announced (1888-89) a study of the origin and development of the novel, to be begun the following year. But in a few years the effect of Gayley's presence overshadowed these scattered facts. His influence was discernible both in new courses and in such master's theses as "The Nature of Literary Types" (1895), " T h e History of the Sentimental School of English Comedy" (1895), "The Aesthetic Value of the Realistic Novel" (1896), "the lines along which English comedy has been influenced by the French" (1898), and " T h e Genetic Principles of Literary Criticism" (1899). Although there was only one types course among eight literature courses in 188788 and one out of nine in 1888-89, five out of thirteen were in types the year Gayley took charge. During the twenty succeeding years, Gayley • Each date in parentheses is the first academic year the course was given according to the Register of the University of California (Berkeley).

ηο

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

himself introduced almost as many types courses as the rest of his department combined. The proportion of types courses among literature courses at California remainéd between one-third and one-half as long as Gayley headed the department, but declined to between a fourth and a fifth soon after he retired from that position in 1923. He was particularly interested in comparative literature, anthropology, aesthetics, criticism, and the theories of the various types of literature. His courses therefore included the following subjects: the science of rhetoric (1889-90); the history of aesthetics and literary criticism, a course which studied the evolution of literature and the differentiation of literary species (188990); the technique, function, and development of various literary types (1889-90); an exposition of the methods of comparative literature which involved criticisms of Posnett, Brunetière, and others, as well as problems in the origins of literary types (1889-90); a comparative history of English comedy (1891-92); the origins and development of the novel (1892-93); dramatic criticism (1894-95); history of English criticism (1901-02); Shakespeare's predecessors and contemporaries· (1902-03); political and philosophical prose (1902-03); great books exemplifying types of literature (1904-05); the principles of dramatic art (1910-11). C. B. Bradley taught courses in the comparative study of the novel (1889-90); the principles of rhetoric (1892-93); and the English essay (1893-94). W. D. Armes lectured on the drama (1897-98). A. F. Lange taught poetics, with emphasis on the theory of the drama (1897-98). W. M. Hart, a close student of Child's work,27 was the first at California to specialize in the short story. His earliest types course, a detailed technical and historical analysis of the short story in America (18991900), slowly turned into lectures on the art of narration using autobiographies as well as novels for material (1908-09). Hart also organized a seminar in the comparative study of the short story, medieval and modern, throughout all European literatures (1908-09). His complementary interest in ballad literature expressed itself in courses on the ballad, geste, and epic (1903-04), early English metrical romances (190405), the European ballad (1994-05), and popular poetry (1904-05). T . F. Sanford's first types courses were on Elizabethan lyric types (1899-1900) and the literary epic (1899-1900). He later added Elizabethan romances (1901-02) and the Elizabethan drama (1920-21). In 1902-03 J . A. Winans introduced his course on the history of oratory. Two years later G. R. Noyes began his lectures on the Russian novelists (1904-05). In 1910-11 F. T . Blanchard began a course on the English novel during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

4: In Colleges and Universities

71

In 1904-05 the catalogue listed seven courses in the English department together under the heading of "The Comparative History of Literature." Three were in types. This listing was soon discontinued, but in igio-11 an independent list was made of courses "offered by the various language departments for the comparative study of literature."28 Among more than eighty courses listed, thirty-two were in types. Twenty-six were on periods and movements. Eleven were on the theory of literature. Two years later, this list, which had appeared in the catalogue after the various departmental announcements of courses, was printed as a department by itself, in regular order among the other departments but without rules or a staff of its own. This arrangement was discontinued in 1915-16. In 1911-12 B. P. Kurtz, one of Gayley's collaborators,29 began teaching literary criticism. He also gave courses on the origins and classification of poetry (1918-19), the characteristics and development of the English elegy (1920-21), and the comparative study of deluge stories (seminar, 1920-21). The first consideration of the lyric as a separate type was by Leonard Bacon, as part of a course in which H. E. Cory presented the English epic (1912-13). Cory also held a seminar in the problems of literary criticism (1914-15). In 1913-14, C. W. Wells initiated his seminar on the theory of fiction. Five years later he began lecturing on the types of prose fiction (1918-19). In 1918-19 William Chislett first taught his course on the history of the novel in America. H. L. Bruce and R. W. Gordon instituted their research groups in the essay and the ballad, respectively, the same year. An innovation appearing in 1920-21 was the separate listing within the English department of courses on the history, technique, and criticism of the drama, supplemented by a list of eight related courses in other departments. Under graduate English courses, five entries, all in types, were grouped together as "The Comparative Study of Literature." In the remaining three years of Gayley's chairmanship about ten new types courses were given, four in the drama and one each in the lyric, the essay, satire, the metrical romance, and English historians. The tenth was an approach to a general undergraduate survey course arranged by types: Robert P. Utter's "Types of English Literature." This sophomore course included "reading and discussion of narrative and lyric poetry, the drama, the essay. More extensive reading in prose fiction. Reports and essays on subjects arising from reading and discussion."30 This has been a rather minute record of the growth of types courses until 1923. With Gayley's departure, as noted above, their proportion

78

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

fell to something between twenty and twenty-five percent of all literature courses. It has fluctuated between those figures for two decades. V.

HARVARD*

A T H A R V A R D , F. J. Child, G. L. Kittredge, G. P. Baker, and Bliss Perry were the outstanding pioneers in types. But it was Barrett Wendell who introduced the first types course in 1887, a history of the English drama until the Restoration. Wendell disdained what he pronounced the narrow outlooks of "Germanized scholarship." 31 Although he did use such classifications as the drama and lyric poetry in interpreting seventeenthcentury literature, 32 the "history of a literary genre . . . was the kind of research in which he often expressed disbelief." 33 He made an exception of the drama because of its unique traditions. G. P. Baker took over the drama course in 1890-91, and Wendell taught it again only twice, in 1896-97 and in 1907-08. Eventually it became a graduate course, supplemented, after 1901-02, by "The Drama in England from 1642 to 1900." In 1905-06 Baker added "The Technique of the Drama." This renowned graduate course in playwrighting was intended to help the inexperienced dramatist by showing him "how experienced dramatists have solved problems similar to his own." 34 In 1910-11 Baker introduced a course on "The Forms of the Drama." T w o more courses in types appeared before 1892: J. B. Fletcher's "Literary Criticism in England since the Sixteenth Century" (1891-92) and Kittredge's "Early English Metrical Romances" (1892-93). T h e inauguration of a Department of Comparative Literature in 1892, under the professorship of A. R. Marsh, was the beginning of a new development in types courses. Of the department's first year courses, two which included materials of English literature were on types. Both were by Marsh and were in medieval studies: one on the use of Celtic legends in narrative poetry of the Middle Ages and one on the evolution of medieval epic poetry. Francis J. Child began his celebrated graduate course on "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads" in 1894-95 and taught it again in 1895-96. After his death, Kittredge, his pupil, offered the course with perfect regularity every odd year from 1897 o n · Before the expansion of the comparative literature department in 1906-07, several new types courses appeared. A. S. Hill's history of the English novel (1895-96) was continued after 1905 by G. H. Maynadier, Hill's last assistant in the course. Fletcher's history of the pastoral (1898* Each date in parentheses is the first academic year the course was given according to the Harvard University Catalogue.

In Colleges

and Universities

73

99), a graduate course in comparative literature, became the second half of a survey of the pastoral in European literature in 1903-04, but after that date was given only as an independent course, by M. A. Potter (1908-09). Schofield's history of the Arthurian legends (1898-99) seems ultimately to have displaced Marsh's earlier course on Celtic legends. In 1899-1900, C. T . Copeland's "English Letter Writers" appeared, and L. E. Gates broadened the course in criticism which he had received from Fletcher (1897-98) into a course in comparative literature, "Literary Criticism since the Sixteenth Century." This was the course which Irving Babbitt taught after 1902 and out of which he developed The New Laokoon. Potter remodeled Marsh's old course on the epic in 190304, and it became a general study of the characteristics and the types of epic poetry. The catalogue listed nine comparative literature courses in 1905-06. The following year W. H. Schofield, who was seeking new courses for his Department of Comparative Literature, shook up that department, stretched it, and reassembled it with thirty-eight entries in the catalogue. Among those which included English literature, eleven were histories of types. Seven of these had not been given before as English or comparative literature. Bliss Perry has described how two were taught. For "Types of Fiction in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries" (1910-11), Perry drew material from both continental and English novelists. "The idea was to follow the currents of Realism, Sentimentalism, Romanticism, etc., as they swept from one European country to another."36 The method of analysis was to formulate general laws of fiction at first and then to apply these laws to the study of specific works, authors, movements, or types.88 An interest in the comparative history of types is characteristic of Perry's research.37 He lectured to graduates on "Political Satire in Europe since the Renaissance" (1906-07), but found it impossible to define his subject from English examples alone. "Since the classic English school of satire was founded upon Roman models, I joined forces with Morris Morgan of the Latin Department and took my students in to hear him lecture upon Juvenal and Horace, and he brought his men into my room to hear about Dryden and Pope. I wish now that we had carried this collaboration in Comparative Literature courses much further than we did, particularly in studying international influences upon the development of types of fiction."38 Besides Perry's courses, Baker's "Forms of the Drama," and J. W. White's announced lectures on the influence of the Greek drama on modern literature (which he never gave), three of the new comparative

74

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

literature announcements were types courses which were connected with English literature: W . F. Harris on the Greek drama and its effect on later art and drama (1906-07), W. A. Neilson on the nature and history of the allegory (1908-09), and J. D. M. Ford's elaborate "History of the Novel and the Tale in Italy and in Spain from the Beginning of the Medieval Period to the Eighteenth Century" (1907-08). Ford believed in studying the development of a literary genre as it evolved from one country to another, disregarding national boundaries.89 No succeeding year introduced so many new courses in types as 190607. Bliss Perry gave the first comparative literature course in the third great type, the lyric, in 1907-08. Of five new types courses announced for 1910-11, three were in the English department and two in comparative literature. T h e first, Perry's "English Critical Essay," was not actually taught until 1911-12. T w o others were A. F. Whittem's history of the fable (comparative literature, 1914-15) and C. H. Moore's course on Roman comedy, which was never presented as comparative literature, though Moore did teach a very similar course to graduate students in Latin. Finally, there were two courses by Ε. N. Greenough. Greenough's doctoral dissertation, sanctioned and encouraged by Kittredge, hàd been a study in the development of a genre, the character. For research in literature, Greenough believed, a prerequisite was "knowledge of the precise nature of the various types of literature and of the canons of excellence in each." 40 He taught a course in periodicals of the eighteenth century (1910-11) and one in the character (1910-12). T h e only new types course which appeared before 1920-21 was Maynadier's "English and American Historians" (1915-16). When the Department of Comparative Literature was discontinued at Harvard in 1940, the Department of English inherited from it two courses in types of literature, " T h e Forms of the Drama" and "Novels of the Nineteenth Century." Out of fifty literature courses announced by the English Department that year, ten, or one-fifth, were on the histories of various types. Since that time, the requirements for undergraduate honors in the English Department have included "a critical awareness of the development of a particular type of literature," which must be one of the following: poetry, drama, fiction, criticism, philosophy. 41 VI.

YALE*

A T Y A L E types courses were approximately one-sixth of the literature courses in 1890, one-third in 1895, more than a third in 1900, one-half in • Each date in parentheses is the first academic year the course was given According to the Yale University Catalogue.

4'. In Colleges and Universities

75

1905, less than half in îgio, little more than a third in 1915, and just about one-third in 1920. By 1940 types courses were hardly more than a fourth of the literature courses at Yale. Edna Hays points out that the progression from 1890 to 1905 was part of a general tendency. During this period, there was a related growth in importance of all comparative literature studies within the Yale English department. 42 Dr. Hays particularly mentions A. S. Cook's course in poetics, which dealt with the various types of literature. Cook considered the idea of evolution one of the five characteristics peculiar to our age. " I n philology," he said, "it is made to bear fruit in monographs on the evolution of this or that literary form—the evolution of the drama, the epic, the essay, and the like." 43 He felt that both literature and language "should be studied as the products of social life. T h e y should be conceived as subject to laws which operate over long periods, and which result from racial or national constitution, experiences, and environment." 44 Cook's "Theories of Poetry" (1891-92) discussed the principles of criticism for the epic, drama, and lyric. He taught the "limits of the various species, and the criteria of excellence." T h e topics of the "English Masterpiece Course" (1889-90) included the methods of judging poetry and a "survey of the different species of composition exemplified by the writers chosen." Besides initiating courses in the essay (1890-91) and in the oration (1893-94), Cook offered one on literary types in general (1903-04), seeking "to outline and illustrate the chief types recognizable in the higher order of European literature." A. S. Cook was the first prominent scholar in types at Yale. Before him, however, Ε. T . McLaughlin had given drama courses as early as 1886. McLaughlin also taught literary criticism (1890-91). T h e next outstanding exponents of the types approach at Yale were William Lyon Phelps and H. A. Beers. Phelps tells an amusing tale about the vicissitudes of his course in modern novels (1895-96). Happily surprised at Beers' ready consent to the teaching of current literature, Phelps was further gratified by an enrollment of two hundred and fifty seniors and juniors. T h e popularity gì the course and wide, predominantly favorable newspaper comment had an unexpected effect. As Phelps relates, "the majority of the older professors gave me to understand that unless I dropped the course at the end of its first year, I should myself be dropped from the Faculty." But the phoenix rose from the ashes disguised as a barnyard fowl. " T w o years later I gave a course in American literature in which I included all the American novels I had discussed in the previous course;

76

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature .

and five years later I gave a course, the first of its kind, I believe, in any university, which was confined to contemporary dramatists." 45 T h e contemporary drama course (1905-06) included authors of several different nationalities. Students desiring to take it had to read both French and German. In 1894 Phelps had introduced his course in Elizabethan drama and, in 1895-96, a course in the drama of the Restoration. T h e breadth of H. A. Beers' interests was displayed in the range of his lectures. Although his earliest types course was the usual history of the English drama (1892-93), he eventually lectured on medieval allegory (1896-97), modern drama (1897-98), English verse narrative (1897-98), Shakespeare apd the modern drama (1898-99), theories of metrical translation (1898-99), the types of English drama ("with incidental treatment of foreign plays," 1900-01), Shakespeare and early drama (190102), and Chaucer, Burns, and the English and Scottish ballads (1906-07). Courses in literary criticism were the specialty of H. A. Smith. In "Comparative Criticism" (1895-96) he compared eighteenth-century critical standards with those of the romantic and Victorian critics. He also showed, in "English Literary Criticism of the Nineteenth Century" (1897-98), how various literary theories and movements affected English critical thought in the nineteenth century. W. L . Cross based his lectures on English fiction (1895-96) on a psychological principle of "action and reaction." According to this belief realism and idealism alternate periodically in popular favor, receiving, in the long run, equal attention, although at specific epochs one or the other is dominant. Cross accepted the biological analogy with few qualms. In 1901-02, he called his course " T y p e s of Prose Fiction." In his interpretation a rebellious writer "varies the type" by taking up some earlier form or method of literary creation, modifying it, and developing it. Cross freely declared that in literary history "there are modes or processes of change and development best expressed in the terms that natural science has made familiar,—modification, variation, deviation, persistence, and transformation. These are perhaps only analogies." 46 He always related his discussions of English fiction to continental works, sources, and influences. Ε. B. Reed was the first at Yale to present the lyric as a separate type (1898-99). He felt that a specific genre could be studied as an evolving form, but knew that "hard and fast lines rarely can be drawn, for the different genres tend to approach and join each other." 47 His course in the origin and development of English lyric types (1898-99) was the earliest course at Yale to be labeled "the evolution of a literary form."

4: In Colleges and Universities

77

H e also taught a course in nineteenth-century English fiction (1906-07) and one in the history of the novel in England (1908-09). E. G. T a y l o r taught the technique of English dramatists since the seventeenth century (1900-01) and the development of English comedy to Sheridan (1902-03). R u d o l p h Schevill showed his training in comparative literature by a course in the principles of dramaturgy which included the origins and development of dramatic art among various nations (1900-01) and by a survey of Renaissance fiction which was partly concerned with the origins of types of fiction in Italy, Spain, and France (1908-09). J. C . A d a m s taught courses in English literary criticism (1901-02) and in nineteenth-century English poetic drama (190405). C. G. Osgood taught M i d d l e English romances (1901-02), and C. B. T i n k e r , the ballad (1903-04) and "Early Narrative" (1904-05). G. H. Nettleton gave a course in the drama since 1660 (1905-06) and a research course in the English drama (1912-13). H e felt compelled to "discard many of the traditional assumptions of dramatic criticism" because he was u n w i l l i n g to twist historical facts into "conformity with a preconceived theory of dramatic evolution." 4 8 C. S. Baldwin, most of whose work was to be done at Columbia University, reviewed English literature by a survey of its principal types (1907-08). Henry Seidel Canby denied the existence of any "real evolution" among the varieties of the short story. 49 Nevertheless, he felt that a history of them would be valuable insofar as it succeeded in relating them to "the concrete life of the race" which expressed itself through them. 60 H e taught " T y p e s of Short Narrative" (1907-08) and " T h e Short Story in English" (1910-11). Seven more new types courses were introduced before 1922: four in the drama, one in the lyric, and one in the ballad and romance. Since that time the production of types courses among literature courses at Y a l e has remained between one-third and one-fourth, approximately. In 1940-41 survey courses organized by types were announced for the college freshmen and for sophomores and juniors in the scientific and engineering schools. VII.

PRINCETON*

BLISS PERRY was the most important early teacher of types at Princeton. He was preceded by T . W . H u n t and M. O. Murray. H u n t taught " T h e Standard T y p e s of English Prose" (1890-91), discussed the main • Each date in parentheses is the first academic year the course was given according to the Princeton University Catalogue.

78

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

types of American literature (1894-95), and lectured on the "nature, laws, methods and relations" of literature (1896-97). Murray taught the earliest drama courses, first as part of a history of English literature (1891-92) and later as the Elizabethan drama alone (1895-96). He also taught "The Periodical Literature of the Eighteenth Century" (189697)· With the advent of Bliss Perry, the narrative broadens. While he was at Princeton, he taught four types courses: one in lyric, dramatic, and narrative poetry as forms of expression (1893-94); one in fiction, including "a comparative study of the schools of modern fiction" (1893-94); one in the history of English literary criticism (1896-97); and one in the Elizabethan drama (1899-1900). Only the last of these courses was continued after he left. The growth in types courses had thus begun in 1891 and continued until 1897, when most of the literature courses were in types. After 1898 the proportion declined, especially when Perry moved to Harvard in 1900. In 1900-01 Stockton Axson introduced the study of the seventeenthcentury drama, and Henry Van Dyke his history of prose forms. No other change occurred for five years, and the second rise in the importance of types courses at Princeton dates from 1905-06, when three new courses appeared: G. M. Harper on the comparative study of modern romantic tragedy; G. H. Gerould on Middle English romances; and Ν. E. Griffin on "Origins of the Story." By 1910-11, although there were no types courses at all among the undergraduate offerings, almost half the graduate literature curriculum was in types. Most of these were in the drama, but literary criticism and Middle English romances were also included. Five years later the majority of the graduate literature courses were in types, and there was one undergraduate types course as well, M. W. Croll's study of the theory of poetry, the "nature of the greater forms of poetic art, epic, drama, and lyric, and the conditions under, which each develops." In addition to the courses mentioned above, the epic and the lyric were part of the literary curriculum this year. In 1920-21 the graduate proportion was still the same, but almost a quarter of the undergraduate literature courses were now in types. Drama remained in the lead, with narrative poetry second in popularity. By 1930-31 the graduate proportion was slightly less than half, and the undergraduate, over a third. Drama was receiving less emphasis, and prose fiction was being taught. Ultimately, the fraction of types courses among all literature courses at Princeton settled at about a third.

4·' In Colleges and Universities VIII.

79

COLUMBIA*

BEFORE 1891 Columbia College students had heard lectures on the forms of English prose and poetry, the philosophy of criticism, and the Anglo-Saxon epic, but not until then were they treated to readings in the humorous drama in English or in nineteenth-century prose fiction of Great Britain and America. That was the year when Brander Matthews, a millionaire's son without the millions, 61 replaced Professor T . R. Price, who was absent on leave. Price had been interested in versification and had believed that every literature text should be selected "as example of some definite form of literature." 52 But Matthews was the first major teacher of types at Columbia. His achievements remind one of Phelps' role at Yale. Matthews chose to lecture on subjects he already knew well: American literature, modern fiction, and versification. He noted the uniqueness of the selection, concluding, "As for the course on the evolution of the modern novel, I am inclined to doubt if I had any predecessor or even for several years any competitor." In 1892, he announced a course on nineteenth-century drama, another topic, he says, "not at that time treated in any other college." T o eliminate the dreary memorization of "dead facts" which had made much of his own undergraduate work in literature "dull drudgery," Matthews used no manual. He demanded that the students read extensively in the original works, on the theory that "if they were exposed to the contagion of literature, some of them might catch it." 63 Matthews also lectured on Molière's influence on English comedy (1895-96), the evolution of the essay (1896-97), and further aspects of the drama.64 In one of these, he joined forces with a comparative literature scholar, a collaboration reminiscent of Perry's experience at Harvard:

I was asked to give a graduate course [1893-94] o n [ he development of the drama from Aeschylus to the Middle Ages to parallel a course by another professor on the evolution of criticism from Aristotle to the Italian Renaissance; and this compelled me gladly to return to the Greek texts over which I had toiled in the persistent search for the second aorist. T o my delighted surprise, I discovered that the authors of Agamemnon and Oedipus were playwrights as well as poets, and that the author of the Frogs was a precursor of Weber and Fields in * Each date in parentheses is the first academic year the course was given according to the Columbia College Handbook of Information or Annual Register, or the Columbia University Catalogue.

8o

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

addition to being the lyrist best beloved of all the Greeks by Arthur Pendennis.68 T h e professor who paralleled Matthews' course with one in criticism was George E. Woodberry. T h e group of comparative literature students to which he belonged contributed richly to the growing list of Columbia's types courses. Woodberry lectured on criticism (1892-93), the drama (1892-93), Middle English romances (1896-97), the theory of literature and its forms (1900-01), and "the philosophy of literary movements, considered by means of an analysis of the evolution of form in poetic art with reference to its logical and moral conditions" (igoo-oi). T h e last two were announced by the Department of Comparative Literature in its first year (1900-01). J. E. Spingarn, the second member of the comparative literature trio, introduced lyric poetry (1899-1900), the allegory (1899-1900), and the "theory and practice of criticism in modern Europe" (1900-01). J. B. Fletcher was the other scholar in the group. He taught the medieval and modern pastoral (1904-05) in a course which he had previously developed at Harvard. His other types course was on the Elizabethan drama (1905-06). Added to the curriculum during this period were G. R. Carpenter's "Types of Medieval and Renaissance Literature" (1896-97) and "English Literary Criticism" (1905-06); G. P. Krapp's "The Folk Story" (1902-03, at Teachers College) and "Anglo-Saxon Lyric Poetry" (190405); W . P. Trent's "English Poetic Forms" (1902-03); C. M. Hathaway's "Studies in the English Drariia" (1904-05); W . A. Neilson's and W. W. Lawrence's "Medieval Narrative Literature" (1905-06); and A. H. Thorndike's seminar in Elizabethan tragedy (1906-07). In 1910-11 Professors Fletcher and Spingarn rejoined their colleagues of a decade past, upon the merging of their department with the English department in the new Department of English and Comparative Literature. T h e course in the history of European literary criticism was discontinued, and Professor Spingarn soon left the university. Almost a fifth of the literature courses in 1910-11 were in types. T h e drama was most common; the lyric, fiction, criticism, and two surveys of types also appeared. In 1915-16 the proportion was up to a fourth, with the drama still the most frequent and the epic, the romance, and the essay added. Although there was a great increase in the number of literature courses during the following twenty-five years, the only notable change in the proportion or distribution of types courses was an advance in the comparative amount of courses in fiction.

4: In Colleges and Universities IX.

81

CHICAGO·

from the founding of the University of Chicago in 189a, one course in literature was required of all students, " a brief outline of the history of English literature, -together with studies in the chief literary forms—the drama, narrative poetry, lyric poetry, the novel, the essay." Ββ T h e very first announcements of the English department, one of the largest in the university, recognized the "species of literature" as one of the "three phases of literary discipline" (1892-93). More than a third of the literature courses were, from the start, in types. With great variations, this fraction has wavered at about a third, more or less, ever since. In the general literature department ("Literature [in English]"), which was founded in 1899-1900, the same relationship existed, although in 1901-02 the fraction dropped to about one-ninth. ALMOST

Albert H. Tolman, in the English department, and Richard Green Moulton, in the Department of Literature (in English), were both particularly concerned with types. Tolman, for example, taught courses in the lyric, epic, drama, ballad, and fiction, although he was mainly interested in the drama. Other early types figures at Chicago were J . M. Manly, W. D. MacClintock, O. L. Triggs, and Myra Reynolds. Since most of the instructors taught more than one type of literature, and since most types courses were handled by several different people in various years, the courses themselves will be reported rather than the persons who taught them. Until 1905 the most popular courses were, as might be expected, those in the drama, fiction, and criticism—in that order. T h e lyric (including a course in the sonnet), the essay, and the ballad were also treated in more than one course. Among miscellaneous courses were the epic, the metrical romance, character writing, and the allegory. T h e r e were also two courses covering several types. Drama, fiction, criticism, the lyric, and the essay were all taught from the first year of the department. T h e allegory and the ballad were not separate courses until 1895-96; the epic, 1896-97; the sonnet, 1897-98; character writing, 1898-99: and the metrical romance, 1900-01. In numbers there were during this period sixteen different courses in the drama, twelve each in fiction and criticism, four in the lyric (in addition to the sonnet course), three in the essay, two in the ballad, and one each in the remaining types: allegory, epic, character writing, and metrical romance. • Each date in parentheses is the first academic year the course was given according to the Annual Register or the Announcements of the College and the Divisions of the University of Chicago.

82

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

In 1911-12 thirteen out of thirty-six literature courses listed in the English department were in types: eight in the drama, one survey, and one each in the novel, the essay, literary criticism, and the ballad and epic. This year, about a third of the twenty-eight courses in the Department of General Literature (formerly Literature [in English]) were in types. In 1916-17 fifteen out of the forty-nine English literature courses listed were in types: seven in the drama, four in fiction, two in criticism, one in the essay, and one in the ballad and epic. Thirteen of the thirtyfive general literature courses were in types. In 1921-22 twenty of the sixty-one English literature courses listed were in types: nine in the drama, four in fiction, three in the romance, two in criticism, one in the essay, and one in the ballad and epic. About half of the general literature courses were in types. In 1926-27 the undergraduate survey by types appeared at Chicago, with one-quarter introductory courses for three major types: poetry, drama, and fiction. These replaced the older traditional sophomore introduction to literature. In 1931-32 eighty-four English literature courses were listed, of which twenty-five were in. types: twelve in the drama, five in fiction, two in the essay, one in criticism, one in the ballad, and one in the types of eightteenth-century poetry. There were also the three introductory courses, poetry, drama, and fiction, comprising a sequence for English majors. In comparative literature (formerly general literature), almost half the courses were in types. T H E CONSEQUENCES of such developments for high school teaching also are plain. College students of 1890 to 1920 became high school English teachers during the first quarter of the twentieth century. They thereby passed on to the secondary level the tendencies analyzed above. Two less direct but compelling means of transmission were college entrance requirements and the professional literature. Though the college requirements determined mainly the content of the high school curriculum, they also had a subtle effect upon the organization and the methods of teaching. Often, moreover, the same professors who formulated them further controlled the lower schools' programs either by writing manuals of instruction and essays in literary criticism or by editing anthologies. Such directions on the part of the college, acting with many other conditions, guided the construction of courses of study which depict the actual procedures and materials used by high school teachers. In the final section of this study, therefore, all these factors will be taken up.

5 In High Schools I . S U R V E Y W I T H ILLUSTRATIONS

I n 1930-31 Dora V. Smith found that except for a simple, unclassified list of books to be read, arrangement by types was the most common organization of the high school literature course. 1 T h i s announcement recognized the results of a movement which had begun half a century earlier. As a result partly of college entrance requirements in composition and partly of tendencies within the high school, English literature became an accepted subject for secondary study in the years from 1870 to 1900. It took at least another ten years to establish common aims for its teaching. Love, appreciation, and understanding of good literature were the basic goals adopted by approximately 1910. 2 For a decade before and after that, the idea of organizing high school literature courses by types was taking form. In the early twenties the first secondary literature anthologies so arranged began to appear. O n the College Entrance Board examinations, questions on types began to be noticeable in 1915 and have been especially frequent since 1923. 8 In less than ten years after that date, Dr. Smith's report was possible. In the early years of this century a cleft between secondary and higher literary studies accompanied the extension of high school education. D u r i n g the fifty years after 1880 the percentage of adolescents from 14 to 17 w h o attended public secondary schools sprang from less than 3 % to almost 50%.* W i t h this came a "relaxation of intellectual standards." T h e secondary p u p i l had often neither the ability nor the urge to read books which colleges prescribed for admission requirements. T h e compromise program which resulted often did little to endear literature to him. T o stretch the student's interest in story and content so that he might feel the subtler values of literature, Allan Abbott decided, about 1903, that a more effective plan was needed "than the present customary practice of taking u p successively some six or more 'school classics' yearly, and studying them and their footnotes and their appendices." His plan was a second-year English course in "Literary T y p e s " at the

84

The "Types

Approach"

to

Literature

Horace M a n n H i g h School of Teachers College. Starting with the romantic novel, the program guided the pupil through the realistic novel, the essay, narrative poetry, tragedy, the comedy of manners, romantic comedy, and the lyric. Composition assignments paralleled the literature work, and outside reading of twenty books was also carried on in terms of the eight types which the class studied through the common texts. Instead of annotated editions, students used regular trade copies. A b b o t t linked each new type studied with the previous one, bringing out the author's intentions. H e pointed out in one selection the secondary effects which were primary in the next selection to be studied. T h e results were what he had planned, and he decided that in the second high-school year pupils gain much by the rapid reading of diverse types of literature . . . that such a course is more effective than the usual minute study of a few books in stimulating interest in literature and in broadening the pupil's character; and that it is more effective than the usual text-book rhetoric in developing a clear, forceful, easy style and a real enjoyment of self-expression.® T h i s conclusion includes the two values which have always been brought forward as peculiar to the types approach: direct concern with literature itself, and ease of transition from single works to wider reading in the same type. T h e latter merit is doubly important. It insures the pupil's contact with most forms of literature. It also fits in with the extensive reading programs which won out against intensive reading in the first quarter of this century. T h e third virtue, that of improving his pupils' writing by assigning for composition the same type that they were studying as literature, has lost favor to other methods of teaching composition. Other teachers, writing at the same time as Abbott, made much of a fourth excellence of the method, its convenience for comparative treatment. W i t h the rise of interest in remedial reading during the last fifteen years, a fifth application has shown up more than before: concern with types as offering different kinds of reading problems. A still newer, sixth suggestion, coming out of the current emphasis on the pupil as a person, is Louise M. Rosenblatt's reminder that, properly studied, literary forms can reveal how "the individual's activities and ideas in any sphere are necessarily directed by attitudes and patterns absorbed from his cultural environment."® In this way, they may help the adolescent realize and adjust to the pressures on his own personality. Vaguely underpinning all these interpretations, but extremely difficult to specify, is a seventh consideration, the belief that a piece of literature is better appreciated if it can be placed in a type category.

5·' In High Schools

85

T h r e e implicit factors accompany these seven uses of the types approach. T h e first, the emphasis this approach is supposed to give to literature, rather than history or biography, was seldom stated in so many words after the early years of this century. Once the aim of appreciation was established and the need for teaching literature, not periods or lives, in high school was understood, this basic superiority of the types approach over the chronological and biographical became implicit and did not have to be argued. Teachers taught and discussed literature as necessarily comprising types. T o acquaint students with the whole of literature often meant to them not literature of all nations, of all times, or of all authors, but of all types. W i t h the purpose of teaching literary works as literature was involved a desire to make pupils recognize and name short stories, plays, essays, poems. In statements of the aims of teaching literature, therefore, from the days of C h u b b to the present, the need for k n o w i n g types is recurrent. In one form or another, finally, acquaintance with the types has been in itself an assumed or explicit value in most extended discussions of the teaching of literature. Direct advocacy of historical and critical analysis of types finds one of its strongest expressions in Fries, Hanford, and Steeves' Teaching of Literature? where the authors feel such study to be an instrument for enhancing appreciation. T h e history of college entrance requirements in English shows how subtly the types idea seeped into a program. In 1892 the National Education Association appointed its Committee of T e n to investigate secondary studies and their relations with colleges. T h e subdivision of this committee which reported on English recommended (1892) that each masterpiece on the list of readings required for college entrance should be "so far as possible representative of some period, tendency, or type of literature." 8 T h i s provision was endorsed by the first meeting of the Conference on U n i f o r m Entrance Requirements in English in 1894® It was also echoed in C. M. Gayley's and C. B. Bradley's joint suggestion to California English teachers the same year that all literature should be "so studied as to develop the great facts of chronological sequence and relationship in English literature, the distinct types and schools of poetry, and the characteristics of the great epochs and groups."10 T h e lists of books on which College Entrance Board examinations were to be based for the years after 1894 show that the committee members meant each selection to represent one of the major types, such as drama, fiction, essay, oration, and narrative poetry. In this way it was

86

The "Types Approach"

to

Literature

possible gradually to liberalize the standards and permit broader reading while at the same time compelling the candidates to touch upon a wide range of literature. A m o n g the requirements of the College Entrance Examination Board for its very first year, 1900, for example, the recommendation of the Conference on Uniform Entrance Requirements in English was quoted, that "a certain amount of outside reading, chiefly of poetry, fiction, biography, and history be encouraged throughout the entire school course." 1 1 A f t e r 1908 the Board did not prescribe individual books for the "reading" section of the examination but named several of each type, from which ten were to be chosen. Beginning in 1914 and continuing for some years, these groups had labels: classics in translation, Shakespeare, prose fiction, essays and biography, and poetry for the "reading" section; and drama, poetry, oratory, and essays for the "study" section—which also became at this time a matter of choosing from a list rather than accepting individual books. In 1923 and thereafter an additional group of types was announced from which candidates might choose two of the ten books required for "reading": a modern novel, a collection of short stories, a collection of contemporary verse, a collection of current nonfiction prose writings, and two modern plays. For a second kind of examination, the "Comprehensive Plan," which the Board had instituted in 1916 and which might be substituted for the "Restricted Plan," n o books at all were prescribed, but the acceptable selections were grouped in an exemplary list as drama, fiction, essay, and poetry. T h e report of the Commission on English to the Board in 1930 considered that the "reading selected should be varied enough to appeal to many different interests and to introduce the student to the more important literary types or forms."12 Following this report the Board's definition of requirements in English for 1935 and thereafter recognized understanding of types as in itself an aim of the English teacher by stating that the candidate should "have a general knowledge of the more important literary types." 13 I I . W R I T I N G S ON M E T H O D

THE ADAPTABILITY of the types approach to comparative techniques was taught by the authors of the first substantial textbooks on the teaching of English. In 1902, while Nicholas Murray Butler, in the preface to Percival Chubb's Teaching of English, rejoiced over the fact that English had "arrived" as a subject, 1 4 C h u b b reviewed the problems of literary instruction with great concern for the child's uninterrupted development. Modern genetic psychology, then a new science, directed him

5-· In High

Schools

8η

toward the child as an organism. In high school, he felt, the teaeher of English must, more than any other, "be conversant with the psychological phenomena of adolescence." Since broad "waves of changing interest" were one of these phenomena, the cultural aim was to be general, not intensive; "the ideal must be one of breadth." Since another was the search for a vocation, "our selected reading matter must be varied enough to include examples of all the leading types of literature." T o parallel the composition work, he planned an emphasis upon narration the first year, description the second, exposition the third, and argument the fourth. But he particularly disavowed the intention of "prescribing for each of the four years an exclusive study of the novel, the epic, the essay, and the speech respectively." What he aimed at was a curriculum which would contain within the work of each year "most of the leading types of literary art." His treatment of general methods in teaching high school literature was to a great extent in terms of types, whether the problem were of placement, of distribution of time, or of growth in appreciation. Chubb encouraged much comparative study of types, quoting Matthews on the short story and Gayley on mythology. He suggested, for example, that the fourth year might be concluded by "comparative work on the drama. Reserving 'Macbeth' for the last of our studies, we can work out from it into a comparative study of some Greek tragedy . . . or a French or German play." 1 5 Another early writer on these problems was Franklin T . Baker at Teachers College. Collaborating with Carpenter of Columbia University and Scott of the University of Michigan in The Teaching of English (1903), he assumed that "the first thing in studying literature is to understand it and enjoy it." 1 6 By analysis of structure and by study of words and allusions, he felt, these aims would be furthered. For grasping a book as a whole, he suggested that four problems be kept in mind: the author's personality, the location of the work in the evolution of its type, the social or intellectual background, and the critical merit of the work. Expanding upon the advantages of "that form of comparative study which considers a piece of literature in its place in the development of the type," he said that "in the various forms of English literature there is evident a continuous series of changes, sometimes in the development to more perfect types, sometimes in the decadence of perfected t y p e s . " " Baker also discussed the teaching of separate types—novel, essay, poetry, drama—with these problems in mind. A n influential spokesman for English teachers in New York was Benjamin A. Heydrick. He felt especially favorable toward the types approach because it could lead to wide reading and was an excellent in-

88

The "Types Approach"

to

Literature

strument for comparative study. In his guide to the study of literature, which appeared in 1901, "each book is treated as a type, a representative of a class, so that the study of a few books may open the way to an appreciation of many." 1 8 T h e outline for the study of each masterpiece included a paragraph headed "Comparative Study," under which comparison of this example with other specimens of the same type was urged. S. S. Seward, whose poetry anthology was popular in college preparatory classes, made the same points in 1909. According to him it was more "natural" to g r o u p poems by type than by author or period. W o u l d n ' t it be easier, he asked, for the student to go "from a sonnet of Shakespeare to one of Wordsworth than from Milton's sonnet, On the Late Massacre in Piedmont to L'Allegro or to Lovelace's To Lucas ta, on Going to the Warsi" By means of a comparative inquiry, he added, an understanding of poetry as an art could be achieved. H e therefore grouped his selections by types to facilitate such an inquiry. 1 9 W i t h a similar approach P. H. Pearson wrote in 1913 that the comparative method was, for purposes of appreciation, more serviceable than any other. A l t h o u g h he applied it to all elements of style, as well as to complete works, he assumed a framework of types. For example, he proposed a comparison of Hiawatha and Evangeline, "with the view of determining which is the truer American epic," in order to "focus attention on basic type characteristics." 20 T w o years later, Emma Miller Bolenius ( T e a c h i n g Literature, 1915) considered the teaching of literature to be almost wholly the teaching of types. Her book aimed to give " a knowledge of the types of literature and the most representative classics. It is intended to show definitely how to present the various kinds of literature so that classes will appreciate the type, and will require a liking for the best books." Merely mentioning the comparative technique as one among many, 2 1 Mrs. Bolenius devoted her whole book, except for an introduction on the meaning of literature, to chapters explaining how to teach nine types: ballad, lyric, metrical tale, metrical romance, epic, drama, novel, essay, and oration. Her suggestions were usually analytic, rarely comparative. Another powerful figure in the history of English teaching was Charles Swain T h o m a s of Harvard. Eighth on a list of twelve principles for choosing literary selections, in his Teaching of English (1917), was the principle that "the English course should provide a variety of literary types." T h o m a s gave two reasons for this demand: first, that one type may please where another won't; second, that "true culture demands an acquaintance with all these literary forms." Like Chubb, T h o m a s thought it unwise to be with any one type for long. " W e shall not want

5-· In High Schools

89

to spend one year upon Shakespeare, another year upon lyric poetry, another year upon the drama. We shall want to include all these types in our course, but we shall not delay too long upon any one." 2 2 Thomas ignored the implications of the types approach for extensive reading, but, like most writers on the teaching of literature, included chapters on how to teach several types: poetry, prose fiction, and the essay. He also suggested that lists of outside reading be divided by types so that a pupil could not stay lost in a single type of reading. A synthesis of Thomas's views with those of Allan Abbott, James Fleming Hosic, and others, also appeared at this time. Abbott had worked out six aims of teaching literature for the Committee on Types of Organization of High School English, of the National Council of Teachers of English. T h i r d among them was an "understanding of the leading features in structure and style of the main literary types, such as novels, dramas, essays, lyric poents." Widely publicized in 1913, and exerting great influence, Abbott's statement of aims, somewhat modified, was incorporated into Hosic's compilation, Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools. T h e report of the committee on senior high school literature in the same publication reflected the opinions of Thomas, and therefore proposed that selections chosen should provide a wide variety of types and that the candidate for college be led, among other things, to "a conscious examination of literary types." As its main principle for arranging the course this report emphasized the psychological growth of the pupil, and it carefully warned that there must be "a decidedly different treatment of different types of literature." 23 T h e report discussed methods of teaching the lyric, prose fiction, the drama, and the essay. It recommended differences in the treatment of each to increase appreciation, understanding, and ability to read. T h e underlying reason for presenting such a types approach was its value for mastering reading difficulties and for realizing the differences in purpose, the peculiar appreciational values, inherent in the respective types. In 1921, four years after he had edited this compilation, Hosic wrote the introduction for the first high school literature anthology to make the types approach the basis of its organization. In presenting this text, Mabel Irene Rich's Study of the Types of Literature, he reviewed the shifts in methods and purposes of teaching literature which had led to the production of such a book: In her Study of the Types of Literature Miss Rich has at last provided a way of escape from the over-mature and formal history of English literature, on the one hand, and the over-minute and pedantic study of three or four examinable masterpieces on the other. Recog-

go

The "Types Approach" to Literature

nizing the need of organizing one's knowledge of literature, she has provided for the closing years of high-school work a comparatively simple and objective view of literature as a whole and thus enabled the young man or young woman about to go out into life or on into college to bring all of his reading into perspective and so to generalize his experiences with various types of writing that he has a »good working basis for further experiences.24 As in Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools, Hosic here considered the types approach in terms of reading problems, aiming to heighten understanding and appreciation. Miss Rich herself thought her book should be useful because it focused "attention on the literature itself rather than on its history," because it facilitated and guided extensive reading, and because it would make the student a better reader by enabling him to tell one type from another and by teaching him what to expect from each. Her book was the outcome of five years' teaching by types (in addition to much greater general classroom experience), and she suggested that some of her own methods be adopted: After the characteristics of a type have been presented and some knowledge has been gained regarding its importance and historical development, examples are studied, the student being encouraged to notice how the sub-divisions of a general class of poetry, or prose, are related, and at the same time are different from each other, and how even two examples of the same type will show marked differences as well as similarities. He must not lose sight of the fact, though, that he is to discover why the classification is justified in each case. Thus not only will the interpretation of the particular piece of literature be of interest to him, but also its relation to other literature. In connection with the class work, the student will read as many examples of the particular type outside of class as the time will allow, reporting either orally or in writing of the things which have interested him in the reading. Sometimes, when the opportunity offers, he may even try to produce something similar himself in connection with his regular theme work. 26 In an article published in 1923, Hosic continued his argument. Of four needs supplied by the literature course, the first he enumerated was "How to read books of different kinds fordifferent purposes." Although his pQint was merely an expansion of what he had already indicated, his statement of the "reading" uses of the types approach is worth quoting for its cautions:

5 : In High

Schools

91

All pupils should learn that to read a story is one thing, a lyric poem another, and a play still a third. Each makes its own peculiar demands upon attention, thought, and imagination. Abstract prose is, by comparison, seen to be another world. One enters it and finds his way about in a different manner. Stories, too, differentiate and lyrics likewise. Some further discrimination in each field may be possible and desirable. A t least the young reader will get a more definite idea of what to expect, what to look for, and how to get the right effect. A study of types merely as types, however, is not meant. We should aim at practical, not academic results. . . . It is not literary technicians we want, but competent readers. Above all we should not welcome half-baked generalizations on literary art. Let us aim at ideals of method, habit, and skill, not at general facts and conclusions.26 T w o years later, when Theodore W . H. Irion finished his study of ninth-grade comprehension difficulties in studying literature, his results corroborated Hosic. Comprehension, he found, varies widely with different types of literature, poetry being the most difficult. In his conclusions he urged teachers to train themselves in the techniques of reading. "There can be no doubt that teachers could save much time in the long run by teaching students in this [ninth] grade how to go about studying literature. 27 By 1926 the types approach had achieved so much popularity that C. C. Fries and the other authors of The Teaching of Literature could say, "The study of literary forms seems to be in its nature and by general consent the last piece of the road to be covered in a course of such design and scope as the ordinary high school course." Reserving the first two years of high school for the development of general knowledge of literature, this book advocated that historical and type aspects of literature be stressed in the last two years. Systematic study of types is necessary for appreciation, the authors explained, but for them a type was not "an organism but a device." They understood that "types are fluid, are influenced by changes in literary fashion, and are wholly effective only when there is some understanding of the qualities of taste which have created and accepted them." Among types, "the major differentiations are indistinct and tentative. . . . So our categories should serve us as indications, and not precise definitions, of artistic purpose." 28 Nancy Gillmore Coryell's experiment in 1927, evaluating extensive and intensive methods of teaching literature, showed that the types approach is peculiarly well adapted for encouraging wide reading and yet keeping the pupils directed toward the literary values of what they read. While Dr. Coryell arranged the course for both experimental groups

92

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

by types and intended to include specimens of all the major types in each, it was of the extensive-reading group that she found "the opportunity [was] given to read pieces of literature by wholes rather than by parts, and to read widely in a definite field and type." For teachers of both groups, the objectives were listed separately under each type. " T o have some definite basis for judging the relative success of the two methods, a set of definite objectives which could be tested was formulated for each type of literature studied."29 This was necessary because, as the experiment was set up, the extensive-reading group actually paralleled the work of the intensive-reading group but read several rather than one work of each type of literature. In the same year another English teacher, Blandford Jennings of Illinois, compared the types approach with different methods of "inculcating some organized notion of the field of literature." His conclusion was that "experienced and skillful teachers are coming more and more to believe that this can best be done by a course of study, usually in the twelfth grade, organized by types." Jennings, like Dr. Coryell, found that the scheme made pupils read wholes and concentrate on the literature itself, thereby gaining in critical values and in appreciation. He further argued that it would "contribute to skill in reading, by suggesting different methods and attitudes for the approach to the conquest of various types of experience through reading." Jennings' classroom style is suggested in his cautions that care ought to be taken to make the study of types inductive, rather than deductive; the pupil will benefit much more from finding for himself the central similarities between a number of selections than from trying to fit the selections to some previously accepted definition. There is also the danger that the study may degenerate into literary formalism in an attempt to make too closely technical differentiations between types. Probably selections studied as lyrical need not be rigidly distinguished as verse of certain kinds. Such essays as "Dream Children," such tales as those by Dunsany, are as truly lyrical as any poetry. The crucial distinction is between lyrical and reflective material on the one hand and narrative and fictional material on the other. With this distinction firmly established, attention might be paid to the differences (in spirit, rather than in form) between lyrics of celebration and praise—the odes; of loss—the elegies; of briefly expressed personal emotion—songs, sonnets, and so on.80 Two years later Isabelle Duffey, of Rockford, Illinois, used her own course as the point of departure for a discussion of the whole question

5·· In High Schools

93

of organizing the literature curriculum by types. Twenty-five years after Abbott's report, Miss Duffey agreed with her predecessor that "a study by types develops greater power in creative writing." Like him, she felt that arousing or extending literary appreciation is the prime function of the teacher of literature. T o enable pupils to recognize, appreciate, and engage in good reading, she believed that the chronological method was decidedly inferior to the pattern of types which had been substituted for it at the Rockford Senior H i g h School for the six years preceding her article. From a survey of practises at more than twenty-five schools near her own, Miss Duffey concluded that about one-half of the schools consulted are using the type method in at least one course. Some have used it only a year or two; some, five or six years; one, ten; and one, twenty or more. In one large high school in another state [than Illinois] there is a constantly growing desire among members of the English department to introduce the type method. Only one school reported that its English department had used this method for some time, but has ceased to do so as instructors felt that nothing was gained by its use. . . . T h e majority of our teachers, particularly those w h o have taught by chronological periods as well as by types, strongly favor the latter. T h e senior class got most of its material from M. I. Rich's Types of Literature. T h e juniors studied American literature by a similar plan, emphasizing types through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries only. T h e teachers themselves composed an outline of the chronological background. Miss Duffey found many reasons for preferring the types approach to its opponents. In addition to the recurrent view that the former emphasizes the works of art rather than their background, she listed eight other values. First, the types approach is more natural, since pupils themselves instinctively think of books in terms of types. Second, it encourages informal discussions and therefore develops some critical sense. T h i r d , it gives a more unified picture of English literature. Fourth, it saves time, because "a pupil can cover ground more rapidly when he is interested in one type for some time than when he is constantly shifting from type to type." Fifth, the same authors are met several different times during the term. Sixth, the types approach favors extensive reading by interesting the pupils in many more books: "Since the introduction of the type method in our school we have purchased a great many more books than heretofore." Seventh, it improves creative writing. A n d

94

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

eighth, "Teaching literature by types aids materially in developing literary appreciation and genuine enjoyment of the best books." 31 T h e time of Miss Duffey's article may be taken as the peak in theoretical advance of the types approach, as Miss Rich's textbook may be taken as the real beginning. Before the decade bounding the work of these two teachers, the method was often advocated in pedagogical essays and used in classrooms. Since that decade it has become, if anything, more popular. Until the early twenties, however, most literature courses which possessed any organization at all were historical. It is since 1930 that derogations and utter indictments of the types approach (at least in conversation) have become commonplace. Ultimately it was subjected to the very same accusation as its forerunner: "In 1929 . . . history of English literature or a systematic analysis of literary types often received more attention than the literature itself." 32 In the last five or ten years an increasing number of vanguard educators have decried the whole idea of types and found it outmoded. A leading cause of this transfiguration was the change in position of the types approach from that of a new technique, establishing itself against the entrenchment of the historical method, to that of despot, resisting the encroachments of curricula which seem to make more of individual differences and needs. If the aims of teaching literature had not been revised to make reading as much the central problem as appreciation, that change would have been far less obvious. But about twenty years ago it was becoming plain that students failed to enjoy school classics chiefly because they couldn't understand rather than because they couldn't appreciate them. Remedial reading developed into a byword. T h e types approach changed from a critical interpretation of literature into a way of teaching reading. It ceased to be primarily a comparative survey of works of art and turned into "the technique used in reading different types." Lou LaBrant's Teaching of Literature in the Secondary School (1931) focuses on the reading skills aspect: T h e process of learning how to read presents many difficulties, only one of which is the lack of the technique used in reading different types. T h e discussion of types is presented first because it seems . . . that knowledge of how to approach these different forms is especially necessary to the reader just entering the field of adult reading. . . . On entrance to high school, the child finds himself rather suddenly reading material that recognizes a host of conventions about which he knows nothing, conventions which add to the delight and understanding of the initiated reader, but which are likely to confuse and irritate the child. 83

5·' In High Schools

95

Most of the chapters of the book are entitled " H o w to Read . . ." the various types—novel, play, essay and biography, poetry, short story, periodical. Emphasis is on the need for developing skills in everyday reading, not simply in schools. T h e most extensive survey of the use of the types approach was made by Dora V. Smith in 1930-31, as part of the National Survey of Secondary Education. From an investigation which included the analysis of 156 different courses of study, Dr. Smith concluded that where some kind of organization was used in high school besides a mere list of classics, it was most commonly the types organization. "Organization by literary types increases gradually from 8 per cent in the seventh grade to 47 per cent in the eleventh. . . . Between 40 and 50 per cent of the courses offer no type of organization whatever, presenting mere lists of classics for study. T h a t organization by type prevails in many of these is suggested by the nature of the selections as well as by the teacher helps." In a chart of the frequency of mention of teaching topics in 120 lesson plans from 24 courses of study, Dr. Smith listed technicalities of types as fourth in order, after main events of story, historical background, and characterization. As she sketched the uses and faults of the types approach, Dr. Smith indicated the existence of an extremely critical attitude toward it. T h e tone of her report suggested that the teachers who followed this method often felt defensive as they explained why they did so. First among the merits stated was convenience. Teachers in the junior and occasionally in the senior high school maintain that use of organization by type is a matter of convenience in handling book sets and not indicative of a desire to emphasize literary technique. For instance, where library books are being loaned in quantities to the classroom library, they point out, it simplifies the procedure greatly to ask for short stories, novels, or l-act plays. There is also less likelihood of conflict in requests of teachers alternating their use of materials. T h e only other favorable criticism prominent in Dr. Smith's report was the statement that "more extensive reading is done under organization by type than where mere lists of titles are given." While remarking that the types approach is superior to the chronological for promoting " a broader program of reading, a more general consideration of literary values, and greater emphasis upon contemporary materials," she objected to two tendencies in its use. First, admitting that "some teachers are able to follow a course of study organized by types without undue

g6

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

stress on form and technique," she implied that an equal number, if not more, are unable to do so. Second, there is little correlation between the "popularity" of the various types in school programs and their use in extra-scholastic stitutions. Predominating types in order of popularity are poetry, the drama, and the novel. Something less than half the mention of these is accorded to biography and the essay, and one-third to magazines and newspapers, miscellaneous prose, and myths and legends in the junior high school. . . . Stress upon poetry is roughly equal throughout the school course. The essay predominates in grade 11, the novel in grades 9 and 10, drama in grades 10 and 11, and biography in grade 9. No other types show prominent use in any single year. In the last chapter of her bulletin Dr. Smith looked forward to the work of the Curriculum Commission of the National Council of Teachers of English for stimulating "renewed progress in the achievement of the manifold objectives of the teaching of English."34 An early product of the commission was An Experience Curriculum in English (1935), which urged that specific kinds of experience be made the underlying foci of the course of study. In the section on upper-school literature, types seemed at first to be largely ignored. Such objectives as "enjoying action" or "to observe the effects of widening trade horizons on our daily lives" appear unrelated to lyric, drama, or epic as such. Yet the subordinate objectives of the individual units were still not far from the familiar. They included undeniably "type" aims: "to enjoy rapidly moving comedies of situation," "to enjoy plays in which suspense and character interest are both strong," "to enjoy poems of the merely ludicrous." Of fifty-six units outlined in literature, forty used materials limited to one of the following types: fiction, novels, detective stories, biography and essay, essays alone, plays, poems, epic, myths, allegory. One unit even had as its avowed objective "to know the salient characteristics of each literary type listed above [essays, letters, journals, autobiographies, lyric poetry] in order that the reader may find the personal message without misunderstanding." Another was entitled "Getting Acquainted with a Literary Type," and aimed to get more intelligent enjoyment from short stories . . . to recognize the limitation of the short story to a single mood, a single plot, and a simple (though possibly important) theme. T o recognize early in the reading of a story the type to which it belongs—alias, the author's purpose—and to read accordingly. T o apply, informally or even subconsciously, such criteria of excellence as intellectual or emotional value

β: In High Schools

97

of the main impression, truth of characters, plausibility of plot, dramatic intensity, appropriateness of style. T o know where to find good short stories for future reading. These units were planned thus mainly to present to the student the difficulties inherent in each type as a reading problem. T h e report therefore advised the prospective teacher of English to learn the "reading techniques for various types." Behind this interpretation was the belief that different kinds of literature are different kinds of potential experience with literature. Since each type has its own peculiar troubles, the curriculum must offer as much as it can of the whole range of type^. In line with this purpose, it is fortunate that certain typical experiences have generally expressed themselves in certain literary types. Thanks to this situation, some units of the experience curriculum are naturally composed almost entirely of single literary types. By taking advantage of these and artificially creating a few additional such formally homogeneous units it is possible to introduce the mastery of the peculiar difficulties of each form as techniques or enabling objectives. T h e philosophy underlying the advice of the Curriculum Commission here borders on the concept of types as organically matching archetypal experience, the communicative form growing pearl-like around the grain of activity—Coleridge's "organic form." 85 A more recent publication of the National Council of Teachers of English expresses a fundamentally similar philosophy. In A Correlated Curriculum (1936), the Committee on Correlation adopted a point of view much like that proposed in the first chapter of the present study. That is the anthropological analysis according to which types express cultures. T h e "remedial reading" and the "anthropological" attitudes toward types are, indeed, the most common in the last fifteen years' writings on teaching literature. T h e remedial reading slant is characteristic of courses intended for less advanced pupils and the cultural-anthropological of those with historical background. T h e most pertinent section of A Correlated Curriculum is based on the report of F. Earl Ward (Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota). For him the experiences out of which types grow are those of a nation or race. Behind every genius who has brought a type to perfection lies a social need and much forgotten experimentation. T h e anonymous stories of folk-lore are the creation of a nomadic people, unable to carry with them in their wanderings the memory of persons and places. . . .

98

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

Similiarly, romance betokens an aristocratic society, the novel a middle-class society, the drama an urban society. It is not clear whether the quotation means that the drama, for example, is always associated with city-dwellers, novels with the bourgeoisie, or simply that they have been so in western civilization. However, it does go on to say that "types are in constant flux and fusion because of social change and movement." In high school, the report continues, pupils should be taught to recognize the types and understand their connection with cultural developments. For doing that, the following "experience" is one of those suggested: Definition of simple and social concepts and literary forms, with respect to their origin, development, and present significance should be enforced through a study of the types of literature. There should result an appreciation of the diversity and ingenuity of contemporary life and literature. 36 Seemingly close to this outlook, Roscoe Edward Parker really opposes it when he explains (1937) that "some understanding of what may be called the mechanics of literary art is essential to the reading and interpretation of different types of literature." For he advocates the old doctrine that the type is the product of genius, not the result of genius working in a tradition. Reducing the feeling for literary form to a purely aesthetic reaction, he makes its appreciation a matter of taste and ignores the social roots of every type in the assertion that "From the author's personality, purpose, and method of interpreting his material, then, arise the various types of literature." 3 7 More in accordance with prevailing views today and that of the Committee on Human Relations of the Progressive Education Association, is Louise M. Rosenblatt's combination of the anthropological and the "individual differences" treatments of the problem. Accepting the interaction of cultural patterns and individual purposes as the origin of types, she points out that comprehension of this process will do two things for the student. It will teach him how great is "the shaping pressure of the environment upon the individual," and it will lead him to realize that men can profoundly influence their surroundings. As an example of the former she mentions the conventions within which all Elizabethan dramatists had to write; to illustrate the latter, she cites Shakespeare's ability to transform those conventions. Dr. Rosenblatt also demonstrates how a broad understanding of types as "crystallized social behavior" enables the student to find in each work of literature an emblem of its time, revealing in its form the attitudes and patterns of a period. 38

5-· In High Schools

99

This and all generalized concepts of types have been fairly consistently eliminated from still another report of the National Council of Teachers of English, Conducting Experiences in English (1939), a survey of the methods used to teach English in accordance with an experience philosophy. Although units involving all or individual types are listed in the index, the book nowhere considers the theory of types, and refers to the pattern only incidentally. However, larger projects summarized often include sections on various types, such as the historical novel or the folktale.88 These are used mainly for the information or attitudes to be found in them. Pupils Are People (1941), in the same series, is the report of the Committee on Individual Differences. It is anthropologically minded at many points. But instead of accepting literary types, it replaces them entirely by categories based on personality problems. Suggested groupings are by "the individual and his relationships," "the individual and society," "the cultures of minority groups," 40 and similar sets of common content. Appreciation is assumed to grow out of satisfaction of the pupil's emotional needs and not to be an essential concomitant of his grasping literary traditions or structural similarities. The sort of organization which is now rivaling the types in high school is known as the "theme" approach. It is especially characteristic of junior high school courses and is often contrasted with the chronological and the types schemes. All the major recommendations of the many National Council committees imply a preference for a "theme" approach, one which would sweep across life activities rather than artistic purposes. John R. Dunbar made a comparative evaluation of the three competing approaches in 1937 and solved the conflict by modifying the types course in the manner of the National Council reports. Not surrendering the need to represent all types of literature in the work, he imposes on it a classification according to psychological growth: 1. ego or self, 2. family or gang, 3. social organization, 4. world-wide organizations. Emphasizing the need for reorganization and reselection of the materials for the literature course, he bases his proposal on the conviction that "literature is but the expression of experience and receives its interest and value from the nearness of the student's experience and knowledge to that expression." 41 In addition to these three approaches, Robert C. Pooley, two years later (1939), analyzed organizations by experiences, by integration and correlation, by free reading, and by several other, far less common, principles. He lists three advantages of types:

too

The "Types

Approach"

to

Literature

ι. T h e student is able to work in closely knit units where he can compare the work of one author with that of others in the same type. 2. H e can note the development of a type and distinguish its contemporary characteristics from those of an earlier day. 3. T h e type organization is well adapted to the motivation of voluntary reading along parallel lines, particularly in connection with the short story and novel. 4 2 H e also sets forth three disadvantages: 1. Universal tendency to overstress literary forms. T h e general reader seldom needs to identify the type of literature he is r e a d i n g he is interested only in the content. 2. Some types are too heavy or too concentrated to be suitable for continuous study. T h i s is especially true of lyric poetry. 3. T h e types organization provides very little perspective in literature and makes a unified theme or idea impractical. 4 3 N o t presuming to specify any one approach as suitable for all teachers or classes, Pooley means his article to be a guide for selecting a pattern. H e expressly insists that the particular needs in each instance should determine the choice. III.

TEXTBOOKS

TEXTBOOK compilers seek the largest possible audiences. W h i l e a statistically accurate survey of recent textbooks in literature would demand a dissertation for full treatment, a sampling of the most popular ones can serve as a good weathervane of teaching trends. A study by Martha A. Meyer in 1936 did not consider the organization of textbooks. She analyzed changes in material, however, and found that since 1920 an increased amount of space has been granted to four literary types: the popular ballad, the short story, the play, and the brief essay.44 T h e r e are many different ways of using the types approach in textbooks. In some there is the appending of a chart of types to a chronological anthology or other sort of collection. Such a chart usually lists the major literary types, briefly defines or discusses them, and indexes the selections in the text which exemplify each one. It may be as laconic as that of Robert Shafer's American Literature46 or as detailed as that in Payne, Neville, and Chapman's Interesting Friends.*6 Many chronological anthologies include curt histories of literary types scattered among the selections. In a book dominated by periods or themes the sub-sections may be clusters of types. Inglis, Cooper, Sturdevant, and Benét's Adventures in

5·· In High Schools

101

English Literature breaks down each period into its most representative types, and precedes each period with a survey of its type developments. 47 When a book is wholeheartedly organized by types, the subdivisions may be type-within-type, selections illustrating the history of each type, or theme-within-type. Miss Rich's text analyzes each major type into narrower divisions; e.g., dramatic poetry includes the masque, the dramatic monologue, the morality. She dwells upon historical relationships and definitions. Exemplifying its title, her book is indeed A Study of the Types of Literature.48 Inglis, Gehlman, Bowman, and Foerster's Adventures in American Literature presents in historical order the authors within each prominent type. 49 Often, as in Briggs, Herzberg, Jackson, and Bolenius' Romance, there is no formal o r d e r chronological or otherwise—within the respective types. And sometimes, when the number of works for one type is unusually great, the group is subdivided by themes, as in the poetry section of Cook's and others' A dventures in Appreciation.e0 E V E N BEFORE Miss Rich's compilation appeared, Percy Hazen Houston and John Kester Bonnell had edited Types of Great Literature (1919), a college text. T h e i r aims are familiar now: to study masterpieces directly as literature and to eliminate the brushwood of historical and critical entanglements, "while at the same time ranging free from the cramping limits of periods and lands." 51 They grouped the material by eight types: epic and romance, narrative poetry, the ballad, lyric poetry, history, biography, letters, orations, and essays. Although a still earlier anthology, Leonidas Warren Payne's American Literary Readings (1917), was organized by region and author within the region, the editor realized that some "teachers in recent years have preferred to study literature by types instead of chronologically by authors or by literary schools, or movements, as has been the prevailing custom in the past." For the benefit of such teachers, he attempted to represent in his selections as many different types as possible, and even included a table cataloguing the works "under the commonly accepted rubrics." 52

Nineteen years later, when Payne joined with Mark A. Neville and Natalie E. Chapman in editing Interesting Friends (1936), the preface of the collection still stated a very similar view, although the book itself was arranged by themes: T h e book introduces the student to various types of literature. It assumes that he classes all literature as prose or poetry. By both incidental and larger devices it enables him to break each of these larger

102

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

divisions into their various types. Thus gradually he comes to know the meaning of short story, essay, biography, lyric poem, narrative poem, drama, and all the leading types into which literature is divided. A n attempt has been made to include a number of selections of each type so that he may determine from experience just how each type is used and the purpose it serves. T h e procedure is therefore inductive, the student gradually building up the understanding desired. Like the earlier book this one included a table of types, "which discusses more formally the various types that are presented rather informally through the book in connection with the selections themselves."83 When Neville took over the editing of a text, with Payne assisting him, Broadening Horizons (1942) was the result. Thoroughly systematized on an experience-theme basis around kinds of experience, it avoids emphasis upon literary types and manifests the editor's conviction that "the form or type of a production means little so long as it expresses vividly what the author originally set out to portray." More important than such factors as type, period, and author's life, he considers "the experiences which called the selection into existence. Separated from these experiences the other factors are virtually meaningless."64 T h e evolution of these three prefaces is a synopsis of the rise and decline of the types approach. EDWIN G R E E N L A W , W . H. Elson, and Christine M. Keck organized the earliest volume of the Literature and, Lije series (1922) by themes, but subdivided a "Legend and History" section into epic, ballads, and drama, among other classes. Introductions to the separate selections also presented some material on types.68 T h e preface to the next volume of the series (1922) made much of the types approach. This book was in four parts: verse narratives, prose narratives, a play, and a survey of American literature. As compared with the first volume, the introductions to the types of literature were more elaborate, and "the elementary study of types in the first book here was carried into the more complex forms of comedy, realistic novel, metrical romance." 58 T h e third volume (ig23) 57 was arranged by themes with some type subdivisions, and the last (1924)88 was based almost entirely on chronology. In 1933 the second edition of Literature and Life began to appear, eleven years after the inception of the first. Book One made special provision for instilling a knowledge of literary types.

T h e revised volume provides, through interesting specimens and simple editorial treatment, an acquaintance with these types: epic.

5-· In High Schools

103

metrical romance, folk ballad, modern narrative poetry, lyric, short story, longer fiction, essay, one-act play, longer drama, biography, and special article.89 Three years later Book Two was consciously intended to give a variety of literary forms and included an index of types. "For those who wish to organize the literature course on the basis of form rather than content, this index provides a complete inventory of the selections and the accompanying explanatory material."60 The index to types was an expansion of a list under the heading "Types of literature" in the index to Book One of the revised edition. Similar comments and editorial equipment grew more detailed in Book Four, which was organized chronologically. 61 Books One (1940) and Two (1941) of the third edition are still arranged by theme, but retain an elaborate index of types which includes brief definitions and questions as well as the page numbers of examples.62 This also appears in the last two volumes (1943), in which the editors, after explaining why they have adopted the historical method, continue: Let it be repeated that the purpose of the history is to provide an approach to the literature. This aim comes out clearly in the treatment of types. An understanding of the forms into which authors have cast their vision of human life is essential to a full appreciation of their work. Learning what to expect in taking up a lyric poem or a one-act play is the first step toward getting its meaning. The highschool student, however, should not expend much time on fine technical distinctions; for him there is only one important question about any literary type: What kind of subject-matter, treatment, and message is to be expected in this type? An understanding of the broad differences between one form and another, as the short story and the novel or the personal essay and the biographical sketch, will set the immature reader's feet in the right path to arrive at the heart of any particular example of the type.63 A N EMPHASIS on world literature which was unusual for its time characterized the two volumes of Ernest Hanes' and Martha J. McCoy's Readings in Literature (1925). Feeling that the chronological method, although then the most common, was not effective in reaching the real aims of the literature teacher, the editors argued that the drama, the epic, the essay, and lyric poetry are the most mature and sophisticated types of literature and "offer the richest sort of introduction to adult experience with life." 64 Purposely disregarding historical, geographical,

104

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

or biographical factors in arranging their materials, therefore, they put samples of the drama and the epic together in their first volume and the essay and lyric poetry in their second. With a similar point of view Jacob Zeitlin and Clarissa Rinaker published Types of Poetry (1927), intending it especially for college freshmen. Although they did not decry chronological study, they believed that a good types text would be useful to many teachers. In spite of the fact that two had been published during their preparation of this book, they felt "that in this volume the material is classified in a more thorough-going fashion than in the others and fuller recognition is given to all the important forms and aspects of English poetry with the exception of the dramatic." 66 Among the advantages of their plan they mentioned the inclusion of American literature as well as British, and contemporary as well as classical. T H E SINGER Prose and Poetry set, widely used in New York State, began as simply a one-volume anthology of classics (1927), each selection or group of selections representing a type.66 A revised edition (1934), however, founded itself on a philosophy of types as embodiments of reading problems. In it the editors assumed that the upper high school student, partly from the extent of his reading and partly from experience with libraries, recognizes types as the divisions of literature. They therefore took that approach to be the most natural, all the more so because it seemed simple, lent itself to the unit method, and gave each type its due emphasis. However, they balanced this statement with the understanding that

even in the types arrangement it seems unwise to become too detailed in analysis and classification. Introductory work on types of literature is usually most effective if presented from the point of view of assisting students to master difficulties which they encounter in learning to read and enjoy the type in question rather than from the point of view of literary classification and techniques.67 T H R E E DIFFERENT SETS of textbooks published by Harcourt, Brace and Company comprise the Adventures series.68 In Adventures in Literature, Book 7 (ig27) 69 and Book 8 (1928),70 the earliest numbers of the set, Jacob.M. Ross used the types approach more because it seemed convenient than for critical reasons. Convinced that there was no single perfect approach to literature, he wished to "present material of high literary excellence, organized so that it may be easily adapted to any method of presentation. It seemed that an organization by types of literature was best for that purpose." He believed, however, that each

5·· In High Schools

105

type needed to be taught differently and that many different "forms of literary experience should be consciously presented to the junior high school p u p i l " so that he would not restrict his interests to the adventure story. T1 Book ρ (1928), under the co-editorship of Ross and H. C. Schweikert, was less restrained in its advocacy of the method, and the preface urged that "the type organization is the natural method of arranging literature." 7 2 While warning that the divisions ought not to be over-stressed, the editors repeated the belief that knowledge of them would make students realize that they can enjoy several different types. T h e y also suggested that the arrangement enabled teachers to estimate easily the amount of material in the text for each type. More cautiously, H. Augustus Miller, H. C. Schweikert, and M . E. Lowe, in editing Adventures in Prose and Poetry (1929), preferred the types approach because it seemed the least arbitrary. Echoing Ross, they said that it allowed a teacher to "regroup the selections as he sees fit, whether to conform to the demands of a prescribed course of study or to follow his individual needs in the sequence of texts." Besides adding the veteran argument that it assured " a more diversified reading," they asserted (as the editors of Prose and Poetry had) that it was easier to use with the unit method. "Since what the student is to gain more than anything else is an appreciation of literature, this objective can be most readily attained by teaching each of the types as separate units." 7 3 For the use of the types approach in Adventures in American Literature (1930) the reasons already given—its "naturalness" and its convenience for unit study—were supplemented by three more. These were its usefulness for comparative discussions, its provision of a sense of direction often lacking in an intermingling of all types, and its revelation of "important elements of our national literature hitherto partially or entirely neglected in our school texts." 74 T h e latter referred mainly to humor, folklore, and certain aspects of biography and drama. Since the Adventures series had been so thoroughly based on the types approach, the editors of Adventures in English Literature (1931) felt bound to explain their use of the chronological organization, subdividing the periods into types. Over so vast a development as English literature, they believed, such great changes have occurred in manners and culture that in order for the student fully to appreciate the earlier works he must relive the experiences of past generations. "Therefore, the chronological arrangement for this longer vista enables the student to grow up with the race, and understand present life as the multiplied product of all that has gone before." However, since the more minute

io6

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

differentiations of time within each age are unimportant for appreciation of the literature of the period, the order by type was applied inside the greater areas. "All the tides that ebb and flow in literature are more evident by having type arrangement within the slow-moving centuries." 75 With variations, most of the other Adventure volumes continue these trends. Adventures in World Literature (1936) was divided into national literatures, each of which subsumed a number of type groupings. Adventures in Reading (1941) and Adventures in Appreciation (1941) break down each type into themes. But further numbers of the set argue few new applications or advantages of the types approach. Even so, it is worth noticing that the preface to a revised edition of Adventures in American Literature (1936) stated that hundreds of teachers who used the older book have reported that such an organization has proved eminently satisfactory. When selections of a single type are viewed together, the high-school student can thereby recognize the different interpretations and techniques and appreciate the influence various American writers have had on the gradual development of the particular literary type. Furthermore, a type organization does permit emphasis on the literature of the past one hundred years, and particularly the literature of the past thirty years.76 A set of three junior high school anthologies which later joined the Adventures group was Hidden Treasures in Literature (1934), edited by Luella B. Cook, G. W . Norvell, and W. A. McCall. 77 Basically arranged by types, all three were subdivided into themes. Ignoring definitions and histories of types, the editors emphasized kinds of reading. When Hidden Treasures was renamed the Challenge series in 1941 and officially became the junior section of Adventures in Literature, the editors took a more open stand against types. In Challenge to Grow, for example, although one of the aims was to include specimens of all sorts of literary forms, from lyric poem to radio script, there was an explicit avoidance of the types principle in grouping. Instead, selections have been grouped according to the particular kind of appeal which their content offers. . . . N o line has been drawn, either, between the new and the old; between recent literature and the 'classics.' On the contrary, an effort has been made to erase such distinctions, and to present literature of any age which has significance for youth in such a way that it will yield up its meaning. 78 Since the publishers apparently expect to revise the entire Adventure

5-· In High Schools

107

series in accordance with a junior-senior high school, six-volume set-up, these tenets may eventually dominate the collection. OF THE Literature in the Senior High School books, the first was Emma M . Bolenius' Widening Horizons (1929), which was arranged exclusively by literary types. Mrs. Bolenius was even more terse here than in her book on teaching literature as to her reasons for adopting this procedure. Her only pertinent comment was that "the selections are grouped by types so that pupils become familiar with the outstanding forms of literature." 7 9 In the third volume, American Literature (1933), T h o m a s H . Briggs, M. J. Herzberg, and Mrs. Bolenius used a combination of type, theme, and history. T h e y thereby gave teachers the alternative of study by chronology or by type. W i t h i n each type, the order was chronological. 8 0 W h e n the revised Literature in the Senior High School appeared, the selections of the first two volumes, New Frontiers (1940) 81 and Romance (194ο), 82 were again classified by types. American Literature (1941) 83 and English Literature, New and Old (1941) 84 followed the earlier edition of American Literature in combining historical, type, and theme approaches. A very similar pattern was used for both the first (1930-31) and the revised (1938-40) editions of the four-volume Good Reading for High Schools,85 edited by T o m Peete.Cross, Reed Smith, and E. C. Stauffer: straight types for the first two years, and chronology subdivided into types for the last two. R u d o l p h W . Chamberlain organized all of Beacon Lights of Literature,69 from Book One (1933) to Book Four (1934), by types. He further arranged the selections e x e m p l i f y i n g each type in chronological order. A l s o accepting one method for the first two years of high school and another for the last two, Henry Garland Bennett used a type-wi thintheme approach for volumes one and two of Literature for the High School (1935) 87 and a historical organization with some slight analysis into types for volumes three and four. In 1937 Mabel Irene Rich re-issued her textbook. W h i l e her preface reviewed general trends since the first edition had been published, the most significant shift in her own outlook was a conscious interest in wider use of world literature and an intimation that anthologies of world literature are best organized by types. 88 IV.

COURSES OF STUDY

REPRESENTATIVE state and city syllabi of the past few years give an inkling of immediate tendencies in the use of the types approach. T h e s e

io8

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

syllabi are similar to the reports of classroom work, the articles on teaching, and the textbooks already considered. Because the variety is great, simple generalizations are impossible. Many curricula, such as that of Dubois, Pennsylvania (1938),89 omit types completely in both aims and suggested units. Others, like that of Aberdeen, South Dakota (1939),80 teach formal definitions and analyses of types. For a fair impression of what is happening, it seems best to offer sample illustrations of the main trends rather than to attempt a close survey of all. 91 After those syllabi which contain no apparent use of types, the barest level of application is that in which the explicit aims of the course do not mention types but the detailed procedures do. In the Literature and Dramatics bulletin (1941) of the Missouri curriculum series, the first section is a course of "Reading Appreciation" prepared by Harry J. Siceloff, State Teachers College, Springfield, Missouri. His objective is T o give to the high-school student an opportunity to develop his reading interests under supervision to the end that his habits of leisure reading, both during and following his formal educational experiences, may be of maximum benefit to him. Toward this purpose, he develops his course around fourteen themes, such as " T h e Art of Living," "Reading for Entertainment," "Hobbies," "Beauty of Literary Form." For the year's course, three of these are to be developed by the class working together, while five are to be selected and fulfilled by the individual student. Siceloff openly deals with traditional types only in "Literature for Culture," the unit intended exclusively for students who plan to go to college. There he advises that the students should learn about historical backgrounds, and that "some time should be spent in the study of literary types."9.2 Otherwise, types are practically invisible. Reading lists are alphabetical or by theme. Beryl De Haven, however, subordinates types not to theme but to chronology. T h e course of study for the Aberdeen, South Dakota, schools (1939) adheres to the plan set forth in Miles, Pooley, and Greenlaw's Study Outline to Literature and Life, Book IV (1935)·93 Prepared for the first half of the senior year, the course is strictly chronological but recommends that the teacher give lectures on the formal characteristics of the dominant types within each period. T o care for those students who were unsuited for the usual sort of English course, the Curriculum Revision Committee of the Springfield, Massachusetts, public schools planned a "general course" in English (1939). Like Siceloff's and De Haven's programs this tentative curriculum does not include a knowledge of types in its list of objectives. How-

5·· In High Schools

109

ever, among the units which comprise it, and which may be shifted among more than one grade, are several studies of types. Although these aim primarily to make the students like what they read, knowledge of type characteristics is also taught. From the unit on the short play, for example, the students should learn the essentials of the short play and the classification of plays as tragedy, comedy, melodrama, burlesque, farce. 94 Other type units are those on biography and modern poetry. Among curricula which do not mention study of types as a purpose of the literature course, there are, finally, a good many which are implicitly built on a types organization. A course of study may announce an "experience" philosophy and yet group the activities for the year by types. T h e world literature course of Akron, Ohio (1938), 96 presents an "experience" approach, emphasizing contemporary life, to develop tenthyear pupils' character toward an understanding of democracy and a world viewpoint. T h e seven units into which the sixteen weeks' work falls are entitled "Identifying Human Characteristics," "Appreciating People and Cultures," etc. Beyond this the outline of the term is planned wholly by,types: short story, novel, drama, poetry, biography, essay, and letters and diaries. Yet except for a few questions, the suggestions within each unit concern activities and subject matter rather than type characteristics. Syllabi which aim at some understanding of literary types show as many permutations of the idea as those which do not. The Place of English in the Secondary School Curriculum (1941), a publication of the Mississippi State Department of Education, outlines a core curriculum around the problems of life. Some of the units are on the library, hobbies, family relationships. Among the aims is a warning that the value of appreciation can be over-rated. Throughout the whole booklet, no overt suggestion appears on the subject of types except the prudent remark, "Although pupils should be taught to recognize the various types of literature, over emphasis on detail, and too minute analysis should be avoided." 96 In discussing both the purposes and the methods of teaching, the New York State Syllabus in English for Secondary Schools, grades seven through twelve (1935, reprinted 1941), recognizes the types approach. It is, however, subordinated, particularly in the junior high school, to the improvement of reading and to skills associated with reading. In the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, the syllabus recommends the organization of literature units by "centers of interest," like pets, travel, or home. For those grades, the authors assert, "technical discussion of literary types . . . should be avoided."

ι io

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

T h e New York State course in reading for the tenth and eleventh grades is characteristic of the trends toward treating types as reading problems. T h i s program "is not a plan for the study of literature 'by types' in the usual meaning of the expression. Rather it deals with the overcoming of the special reading difficulties of the high school pupil." T h e plan advises teachers to guide the pupil toward recognizing and overcoming the obstacles to reading which each type possesses. There are certain excellent examples of the various literary types that are liked by practically all high school pupils. T h e choices for general class study should be made from these. . . . When the special difficulties of reading the type have been overcome, a period of extensive reading of other materials of the same literary type should follow. 97 A series of short articles then shows how these procedures apply to the short story, poetry, the novel, the play, the essay, and biography. New Hampshire's thorough report on English, grades seven through twelve (1938), 98 does not mention types on the list of major aims. It stresses experience and understanding. Acquaintance with different types is, however, one of the aims for the junior high school. 99 T h e report also recommends that outside reading be of the same type as that studied in class. Contrasting with this meager theoretical treatment of types, the practical organization of the six years is primarily by types. Reading lists are similarly arranged, and the suggestions for teaching frequently lead the student toward a knowledge of type characteristics. A fuller consideration of types in both objectives and techniques of teaching literature appears in the Fort Worth, Texas, course of study in senior high school English (1939). 100 Here literature is arranged basically by theme, although chronology and types are elements of the organization. T h e philosophy which determines this system is three-fold. First, literature is a direct outgrowth of life experiences and ought therefore to be studied in relation to themes which stand for such experiences. Second, like life itself, literature is divisible into eras, and cannot be fully comprehended apart from knowledge of the chronological periods which brought it forth. Third, literary expression has fallen into type traditions because of writers' usages, and students must be acquainted with these types to grasp the writers' productions. T h e emphasis varies from year to year in deference to teachers' desires, students' preferences, and the requirements of the subject matter. Throughout, as noted, the major approach is by theme. In the fourth term, however, since teachers and pupils would rather have it that way, the themes are broken down into types rather than periods. For the

5·' In High Schools

111

sixth, because the purpose of the work is to reveal the major aspects of American life through American literature, the secondary organization is chronological. T h e English and world literature program of the seventh and eighth terms demands a dual approach similar to that of the sixth. For a careful evaluation of the types approach and an extensive practise of it, the Colorado syllabus (1940) 1 0 1 is distinctive. After acknowledging other basic orientations in a list probably suggested by Pooley's article, 102 the authors select the types approach, not because it is the best, but merely as an illustration of how a curriculum may work. In accordance with the prominence of reading in the preliminary discussion, types are used as an aid to remedial reading. " T y p e organization facilitates this training; it should not encourage a minute study of literary techniques." 1 0 3 T h e aim of teaching reading techniques is supplemented by the encouragement of extensive reading, since students are to be allowed to make their own choices for wide reading in the field of a type after it has been studied as a class project. T o implement these purposes, the syllabus contains pages of suggestions for teaching the separate types: the short story, poetry, the drama, the novel, the folktale and myth, biography and autobiography, and others. T h e appended lists of reading are arranged first by grade, then by type. A few of the sub-lists are by subject rather than type.

6 Conclusion -DEYOND the conclusion that there has been undue confusion both in the advocacy of the types approach and in the opposition to it, what inferences may be drawn from this study? For some of the questions put at the beginning, the answers are rather satisfactory: W H A T IS T H E T Y P E S A P P R O A C H ?

It is, at its barest, an organization of readings. It is merely a grouping of literary selections by type, as novel, poem, drama. H o w H A S T H I S A P P R O A C H DEVELOPED?

Historical associations have enriched it so that it is more than a convenient arrangement of works. Behind current defenses and criticisms is an obscure story of complex factors too generally unknown. T h e evolutionary twist given to literary criticism by G e r m a n historical scholarship during the early part of the nineteenth century began the movement. From specialized researches in comparative literature, problems in types seeped into the new graduate English departments in the 1870's and 1880's, appearing as undergraduate courses before 1890. Collegiate courses in single types were fully developed by 1910. Introductory collegiate surveys by types became common during the decade following the first W o r l d W a r . O u t of the need for some organization of the growing high school literature departments during this century came the practise of concentrating on one type of literature at a time and organizing the work of the semester, the year, or of the whole school curriculum in literature so that all the major types would be considered. T e x t b o o k s and courses of study have exemplified this practise. W H A T A R E ITS C O N T R I B U T I O N S AND l i s UNUSED POTENTIALITIES?

In origin the types approach represented an attempt to feel toward the essentials of literary creation and of literary values. Its own categories rise out of cultural processes embodied in traditions and conventions,

6: Conclusion

113

T h e interpretations through which these categories have passed therefore reflect the pressures of literary criticism, nineteenth-century scholarship, anthropological researches, and college precedents. Although basically an organization, the types approach has come to imply certain techniques of study. O n the high school level, during the early period before the World War, types appeared as a means of comparing works of different countries, times, or men. As a direct route to literature they possessed additional advantages: the ease with which a pupil's experience with one example in a type can ripple out toward several similar books; the convenience of parallel work in composition and literature, study and practise of the same type at the same time. T h e latter, to be sure, is one of two early applications which few would recommend today unqualifiedly. However, teachers of the techniques of drama, verse, and fiction often find it necessary to precede their stress on writing by a discussion of examples of the type under study. A still less defensible deviation from the straight way to literature is the formalization of the approach. Minute analysis of structure is rarely proposed any more. Those who fall into it do not boast of it. Yet the value of certain kinds of analytic discussion is unimpeachable. T h e plotsetting-character attack is one universal example. Another is the treatment of the drama, which still demands a good deal of technical consideration. (This fact may be related to the prominence of the drama as a subject for type treatment and "rules" in the history of literary criticism, as a field of comparative literature, and as a separate course on graduate and undergraduate levels.) Since the approach became popular in the twenties, other trends have been clear. These are in two directions, one toward the restriction and the other toward the enrichment of types. In defense of the approach the most common attitude has been a narrowing of its implications to the improvement of reading. T a k i n g types simply as systems of conventions, teachers warn students beforehand of the difficulties of reading each and how they can be overcome. Less often noted is the broadening of the method of comparative inquiry, finding modern expression in the expanding horizon of world literature. Such anthropological and psychological concerns with the deeper relationship of a type to its origins in a way of life is vital to the work of Louise Rosenblatt, Kenneth Burke, Gladys Reichard, and Müller-Freienfels, to name a few. Through these concerns the teacher can help pupils recognize some of the processes which form personalities, social environments, and literature.

114

The "Types Approach"

to

Literature

W H A T SHOULD B E T H E T E A C H E R ' S C O N C E P T OF T Y P E S AND OF T H E V A L U E S OF T H E T Y P E S A P P R O A C H ?

T h i s embraces these first answers and something more. T h i s something more is not simply a recognition of salient facts in the history of the teaching of literature by types but the reaching of some decision about uses to be made of the types approach in courses—notably world literature courses—which seem to invite it. In relating the story of the types approach it would hardly have been appropriate to label one use good and another bad—to take sides with Babbitt against Spingarn and Croce, for instance. It is possible, however, to note certain uses and views that have been dubious and subjected widely to question and others that have been relatively unquestioned. W h i l e lack of questioning is n o final guarantee that a technique is not questionable, it provides some basis for judging the advisability of practical applications. T h e teacher of world literature should be wary of basing a types approach upon the biological analogy—that literary species follow a course of evolutiön significantly comparable to that of living organisms. H e may nevertheless discuss that very profitably with his students, to acquaint them with the possible implications of the critical method they are using. Almost certainly he will want to avail students of the resources which this approach offers for comparing literary materials of varying periods, places, and authors. He will welcome the handiness of the epic as a lens through which to contrast the cultures of Homer's archaic Greece, Vergil's imperial Rome, Dante's renascent Italy, and Milton's Puritan Britain. Again, the teacher will guard against the ghostly theory that types are the more or less inadequate imitations of a set of perfect originals existing in the empyrean. Yet he is bound to demonstrate to his students the extensiveness of certain patterns, whether because of anthropological diffusion or because of the similarities of human behavior under like conditions. Here he will juxtapose the drama and the folk ballad, in their far-reaching occurrence, with the sermon and the lyric. He will not succumb to the pseudo-scientific error of basing each type upon an emotion—tragedy on sorrow, comedy on joy, lyric on love. He cannot evade the fact, however, that certain types have become the traditional vehicles for certain moods, that the elegy is usually a poem of mourning and the limerick a piece of comic art. Surely it is possible thus to salvage what has proved most enduring in types and to pick up, to revitalize, to extend in world literature courses the labors of earlier scholars and teachers.

6: Conclusion

115

Perhaps their evidence was too narrow. Today there is half a century of additional research at hand: the harvests from cultural anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, sociological philology, and semantics; the new interpretations of symbol, dream, myth, ritual, language. Perhaps they went too far in their generalizations by trying to comprehend all mankind. It is still feasible to take one culture at a time and to see how its types reflect its ideals, traditions, routines, and artifacts. Perhaps they needed models. Today Burke, Reichard, Kardiner, Jaeger, MüllerFreienfels are showing how the job can be done.· T h e needs, the materials, and the instruments are ready. T h e task ahead is to draw them together, serving students, through an effective approach, with selections from the world's literature. It will not be done well unless the planners have a sound, critical understanding of the antecedents and the implications of their problem. • See Francis Shoemaker, Aesthetic

Experience

and the Humanities,

pp. «4-71.

Notes For complete information about each source, see the bibliography. Where an unbroken series of quotations or references is from the same work, a single note to the last of the references lists the sources for all.

CHAPTER Ι

1. N. F. Maclean comes to a similar conclusion in his "Theory of Lyric Poetry in England," pp. 1-7. 2. Allan Abbott, " A n Experiment in High-School English," The School Review, X I I , 558. 3. Most of the scholarly material used in this study assumes that this distinction is proper. See Antti Aarne, The Types of the Folk-tale, p. 10; C. M. Gayley, " W h a t is 'Comparative Literature'?" The Atlantic Monthly, X C I I , 67. 4. Irene Behrens, Die Lehre von der Einteilung der Dichtkunst, p. 221 and passim. 5. H . M. Beiden, " T h e Relation of Balladry to Folk-Lore," Journal of American Folk-Lore, X X I V , 11. 6. J. L. Lowes, Convention and Revolt in Poetry, p. 34. 7. O . J. Campbell, Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. 8. F. Boas, " T h e Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology," Science, IV, 901-8. 9. For illustrations from the past see John Dryden, Essays of John Dryden, I, xvxviii, on Milton and Dryden; E. M. Thornbury, Henry Fielding's Theory of the Comic Prose Epic., pp. 8, 110, on Fielding. For illustrations from recent authors see Henry James, The Art of the Novel, p. 130 and passim; T . S. Eliot, Selected Essays, pp. 31-45. For examples of concepts of kinds which have not been widely accepted in America, see René Bray's comparison of kinds with levels of truth ("Des Genres littéraires," Recueil de travaux, pp. 103-111); Veit Valentin's division of literature into epic, lyric and reflective rather than epic, lyric, and drama ("Poetische Gattungen," Zeitschrift für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, V, 35-51); Austin Warren's correlations of kinds with emotions (Norman Foerster and others, Literary Scholarship, p. 161); and P. M. Buck's elaborate chart of such a correlation (Literary Criticism, pp. 2448.); John Erskine's identification of drama, lyric, and epic with emphasis on past, present, and future, respectively (The Kinds of Poetry and Other Essays, pp. 3-39); Kenneth Burke's treatment of kinds as symbolic structures expressing the adjustment of a society to its universe (Attitudes toward History, I, 41-42). 10. I. Behrens, op. cit., p. 218 and passim. 11. R . K. Hack says that "the laws of the genres are nothing but the expression in the sphere of literature of the Platonic doctrine of ideal forms" ( " T h e Doctrine of Literary Forms," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, X X V I I , 43). But F.B.R. Hellems says that while there may be some truth in Hack's contention, "that it is true in the close sense insisted upon by him I cannot see" (review of R. K. Hack, " T h e Doctrine of Literary Forms," Classical Philologyt X V , 101-2). For criticism of Hack see also W . C. Greene, "Plato's View of Poetry," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, X X I X , 75.

Notes for Chapter

ι

117

12. J. H . Smith and E. W . Parks, The Great Critics, p. 3. 13. R. S. B r u m b a u g h says, "Platonic dialectic is a single method appropriate to any problem or subject matter, and neither in its description nor in its application is there any indication that Plato conceived of separate sciences with appropriate subject matters and methods which could proceed autonomously and literally rather than by dialectical investigation" ( T h e Role of Mathematics in Plato's Dialectic, p. 1). 14. Plato, Republic, I, 231. 15. Plato, Laws, I, 109. 16. J. W . H. Atkins, Literary Criticism in Antiquity, I, 46. 17. V!. C. Greene, op. cit., p. 34. 18. E.g., Ion, p. 289. 19. I. Behrens, op. cit., pp. 9-13. 20. Ibid., p. 14. 21. Lane Cooper, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, pp. xxii, x x . 22. S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, p. 113. 23. Lane Cooper, The Poetics of Aristotle, pp. 17-18. 24. Ingram By water, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, p. 97. 25. J. W . H. Atkins, op. cit., I l , 30. 26. Cicero De optimo genere orationis, [Opera], II, 1685-86. Translated by present writer. 27. J. W. H. Atkins, op. cit., II, 37, 38. 28. Cicero, Brutus. 29. J. F. D'Alton, Roman Literary Theory and Criticism, p. 415. 30. A. S. Cook, editor, The Art of Poetry, p. 14. 31. J. F. D'Alton, op. cit., pp. 398-423. 32. J. W. H. Atkins, op. cit., p. 286. 33. Quintilian, The Institutio oratoria, IV, 2-74. 34. 1. Behrens, op. cit., p. 206. 35. C. S. Baldu in, Mediei'al Rhetoric and Poetic, pp. 131-32. 36. Diomedis Artis granimaticae libri III, Heinrich Keil, editor, Grammatici latini I.482. 37. I. Behrens, op. cit., p. 205. Translated by present writer. 38. Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologarum sire originum libri X X VIII. vii. 39. C. S. Baldwin, op. cit., p. 175. 40. Dante Alighieri De vulgari eloquentia, pp. 75. 78. 41. J. E. Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, pp. j f f . and passim. 42. A. S. Cook, editor, op. cit., pp. 41-42. 43. I. Behrens, op. cit., p. 70. 44. C. S. Baldwin, Renaissance Literary Theory and Practise, p. 155. 45. A. S. Cook, editor, op. cit., p. 41. 46. F. M. Padelford, Select Translations from Scaliger's Poetics, pp. 16, 19 20, 54. 47. J. E. Spingarn, op. cit., p. 149. 48. H. B. Charlton, Castelvetro's Theory of Poetry, pp. 17-18. 49. G. G. Smith, editor, Elizabethan Critical Essays, I, xiv. 50. G. A. T h o m p s o n , Elizabethan Criticism of Poetry, p. 79. 51. D. L. Clark, Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance, p. 77. 52. G . G. Smith, editor, op. cit., pp. 19, l x x x v , 159, 179. 53. I. Behrens, op. cit., p. 120. 54. G. G . Smith, editor, op. cit., pp. 249-250, 255. 55. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, pp. 321, 25-27, lxiii. 56. I. Behrens, op. cit., p. 123. 57. Aisso Bosker, Literary Criticism in the Age of Johnson, pp. 19-20. 58. I. Behrens, loc. cit.

118

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

59. W. F. Patterson, Three Centuries of French Poetic Theory, I, 355. 60. J. E. Spingarn, op. cit., p. 179. 61. Joachim du Bellay, La Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse, pp. 201232. 62. René Rapin, Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie, pp. 71-72. 63. A. S. Cook, editor, op. cit., pp. 173-208, 193. 64. J. E. Spingarn, op. cit., p. 306. 65. J. E. Spingarn, editor. Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, I, 51, 206, 207, xxxi; II, 54-55, 57. 66. See John Dryden, Essays of John Dryden, I, xv, 27, 181, 4 (n2). 67. A. A. Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Second Characters, pp. 59, xxii. 68. A. Bosker, op. cit., p. 86. 69. A. A. Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics, I, 180. 70. Ibid., pp. 158ft. 71. Austin Warren, Alexander Pope as Critic and Humanist, pp. 67-75. 72. P. H. Houston, Dr. Johnson, pp. 127, 126, 210. 73. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, I, 170. 74. For the evolution of the concept of imitation in Renaissance criticism, see J. E. Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, pp. 132-136. 75. I. Behrens, op. citpp. 217-18 and passim. William Charvat says that recognition of the short lyric in America during the first third of the nineteenth century was an idea which "was probably German in origin, though no specific influence can be traced to its chief proponent, A. W. Schlegel." (The Origins of American Critical Thought, p. 107.) Ν. M. Maclean, however, stresses the influence of Coleridge, who he admits was inspired by German criticism ("Theory of Lyric Poetry in England," pp. 153-185). 76. I. Behrens, op. cit., pp. 218-219 and passim. 77. See Bernard Bosanquet, A History of Aesthetic, pp. 334-62ff. 78. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, " T h e Character and Extent of Greek Literature," Lane Cooper, editor, The Greek Genius and Its Influence, p. 164. 79. C. M. Gayley and B. P. Kurtz, Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism, p. iv. CHAPTER 2

1. C. M. Gayley and F. N. Scott, An Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism, p. 249. 2. This is not to say that historical criticism had not appeared before the eighteenth century. On Johnson and others see Paul Hamelius, Die Kritik in der englischen Literatur des jy. und 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 161-82. On earlier periods, see René Wellek, The Rise of English Literary History. Johnson also recognized the historical factors. See A. Bosker, op. cit., p. 103. 3. Eric Partridge, Literary Sessions, p. 56. 4. O. J. Campbell, "What Is Comparative Literature?" Essays in Memory of Barrett Wendell, p. 26. 5. M. M. Colum, From These Roots, p. 104. 6. Norman Foerster, The American Scholar, pp. 9-10. 7. C. M. Gayley, " T h e Development of Literary Studies During the Nineteenth Century," H. J. Rogers, editor, Congress of Arts and Science, III, 327. 8. M. M. Colum, op. cit., p. 44. See also H. S. Jantz, "The Fathers of Comparative Literature," Books Abroad, X, 402. 9. For an analysis of the place of "Romantic idealism" in the development of the modern theory of evolution, see G. H. Mead, Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 153-168. 10. Henry Nevinson, A Sketch of Herder and His Times, p. 325. 11. James Sully, "Evolution," The Encyclopœdia Britannica (ninth edition), VIII, 75»·

Notes for Chapter 2 ι». E.g., see J . M. Manly. The Outlook-, N. Foerster, " T h e Study of Letters," N. Foerster and others. Literary Scholarship, p. 3. 13. See H. F. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin. 14. On Herder as a forerunner of Darwin see Friedrich von Bärenbach, Herder als Vorgänger Darwin's. 15. J . G. Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, I, 5. 16. H. Nevinson, op. cit., p. 333. 17. J . G. Herder, op. cit., pp. 13-14. 18. A. G. F. Gode-von Aesch, Natural Science in German Romanticism, p. g i . As presented above, the problem is greatly simpliRed, and this book should be consulted before indirect conclusions are drawn; see especially " T i m e and Eternity: the Problem of Evolution," pp. 74-92. 19. F. McEachran, The Life and Philosophy of Johann Gottfried Herder, p. 66. so. Kuno Francke, A History of German Literature, pp. 319-320. s i . J . M. Andress, Johann Gottfried Herder asan Educator, pp. 240, 241. 22. Calvin Thomas, A History of German Literature, p. 238. 23. Cf. Ν. Foerster, The American Scholar, pp. 10-12. 24. M. Colum, op. cit., pp. 42-43. 25. J . M. Andress, op. cit., p. 329. 26. According to J . T . Merz, "the terms morphology and morphological school have come to mean more and more that complex of comparative researches which historically prepared the genetic, developmental, or evolutionist school of thought, but which were mainly dominated by the conception of fixed types and forms, and, though searching for the laws of modification, did not rise to a clear enunciation of a theory of evolution and descent." (A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, II, 213, note 1. See also pp. 274-75, 328.) 27. On the relationship of such scholars see M. Colum, op. cit., and Paul Van Tieghem, La Littérature comparée, pp. 19-32. On American developments see Edna Hays, "Comparative Literature and the Modern Humanities" (unpublished paper). 28. O. J . Campbell, "What Is Comparative Literature?" p. 27. 29. See C. M. Gayley and B. P. Kurtz, op. cit., pp. 633-635. 30. N. Foerster, and others, Literary Scholarship, p. 8. See also O. W. Long, Literary Pioneers. 3 1 . W. Charvat says, " B u t it was the brothers Schlegel and Madame de Staël who had most to do with American interest in the historical and national study of literature" (op. cit., p. 60. See also pp. 59-71, 125 f f . , and passim). See also O. W. Long, op. cit.; E. G. Jaeck, Madame de Staci and the Spread of German Literature, pp. 251-345. 32. Letter to Sir Frederick Pollock, March 4, 1888 (O. W. Holmes and Sir F. Pollock, Holmes-Pollock Letters, I, 3 1 , 45. 33. M. F. Brightfield, The Issue in Literary Criticism, p. 1. 34. Herbert Spencer, First Principies, pp. xi-xii of appendix. 35. Letter to Carl Stumpf, February 6, 1887 (William James, The Letters of William James, I, 264). Writing to G. C. Robertson, August 13, 1886, James asks, "How can an adult man spend his time in trying to torture an accurate meaning into Spencer's incoherent accidentalities?" (ibid., p. 254). 36. Letter to Charles Renouvier, November 2, 1872 (ibid., p. 164). 37. M. E. Curti, The Growth of American Thought, pp. 567-568. 38. Quoted from National Quarterly Review in appendix to H. Spencer, op. cit., p. vii. 39. H. S. R . Elliot, Herbert Spencer, p. 86. 40. H. Spencer, First Principles, p. 367, expanded slightly in accordance with footnote to definition, by addition of "relatively" in two places. 41. H. S. R . Elliott, "Herbert Spencer," Dictionary of National Biography, second supplement, pp. 360-69.

120

The "Types Approach"

to

Literature

48. H . Spencer, An Autobiography, I, 300. 43. O. W . Holmes, letter t o Lady Pollock, J u l y 2, 1895, O. W . H o l m e s arid Sir F. Pollock, op. cit., p . 58. 44. M. M. C o l u m , op. cit., p . 43. 45. H o r a c e Kallen, Art and Freedom, I, 467. 46. M. M. C o l u m , op. cit., p p . 123, 126, 127. 47. H . A. T a i n e , The Philosophy of Art, p p . 64, 77, 134-146. 48. E d w a r d D o w d e n , New Studies in Literature, p . 409. 49. Sir H . S. M a i n e , Ancient Law, p. 165. 50. B. E. L i p p i n c o t t , Victorian Critics of Democracy, p . 174. 51. [Sir F. Pollock] (unsigned), "Sir H e n r y M a i n e as a J u r i s t , " Edinburgh Review, C L X X V I I I , 104. 52. For d o u b t s as to t h e validity of evolutionary theories, see J. H . L a n d m a n , " P r i m itive Law, Evolution, a n d Sir H e n r y M a i n e , " Michigan Law Review, X X V I I , 404-425; F. Boas, " T h e M e t h o d s of E t h n o l o g y , " American Anthropologist (New Series), X X I I , 311-321. 53. E.g., A. S. Mackenzie says, " I t is t h e c o m p a r a t i v e m e t h o d . . . t h a t m u s t be largely relied o n to show t h e existence a n d n a t u r e of literary e v o l u t i o n " ( T h e Evolution of Literature, p. 12). 54. J . A. Symonds, Essays Speculative and Suggestive, p . 30. 55. For a n u n u s u a l l y explicit e x a m p l e see I. T . Myers, A Study in Epic Development, d o n e u n d e r t h e guidance of A. S. Cook. See also H . M. Posnett, Comparative Literature·, F. B. G u m m e r e , The Beginnings of Poetry. 56. A. S. Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 2. 57. O n t h e effects of Darwin's theories o n American t h o u g h t see B. J. Loewenberg, " D a r w i n i s m Comes to America, 1859-1900," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, X X V I I I , 339-368. For Darwin's effect o n scholarship see J . M. Manly, op. cit. 58. J . T . Merz, op. cit., p . 328. 59. M. F. Brightfield, loc. cit. 60. A l b e r t Feuillerat, "Scholarship a n d Literary Criticism," Yale Review, XIV, 3 1 1 . 61. P. V a n T i e g h e m , op. cit., is o n e of those w h o use this t e r m as an abbreviation for " g e n r e scholar" a n d "genology" as a n abbreviation for "scholarship in genres." See p p . 4-5. 62. O n t h e influence of G e r m a n scholarship see P a u l Shorey, " A m e r i c a n Scholarship," The Nation, CL, 466-69; O . W . Long, op. cit.; E. G. Jaeck, op. cit.; H . S. Jantz, Martin op. cit. See also C. F. T h w i n g , The American and the German University; Schütze, Academic Illusions, p p . vii-ix a n d passim. Bliss P e r r y describes t h e typical a t t i t u d e of a n American scholar a b o u t to leave f o r study in G e r m a n universities t o w a r d t h e e n d of t h e last century in And Gladly Teach, p p . 88-89. 63. S. B. H u s t v e d t , Ballad Books and Ballad Men, p p . 207-8. 64. G. L. Kittredge, " F r a n c i s J a m e s C h i l d , " F. J . Child, editor, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, I, xxv. 65. See letters in t h e Child Manuscripts a t H a r v a r d , X I I , 129, 131, 147, 167; X I I I , 57. 66. T h o m a s Davidson, " P r o f . Child's Ballad Book," The American Journal of Philology, V, 466-67. 67. F. J . Child, editor, English and Scottish Ballads, 1857-59. 68. G. L. Kittredge, op. cit., p p . xvii, xxviii. 69. S. L . Wolfe, "Scholars," The Cambridge History of American Literature, IV, 485. 70. " T h e English a n d Scottish P o p u l a r Ballads," The Atlantic Monthly, LI, 404. 71. S. B. H u s t v e d t , op. cit., p. 221. 78. " T h e English a n d Scottish P o p u l a r Ballads," op. cit., p . 407. 73. F. B. G u m m e r e r e m a r k s t h a t "Professor C h i l d has left n o t h i n g o n t h e subject of

Notes for Chapter 2

121

ballad-origins which he wished to be quoted or regarded" ( " T h e Ballad and Communal Poetry," [Harvard] Studies and Motes in Philology and Literature, V, 41. 74. F. J . Child, "Ballad Poetry," Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia, I, 464-68. 75. VV. M. Hart, "Professor Child and the Ballad, "Publications of the Modern Language Association, X X I (New Series, XIV), 755-807. 76. T. G. James does not value very highly Hart's reconstruction of Child's ideas ( " T h e English and Scottish Popular Ballads of Francis James Child," Journal of American Folk-Lore, X L V I , 51-68.) 77. W. M. Hart, op. cit., p. 804. 78. E.g., " T h e primitive ballad, then, is popular, not in the sense of something arising from and suited to the lower orders of a people. As yet, no sharp distinction of high and low exists, in respect to knowledge, desires and tastes. An increased civilization, and especially the introduction of book-culture, gradually gives rise to such a division; the poetry of art appears; the popular is no longer relished by a portion of the people, and is abandoned to an uncultivated or not over-cultivated class—a constantly diminishing number" (F. J . Child, "Ballad Poetry," op. cit., p. 464). 79. F. B. Gummere, The Anglo-Saxon Metaphor, p. 1 1 . 80. J . M. Manly, "Francis Barton Gummere, 1855-1919," Modern Philology, X V I I , «43· 81. J . M. Hart, "Rhetoric—Style—Metre," Modern Language Notes, I, 52. 82. F. B. Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry, pp. 35, ix. 83. F. B. Gummere, Old English Ballads, pp. xlviii, lxii. 84. F. B. Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry, pp. 434, 27-28. Italics not in the original. 85. W. M. Hart, "Professor Child and the Ballad," op. cit., p. 755. 86. F. B. Gummere, "Primitive Poetry and the Ballad, II," Modern Philology, I, 234. 87. F. B. Gummere, The Oldest English Epic, pp. vii, 15, and passim. 88. F. B. Gummere, " T h e Relation of English Literature to Other Sciences," H. J . Rogers, editor, Congress of Arts and Science, III, 403-4. 89. F. B. Gummere, Democracy and Poetry, pp. 155, 156. 90. I. M. Andrews, " A World-Literature," The Century Magazine, X L I , 479. 91. C. M. Gayiey, "A Society of Comparative Literature," The Dial, X V I I , 57. 92. C. M. Gayiey, The Classic Myths in English Literature and Art. 93. C. M. Gayiey and F. N. Scott, An Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism, pp. 248, vi, 366. 94. C. M. Gayiey, "What is 'Compaiative Literature'?" The Atlantic Monthly, X C I I , 56-57, 59, 65-66, 67. 95. C. M. Gayiey and C. C. Young, editors, The Principles and Progress of English Poetry, p. xci. 96. See C. M. Gayiey and B. P. Kurtz, Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism, passim, for evidence of Gayley's acquaintance with these philosophers and his extensive dealings with them. 97. Ibid., pp. iv-v. 98. C. M. Gayiey and others, English Poetry, Its Principles and Progress, with Representative Masterpieces from ijgo to 191", p. liv. 99. A. S. Mackenzie, The Evolution of Literature, pp. 392, vii, 404, 2 (ni), 13, 12. 100. R . G. Moulton, The Modern Study of Literature; an Introduction to Literary Theory and Interpretation. 1 0 1 . R . G. Moulton, The Literary Study of the Bible, p. vii. 102. R . G. Moulton, The Modem Study of Literature, pp. 7, 3, 4. 103. F. Boas, " T h e Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology," Science (New Series), IV, 901-908. Boas also says that "it would be quite impossible to understand, on the basis of the single evolutionary scheme, what happened to any particular people" ("The Methods of Ethnology," American Anthropologist [New Series] X X I I , 317).

122

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

104. P. Van Tieghem, La Littérature comparée, pp. 70-86. See also E. Hays, "Comparative Literature and the Modern Humanities." 105. S. M. Tucker, Verse Satire in England before the Renaissance, p. ix. 106. A. H. Upham, review of C. E. Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners, Modern Language Notes, XXVII, 222, 221. 107. S. M. Chew, "Lyric Poetry," Modern Language Notes, X X I X , 174. 108. W. F. Bryan, review of Hugh Walker, The English Essay and Essayists, Modern Language Notes, X X X I , 356. 109. S. M. Chew, op. cit., p. 174. no. R. W. Dearing, "History of the Novel," Modern Language Notes, X, 215, 218. m . H. V. Routh, "The Future of Comparative Literature," The Modern Language Review, VIII, 3. 112. F. W. Chandler, "Comparative Literature: Is It Dead?" Books Abroad, X, 136. 113. A. R. Marsh, "The Comparative Study of Literature," Publications of the Modern Language Association, X I (New Series, IV), 164, 166-167. 114. H. V. Routh, op. cit. 115. See [Gaston Paris], "Résumé de l'allocution de M. Gaston Paris" (unsigned), International Congress of Historical Sciences, Paris, 1901. Annales internationales d'histoire, 6e section, pp. 39-41; P. Van Tieghem, La Littérature comparée, pp. 19-32; Fernand Baldensperger, "Littérature comparée: le mot et la chose," Revue de littérature comparée, I, 5-29; Eric Partridge, A Critical Medley, pp. 159-226. 116. Eric Partridge, op. cit., p. 168. 117. J . S. Will, "Comparative Literature: Its Meaning and Scope," University of Toronto Quarterly, VIII, 178. 118. C. M. Gayley, "What is 'Comparative Literature'?" The Atlantic Monthly, XCII, 63. 119. O. J . Campbell, "What Is Comparative Literature?" Essays in Memory of Barrett Wendell, pp. 36-37. 120. G. E. Woodberry, "Editorial," Journal of Comparative Literature, I, 5-6. 121. G. E. Woodberry, The Appreciation of Literature, pp. 11, 190-191, 6-7. 122. See J . A. Symonds, Essays Speculative and Suggestive, p. 30. 123. N. Foerster and others. Literary Scholarship, p. 122. 124. J . A. Symonds, op. cit., pp. 32, 33, 35, 52. 125. J . A. Symonds, Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama, p. 12. 126. C. M. Gayley, "The Development of Literary Studies During the Nineteenth Century," H. J . Rogers, editor, Congress of Arts and Science, III, 348. 127. Agreement is not unanimous on this charge. See E. Partridge, A Critical Medley, p. 204; Elton Hocking, Ferdinand Brunetière, p. 189. 128. Ferdinand Brunetière, L'Evolution des genres dans l'histoire littéraire, p. 23. 129. F. Brunetière, L'Evolution de la poésie lyrique en France au dix-neuvième, siècle, p. 4. 130. See F. Brunetière, "La Doctrine évolutive et l'histoire de la littérature," Revue des deux mondes, LXVII, p. 884. 131. F. Brunetière "La Littérature européenne," Annales internationales d'histoire, igoo, pp. 5-38. 132. F. Brunetière, "La Critique littéraire," La Grande encyclopédie, XIII, 417. 133. Hocking says that Brunetière's practise often disregarded his theories and that Brunetière was a better critic when he did so (op. cit., p. 194). 134. Abbe C. Vincent's Théorie des genres littéraires is very similar to Brunetière's work. Cf. also Léon Levrault's series. Charles Letourneau's "Origin of Literary Forms" (The Popular Science Monthly, XLIII, 673-82) smacks of Brunetière. 135. Albert Schinz remarks that "while all admired his forceful argumentation, few followed him" ("Ferdinand Brunetière," Modern Language Notes, XXII, 57). 136. W. P. Ker finds much truth in Brunetière sans "science" (Form and Style in Poetry, p. 127).

Notes for Chapter 3

123

137. £. Hocking, op. cit., p. 173. 138. Edward Wright, "Development of Literary Criticism in France," Contemporary Review, L X X X I 55. 139. C. M. Gayley, loc. cit. 140. M. F. Brightfield, The Issue in Literary Criticism, p. 17. 141. E. Hocking, op. cit., p. 17. 14». F. H . Stoddard, The Evolution of the English Novel, pp. 1-2. Philology, 143. J. M. Manly, "Literary Forms and the Origin of Species," Modern IV, 580, 591. 144. Unfortunately, Manly was not understood very well, and he later recalled that "half my readers congratulated me on the discovery of the true theory of literary evolution" ( T h e Outlook, p. JO). 145. J. P. Hoskins, "Biological Analogy in Literary Criticism," Modern Philology, VI, 408. 146. Ibid., VII, 80. 147. J. Erskine, The Kinds of Poetry, pp. 8-9. 148. E.g., W . P. Ker's cautious but direct statement of policy (op. cit., p. 165). 149. A. H. T h o r n d i k e , "Letters," A Quarter Century of Learning, p. 188. CHAPTER 3

1. Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic

as Science of Expression

and General Linguistic,

p.

449· 2. Douglas Ainslie, "Benedetto Croce," The Anglo-Italian Review, II, 123, 121. 3. O . K. Struckmeyer, Croce and Literary Criticism, p. 15. 4. B. Croce, op. cit., p. 37. 5. For a systematic critique see James Smith, "Croce," Scrutiny, II, 28-44. 6. E. G. Cox, "Croce and Criticism," The Pacific Review, II, 630. 7. Karl Vossler, "Benedetto Croces Aesthetik als Wissenschaft des Ausdrucks," Beilage zur allgemeinen Zeitungt September 10, 1902, p. 481. 8. Ibid., p. 482. Translated by present writer. See also, by the same author, The Spirit of Language in Civilization, pp. 8, 219, 220. 9. A . B. Walkley, Dramatic Criticism, pp. 115-16. 10. Ibid., p. 123. See also A . B. Walkley, "Criticism and Croce," The Times (London), March 20, 1911, p. 12. For Spingarn's reply see J. E. Spingarn, " A Note on Dramatic Criticism," English Association, Essays and Studiesß IV, 7-28. 11. Albert Schinz, " L a Superstition du 'genre littéraire,'" Mercure de France, LVIII, 161-77. 12. Spingarn calls it " t h e first review of the book outside of Italy, so far as I k n o w " ( " T h e Rich Storehouse of Croce's T h o u g h t , " The Dial, H V , 483). But Karl Vossler, the common friend of Spingarn and Croce, had already published his review on September 10, 1902 (see note 7 above) when Spingarn's appeared in the September 25, 1902, issue of The Nation. 13. [J. E. Spingarn], review of B. Croce, Estetica (unsigned), The Nation, L X X V , 252. 14. J. E. Spingarn, " T h e R i c h Storehouse of Croce's T h o u g h t , " loc. cit. 15. J. E. Spingarn, Creative Criticism, pp. 22, 23, 210-221. 16. J. E. Spingarn, "Literary Criticism," Columbia University, Lectures on Literature, pp. 355-373. 17. For Spingarn's definition of " a i m , " see J. E. Spingarn, A Spingarn P· [4]· 18. J. E. Spingarn, Creative Criticism, pp. 22-23. 19. H . E. Cory, "Modern Humanism," T h e Dial, LIV, 131. 20. J. W . B[right], review of J. E. Spingarn, Creative Criticism Language Notes, X X X I I , 443.

Enchiridion,

(initialed),

Modern

124

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

8i. If there was such a "success," it did not last long. See p. below. 22. Bliss Perry, "Literary Criticism in American Periodicals," Yale Review (New Series), III, 648. 23. The reply of The Dial to Spingarn in 1911 might be considered vehement, but it was hardly persuasive: "There are such things as aesthetic· principles . . . Literary genres give us norms that are indispensable for purposes of comparison, and the doctrine of evolution enables us to understand transitional types and puzzling reversions" ("The New Criticism," The Dial, L, 250-51). 24. "Grocer-shop Criticism," The Dial, LVII, 5. 25. J. E. Spingarn, review of Irving Babbitt, The Masters of Modern French Criticism, The Journal of Philosophy, X, 694, 695. 86. Irving Babbitt, " T h e Modern Spirit and Dr. Spingarn," The Journal of Philosophy, XI, 215-18. 27. J. E. Spingarn, " T h e Ancient Spirit and Professor Babbitt," The Journal of Philosophy, XI, 326-28. 28. I. Babbitt, "Reply to Dr. Spingarn," The Journal of Philosophy, XI, 329. 89. I. Babbitt, "Ferdinand Brunetière and His Critical Method," The Atlantic Monthly, LXXIX, 764. 30. I. Babbitt, "Ferdinand Brunetière," The Atlantic Monthly, XC, 532, 533. 3 1 . I . Babbitt, The New Laokoon, p. x. 32. I. Babbitt, "Croce and the Philosophy of Flux," Yale Review (New Series), XIV, 379· 33. I. Babbitt, "Impressionist versus Judicial Criticism," Publications of the Modern Language Association, X X I (New Series, XIV), 687-705. 34. I. Babbitt, "Genius and Taste," The Nation, CVI, 138. 35. J. E. Spingarn, Creative Criticism. 36. I. Babbitt, The New Laokoon, pp. xiv, 252. 37. See sympathetic review by F. J. Mather, "A 'Laokoon' for the Times," The Nation, XC, 578-581. 38. I. Babbitt, op. cit., pp. 186, 247, 184-185. 39. H. E. Cory, op. cit., p. 133. 40. George Boas, review of I. Babbitt, On Being Creative, Modern Philology, X X X , 220. See also A. O. Lovejoy, review of I. Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, Modern Language Notes, X X V , 302-8; I. Babbitt, "Schiller and Romanticism," Modern Language Notes, XXXVII, 257-68; A. O. Lovejoy, "Reply to Professor Babbitt," Modern Language Notes, XXXVII, 268-274. 41. Bernard Bosanquet, A History of Aesthetic, p. 465. 42. Franz Boas, "Stylistic Aspects of Primitive Literature," Race, Language and Culture, p. 496. 43. Edward Sapir, Language, pp. 236-247. 44. F. Boas, op. cit., pp. 495-496. 45. G. A. Reichard, "Literary Types and Dissemination of Myth," Journal of American Folk-Lore, XXXIV, 277. 46. R. H. Lowie, An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, p. 196. 47. F. Boas, "Literature, Music, and Dance," F. Boas, editor. General Anthropology, P· 595· 48. M. W. Croll, review of E. N. S. Thompson, The Seventeenth-Century English Essay, Modern Language Notes, XLII, 564. 49. F. Boas, op. cit., pp. 601-602. 50. Clara Ehrlich, "Tribal Culture in Crow Mythology," Journal of American Folklore, I, 307. 51. F. Boas, "Mythology and Folk-tales of the North American Indians," Anthropology in North America, pp. 310-311. 52. M. W. Croll, op. cit., p. 564.

Notes for Chapter 3

»25

53. Ν. Η. Pearson, "Literary Forms and Types; or, A Defense of Polonius," English Institute Annual, 1940, p. 70. 54. Η. E. Mantz, "Types in Literature," Modern Language Review, XII, 476, 462. 55. J . T . Shipley, The Quest for Literature, p. «57. 56. Austin Warren, N. Foerster and others, Literary Scholarship, p. 161. 57. Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History, I, 42. 58. N. Foerster and others, Literary Scholarship, pp. 122, 127. 59. Archer Taylor, Problems in German Literary History, p. 73. 60. A. G. van Kranendonk, " T h e Study of the Novel," English Studies, II, 54. 61. L. F. Mott, "Modern Literature," Modern Language Notes, X, 55. 62. W. T . Brewster, " T h e Logic of Literary Criticism," Anniversary Papers, by colleagues and pupils of George Lyman Kittredge, pp. 204-205. 63. H. S. Jantz, " T h e Factor of Generation in German Literary History," Modern Language Notes, LII, 329. 64. Edwin Greenlaw, The Province of Literary History, p. 171. 65. P. Van Tieghem, La Littérature comparée, p. 72. Translated by present writer. 66. On German theories of genres see Karl Viètor, Probleme der literarischen Gattungsgeschichte," Deutsche l'ierteljahrschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, IX, 425-447. On French theories and those of other countries see Helicon, I and II. both of which are devoted to problems of genres. T h e contributions grew out of the T h i r d International Congress of Literary History, 1939, which was mainly concerned with genres. On the relation of genology to comparative literature in France see Paul Hazard, "Les Récents travaux en littératures comparées," Revue universitaire, 1914, pp. 112124, 212-222. René Bray of Lausanne insists that a literary work which belongs to no genre is unimaginable ("Des Genres littéraires . . . ," Recueil de travaux, p. 104). For an English viewpoint see Eric Partridge, who protests that "it remains to be proved that we can do without genres" (Literary Sessions, p. 65; see also A Critical Medley, pp. 203-204). 67. Vet Lane Cooper complains in 1922 that "not many such types have been methodically examined" (An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy, p. 1). 68. T h e announcement, which was printed on the reverse side of the first leaf (unnumbered) of F. B. Gummere, The Popular Ballad, follows: T H E T Y P E S OF E N G L I S H L I T E R A T U R E under the general editorship of Professor William A. N'eilson THE POPULAR BALLAD. By Professor Francis B. Gummere of Haverford College. THE LITERATURE OF ROGUERY. By Professor F. W. Chandler of the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. IN PREPARATION

THE PASTORAL. By Professor Jefferson B. Fletcher of Columbia University. THE ALLEGORY. By Professor William A. Neilson of Harvard University. THE ESSAY. By Ferris Greenslet, Ph.D. LITERARY CRITICISM. By Professor Irving Babbitt of Harvard University. T H E SHORT STORY, MEDIEVAL AND MODERN. B y P r o f e s s o r W . M . H a r t of t h e U n i v e r s i t y

of California. THE MASQUE. By Professor J . W. CunlifTe of Magill University. THE TRAGEDY. By Professor A. H. Thorndike of Columbia University. THE LYRIC. By Professor Felix E. Schelling of the University of Pennsylvania. THE SAINTS' LEGENDS. By G. H. Gerould, Preceptor in Princeton University. CHARACTER WRITING. By Chester N. Greenough, Ph.D., Instructor in Harvard University. THE NOVEL. By Professor J . D. M. Ford of Harvard University.

126

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

69. W. A. Neilson, in "Prefatory Note" to F. B. Gummere, The Popular Ballad, pp. χ, xi-xii, xiii. 70. Letter to |the present writer, June 19, 1941. 71. F. W. Chandler, Romances of Roguery, p. vi. 7«. F. W. Chandler, The Literature of Roguery, I, vii-viii. 73. A. H. Thorndike, " T h e Pastoral Element in the English Drama before 1605," Modern Language Notes, XIV, 114-23. His aim (p. 115) was to illuminate "the origin and development of English pastoral drama." 74. A. H. Thorndike, Tragedy, p. v. 75. F. E. Schelling, The English Lyric, p. vii. 76. G. H. Gerould, Saints' Legends, p. vii. 77. Letter to the present writer, June 8, 1941. 78. Volumes of The Warwick Library were later re-issued in The Casket Library, by the same publishers. The promised English Letter-Writers, by Walter Alexander Raleigh, never appeared. The other books, all published by Blackie and Son of London (Carpenter's book was also published by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York), were issued in the following order: Edmund K. Chambers, editor, English Pastorals, 1895. xlviii, 280 pp. Frederic Ives Carpenter, editor, English Lyric Poetry, 1500-1700, 1897. lxv, 276 pp. Herbert Arthur Evans, editor, English Masques, 1897. 1χϋί> 245 pp. Oliphant Smeaton, editor, English Satires, 1899. Iii, 298 pp. Charles Harold Herford, editor, English Tales in Verse. 1902. lvii, 291 pp. J. H. Lobben, editor, English Essays, 1902. lxi, 257 pp. Charles Edwyn Vaughan, editor, English Literary Criticism, 1903. cii, 219 pp. 79. C. H. Herford, in "Editor's Preface" to Ε. K. Chambers, editor, op. cit., p. v. 80. Published by Librairie Paul Delaplane of Paris, the set included the following (except where otherwise noted, the books are by Léon Levrault): La Comédie 1901. 125 pp. Drame et tragédie . . . , 132 pp. Marius Roustan, L'Eloquence . . . , 1902. i n pp. Marius Roustan, La Lettre . . . , 1902, 120 pp. La Poésie Lyrique . . . , 1903. 150 pp. La Satire . . . , 1904. 130 pp. La Fable . . . . , 1905. 151 pp. L'Histoire . . . , 1905. 156 pp. Maximes et portraits . . . , 1909. 144 pp. La Critique littéraire . . . , 1911. 138 pp. Le Genre pastoral . . . , 1914. 166 pp. Le Théâtre . . . , n.d. 368 pp. Le Roman . . . , n.d. 116 pp. Le Journalism . . . , ? pp. 81. T h e accuracy of the dates, pages, and order of appearance given here cannot be guaranteed. The set was issued in sections, re-issued, and re-numbered. T h e preface to Cian, volume one, tries to answer Croce's arguments. All volumes are part of the Storia dei generi letterari italiani, published at Milan, Casa Editrice Dottor Francesco Vallardi: Adolfo Albertazzi, Il Romanzo, 1903. xi, 375 pp. Vincenzo Crescini and Francesco Foffano, Il Poema cavalleresco, two volumes: Crescini, I, 1904-1907. 144 pp.; Foffano, II, 1904. viii, 258 pp. Emilio Bertana, La Tragedia, 1905. 442 pp. Giovanni Gentile, La Filosofia, 1904-1915. 240 pp. Alfredo Galletti, L'Eloquenza, 1905-1910. 480 pp. Vittorio Cian, La Satira, two volumes: I, 1923. xix, 521 pp.; II? (There seems to have been an earlier edition, La Satira italiana, published 1906-1908.)

Notes for Chapter 4

127

Orazio Bacci, La Critica letteria, I, Dall' antichità classica al renascimento, 1910. »6g pp. Ireneo Sanesi, La Commedia, 1912. 500 pp. Antonio Belloni, Il Poema epico a mitologico, 1912. vii. 385 pp. Ab-El-Kader Salza, La Lirica, 1905-1911. 288 pp. Enrico Vairara, La Poesia pastorale, 1909. viii, 505 pp. Erasmo Percopo, La Poesia giocosa, 1907. 96 pp. Giuseppe Lisio, La Storiografia, 1904-1910. 528 pp. Giorgio Rossi, Le Autobiografie e gli epistolari, 1907-1912. 240 pp. G u i d o Falorsi, Disegno storico della letteratura, 1912. 384 pp. Ciro Trabalza, La Critica letteria, II, Dai primordi dell' umanismo all' età nostra, 1915 ? ?pp. Lettorio di Francia, Novellistica. T w o volumes: I, 1924. ?pp.; II, 1925· ? ΡΡ· 82. Published in London by J. M. Dent and Sons, and in New York by E. P. Dutton and Company, The Channels of English Literature included the following: William Macneile Dixon, English Epic and Heroic Poetry, 1912. xi, 339 pp. James Seth, English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy, 1912. xi, 372 pp. Ernest Rhys, Lyric Poetry, 1913. x, 374 pp. George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, The English Newel, 1913. vii, 319 pp. Felix Emanuel Schelling, English Drama, 1914. 341 pp. H u g h Walker, The English Essay and Essayists, 1915. vii, 343 pp. Waldo Hilary Dunn, English Biographyf 1916. xxi, 323 pp. H u g h Walker, English Satire and Satirists, 1925. x, 325 pp. 83. W . M. Dixon, op. cit., p. 26. 84. Ernest Rhys, op. cit., p. v. 85. F. E. Schelling, op. cit., p. v. 86. W . H. D u n n , op. cit., pp. xi, 236. 87. Published in London by Martin Seeker and in New York by George H. Doran, The Art and Craft of Letters comprised these books (the dates are of American publication, which are the earliest available): Lascelles Abercrombie, The Epic, 1914. 96 pp. Gilbert Cannan, . . . Satire, 1914. 62 pp. Richard Henry Gretton, History, 1914. 61 pp. John Leslie Palmer, Comedy, 1914. 64 pp. Frank Sidgwick, The Ballad, 1914. 62 pp. Christopher Reynolds Stone, Parody, 1914. 62 pp. Orlo Williams, The Essay, 1914. 63 pp. Percival Presland Howe, Criticism, 1915. 62 pp. John Drinkwater, The Lyric, 1916. 63 pp. Barry Eric Pain, The Short Story, 1916. 63 pp. 88. L . Abercrombie, op. cit., p. 5. 89. See section iii of chapter four. CHAPTER

4

1. W . M. Payne, editor, English in American Universities, pp. 11, 21. 2. North Carolina, University, Catalogue, 1892-93, p. 20. 3. W . T . Hewett, " T h e Aims and Methods of Collegiate Instruction in Languages," Publications of the Modern Language Association (formerly tions of the Modern Language Association of America), I, 35. 4. J. M. Hart, " T h e College Course in English Literature, how it may proved," ibid., p. 95. 5. T . W . H u n t , " T h e Place of English in the College C u r r i c u l u m , " ibid., p. 6. J. M. Garnett, " T h e Course in English and its Value as a Discipline,"

Modern Transacbe Im127. Publica-

is8

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

lions of the Modern Language Association (formerly Transactions and Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America), II, 67. 7. W. M. Payne, editor, op. cit., p. 42. 8. Modern Language Association of America, Proceedings at Nashville, December 29, jo, 31, 1890 (edited by A. M. Elliott), p. xvi. 9. F. G. Hubbard, " T h e Undergraduate Curriculum in English Literature," Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXIII (New Series, XVI), 259. 10. The two figures are from the following sources, respectively: D. D. Feder, "Colleges and Universities—VIII. Student Personnel Work—2. Student Population Statistics," W. S. Monroe, editor. Encyclopedia of Educational Research, p. 254; J. D. Russell (with the cooperation of Theodore Harris), "Colleges and Universities," ibid., p. 205. jI. R. P. Boas, " T h e Introduction to English Literature," The English Journal, II, 636. 12. W. W. Hatfield, "Instead of the Survey," College English, XX, 841. 13. Shields Mcllwaine, " 'Sophomore Lit.': a Sad Case," The English Journal (college edition), XXII, 56. 14. A. B. Wesenberg, "Conversion to Types," Education, LVIII, 357. 15. W. W. Hatfield, loc. cit. 16. S. Mcllwaine, op. cit., p. 57. 17. A. R. Carli, "First Courses in English Literature in Selected Liberal Colleges," pp. 23-24, 29-30, 32. 18. E.g., O. J. Campbell, "Introductory Course in Literature," The English Journal (college edition), XVII, 744. 19. W. C. De Vane, " T h e English Major," College English, III, 50. 20. Chicago, University, Annual Register, 1894-95, p. 132. 21. O. J. Campbell remembers that Barrett Wendell, in his course in Elizabethan literature, exclusive of the drama, did not divide his material by types. 22. E.g. J. M. Hart complained that Shakespeare was isolated too much in study. He urged that an adequate treatment of the English drama was needed for full appreciation of Shakespeare (op. cit. pp. 88-89). C. W. Kent, at about the same time, also tells of lectures on the drama before and after Shakespeare as given in connection with the study of Shakespeare (W. M. Payne, editor, op. cit., pp. 66-67). 23. H. W. Simon, "On the Place of the Study of Literature in a Progressive College," College English, III, 461. 24. The programs traced here were influential in the training of the teachers whose work is the subject of the next chapter. T h e belatedness in the entrance of types survey courses into the undergraduate curriculum may be correlated with the lag between the common use of types in universities and the acceptance of the types approach in high schools after the World War. 25. According to the Calendar listing, the courses seem to have been given first in 1879-80. 26. I. M. Andrews, "A World-Literature," The Century Magazine, XLI, 479. 27. See W. M. Hart, "Professor Child and the Ballad," Publications of the Modern Language Association, X X I (New Series, XIV) 755-807. 28. California, University (Berkeley), Register, igio-11, pp. ig8-gg. 29. See B. P. Kurtz, Charles Mills Gayley, passim, for a record of their friendship. 30. California, University (Berkeley), Register, 1922-23, p. 88. 31. Wendell, Barrett, Barrett Wendell and His Letters (edited by M. A. DeWolfe Howe), p. 269. 32. See B. Wendell, The Temper of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature. 33. C. N. Greenough, Collected Studies, p. 120. 34. G. P. Baker, Dramatic Technique, p. iv. 35. B. Perry, op. cit., p. 244.

Notes for Chapter 5

129

36. Β. Perry, A Study of Prose Fiction (revised edition), p. ig. 37. See the bibliography. 38. B. Perry. And Gladly Teach, p. 256. 39. J. D. M. Ford and M. A. Ford, The Romance of Chivalry in Italian Verse, p. iii. As an example of his interest in types, see table of contents of J. D. M. Ford, Main Currents of Spanish Literature. 40. C. N. Greenough, Collected Studies, p. v. 41. Harvard University, Catalogue, 1940-41, p. 282. 42. See Edna Hays, "Comparative Literature and the Modern Humanities," p. 62. 43. A. S. Cook, The Higher Study of English, p. 126. 44. A. S. Cook, " T h e College Teaching of English," p. 276. 45. W. L. Phelps, Autobiography with Letters, pp. 301, 302. 46. W. L. Cross, The Development of the English Sovel, pp. xi, xiii. 47. E. B. Reed, English Lyrical Poetry, p. 2. 48. G. H. Nettleton, English Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1642-1780). 49. H . S. Canby a n d Alfred Dashiell, A Study of the Short Story, p. 3. 50. H . S. Canby, The Short Story in English, p. v. 51. See Brander Matthews, These Many Years, p. 39A. 52. T . R. Price, " T h e New Function of Modern Language Teaching," Publications of the Modern Language Association, XVI (New Series, IX), 84. 53. B. Matthews, op. cit., pp. 393, 394-395. 54. " T h e H u m o r o u s Drama of the English Language," 1891-92. "Seminar in the History of the Drama," 1899-1900. " T h e Development of the English Drama," 1901-02 (with collaborators). 55. B. Matthews, op. cit., p. 405. 56. T h i s is A. H . Tolraan's statement (W. M. Payne, editor, op. cit., p. 87). CHAPTER 5 D. V. Smith, Instruction in English, pp. 47-48. T h e report was based on a survey made in 1930-31. 2. Abbott's representative statement of aims was printed in 1912. 3. W. Q. Norton, compiler, Entrance English Questions, passim. 4. G. N. Kefauver and others, The Secondary-School Population, p. 4. 5. Allan Abbott, "An Experiment in High-School English," The School Review, XII. 5 5 ' . S57-55 8 · 6. L. M. Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration, p. 301. 7. C. C. Fries and others, The Teaching of Literature, p. 141. 8. Edna Hays, College Entrance Requirements in English, p. 25. 9. A. S. Cook, A Summary of the Proceedings of the Meetings of the National Conference on Uniform Entrance Requirements in English, 1894-99, p. 3 1 . 10. C. M. Gayley and C. E. Bradley, Suggestions to Teachers of English in the Secondary Schools, p. n . Italics not in the original. 11. College Entrance Examination Board, Document No. 2 (February 1, 1901), p. 14. 12. Commission on English, Examining the Examination in English, p. 189. This recommendation seems to be in the phraseology of C. S. Thomas, chairman of the commission. Italics not in the original. 13. College Entrance Examination Board, "Definition of the Requirements" (edition of December 1935), Document No. 148, p. 18. 14. N. M. Butler, in "Preface" to Percival Chubb, The Teaching of English in the Elementary and the Secondary School, p p . xix-xxi. 15. P. Chubb, op. cit., pp. 238, 242, 249, 256-257, 268. 16. G. R. Carpenter and others, The Teaching of English in the Elementary and the Secondary School, p. 251.

130

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

17. Ibid., p. 257. 18. B. A. Heydrick, How to Study Literature, p. vi. 19. S. S. Seward, editor, Narrative and Lyric Poems for Students, pp. iv, 453. 20. P. H. Pearson, The Study of Literature, p. 97. s i . Ε. M. Bolenius, Teaching Literature in the Grammar Grades and High School, pp. vii, 4. 22. C. S. Thomas, The Teaching of English in 1the Secondary School, pp. 121, 123, 130. 23. J. F. Hosic, Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools, pp. 32, 66, 72. (See also Allan Abbott, "The Aims of High-School English," The English Journal, I, 5095"·) 24. J. F. Hosic, in "Introduction" to M. I. Rich, A Study of the Types of Literature, p. XV. 25. M. I. Rich, A Study 0/ the Types of Literature, pp. vii, ix-x. 26. J. F. Hosic, "Reorganization of the High School Course in Literature," Teachers College Record, XXIV, 340, 341. 27. T . W. H. Irion, Comprehension Difficulties of Ninth Grade Students in the Study of Literature, p. 75. 28. C. C. Fries and others, The Teaching of Literature, pp. 139, 142-144. 29. N. G. Coryell, An Evaluation of Extensive and Intensive Teaching of Literature, pp. 8, 18. 30. Blandford Jennings, "Place of the Chronological Survey," Bulletin of the Illinois Association of Teachers of English, XIX, 18-19. 31. Isabelle Duffey, "Teaching Literature by Types," Bulletin of the Illinois Association of Teachers of English, XXI, 20, 22, 23. 32. R. B. Inglis and others, editors, Adventures in English Literature, p. xiv. 33. L. L. La Brant, The Teaching of Literature in the Secondary School, pp. 45,46. 34. D. V. Smith, Instruction in English, pp. 48, 64, 66, 89. 35. National Council of Teachers of English, An Experience Curriculum in English, pp. 43, 51, 53, 52, 71, 319, 23. See Gordon McKenzie, Organic Unity in Coleridge, p. 76, and passim. 36. National Council of Teachers of English, A Correlated Curriculum, pp. 58, 62. 37. R. E. Parker, The Principles and Practice of Teaching English, p. 93. 38. L. M. Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration, pp. 300-301. 39. National Council of Teachers of English, Conducting Experiences in English, pp· 53.30-33· 40. National Council of Teachers of English, Pupils Are People, pp. 136-139. 41. J. R. Dunbar, "Modern Trends in Teaching Literature," Oregon Educational Journal, XI, 14. 42. R. C. Pooley, "Varied Patterns of Approach in the Teaching of Literature," The English Journal, XXVIII, 353. Numerals and italics not in the original. 43. Ibid., pp. 344-45 (condensed). Numerals not in the original. 44. M. A. Meyer, "A Study of the Changes Found in Texts in English Literature Used Extensively in High Schools since 1920," p. 21. 45. Robert Shafer, editor, American Literature, I, xvii; II, xvrxxv. 46. L. W. Payne and others, editors, Interesting Friends, pp. 603-9, 613-15. 47. R. B. Inglis and others, editors, Adventures in English Literature, passim. 48. M. I. Rich, editor, A Study of the Types of Literature, passim. 49. R. B. Inglis and others, editors, Adventures in American Literature, passim. 50. L. B. Cook and others, editors, Adventures in Appreciation, pp. 579-685. 51. P. H. Houston and J. K. Bonnell, editors, Types of Great Literature, p. v. 52. L. W. Payne, editor, American Literary Readings, p. xvi. 53. L. W. Payne and others, editors, Interesting Friends, pp. vii-viii, x. 54. M. A. Neville and L. W. Payne, editors, Broadening Horizons, p. x.

Notes for Chapter 5

»31

55. Edwin Greenlaw and others, editors, Literature and Life, Book One, passim; see also Book Two. 56. Edwin Greenlaw and Dudley Miles, editors, Literature and Life, Book Three, p. v. 57. Edwin Greenlaw and Dudley Miles, editors, Literature and Life, Book Three. 58. Edwin Greenlaw and Dudley Miles, editors, Literature and Life, Book Four. 59. Edwin Greenlaw and others, editors, Literature and Life (revised edition), Book One, p. iv. 60. Dudley Miles and others, editors, Literature and Life (revised edition), Book Two, p. iv. 61. Dudley Miles and others, editors, Literature and Life (revised edition). Book Four, p. v. 62. Dudley Miles and G. S. Keck, editors, Literature and Life [third edition]. Book One, passim; also Dudley Miles and others, Literature and Life [third edition], Book Two, passim. 63. Dudley Miles and R . C. Pooley, editors, Literature and Life in America, p. vii; for a more non-committal statement, see Dudley Miles and R . C. Pooley, editors. Literature and Life in England, p. v. 64. Ernest Hanes and M. J . McCoy, editors, Readings in Literature, I, vii. 65. Jacob Zeitlin and Clarissa Rinaker, editors, Types of Poetry, p. v. 66. H. W. McGraw and others, editors, Prose and Poetry for the Ninth Year. In 1928, the second volume appeared: H. W. McGraw and others, editors, Prose and Poetry for the Tenth Year. 67. H. W. McGraw, editor. Prose and Poetry for Enjoyment, p. vii. 68. All references are to the "Regular Edition," one column per page. 69. J . M. Ross, editor. Adventures in Literature, Book η. yo. J . M. Ross, editor. Adventures in Literature, Book 8. 71. J . M. Ross, editor, Adventures in Literature, Book 7, p. xiv. 72. J . M. Ross and H. C. Schweikert, editors, Adventures in Literature, Book 9, p. xvii. 73. H. A. Miller and others, editors, Adventures in Prose and Poetry, p. xii. 74. H. C. Schweikert and others, editors, Adventures in American Literature, p. xvi. 75. H. C. Schweikert and others, editors. Adventures in American Literature, pp. xiii, xiv. 76. R . B. Inglis and W. K. Stewart, editors, Adventures in World Literature. 77. L. B. Cook and others, editors, Hidden Treasures in Literature, Book One, Book Two, and Book Three. 78. L. B. Cook and others, editors, Challenge to Grow, p. vi. 79. E. M. Bolenius, editor, Widening Horizons, p. v. 80. T . H. Briggs and others, editors, American Literature (1933), passim. 81. T . H. Briggs and others, editors, Nexv Frontiers. 82. T . H. Briggs and others, editors, Romance. 83. T . H. Briggs and others, editors, American Literature (1941). 84. T . H. Briggs and others, editors. English Literature, New and Old. 85. For complete information on these eight books see bibliography, under Good Reading for High Schools. 86. For complete information on these four books see bibliography, under Beacon Lights of Literature. 87. For complete information on these four books see bibliography, under Literature for the High School. 88. M. I. Rich, A Study of the Types of Literature (revised edition), p. xxvii. 89. Dubois, Pennsylvania, Tentative Course of Study in English, Junior High School. 90. Aberdeen, South Dakota, English Course of Study for Senior High School, Grade 11B.

132

The "Types

Approach"

to

Literature

g i . T h e courses of study used are on file in the Curriculum Construction Laboratory, Teachers College, Columbia University. T h e y were selected, after a preliminary survey of many more, as being representative of trends and as a sound geographical distribution. 92. Missouri, Literature and Dramatics, pp. 11, 19, 28. 93. D. H. Miles and others. Literature and Life, Student's Guide; Teacher's Manual, Book Four. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, n.d. 94. Springfield, Massachusetts, Senior High English, a Tentative Course of Study for Senior High Schools, p. 135. 95. Akron, O h i o , A Tentative Presentation of the Contemporary English Course of Study in World Literature. 96. Mississippi, T h e Place of English in the Secondary School Curriculum, pp. 19, ΪΟ. 97. New York, Syllabus in English for Secondary Schools, Grades 7-/1, pp. 23, 26, 28. 98. New Hampshire, Tentative Report of Educational Council Committee on the Reorganization of the Program in English, Grades VII to Xli. 99. Ibid., " L i t e r a t u r e , " p. 2. 100. Fort W o r t h , T e x a s , Language, Arts, a Tentative Course of Study for the Senior High School. 101. Colorado, Course of Study for Secondary Schools, English. 102. See note 42 above. Compare the Colorado course of study, pp. 21-22, with Pooley's article. 103. See Colorado, op. cit., pp. 7-19, 22.

Bibliography Aarne, Antti, The Types of the Folk-tale. Translated and enlarged by Stith Thompson. FF Communications No. 74. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1928. Abbott, Allan, " T h e Aims of High-School English," The English Journal, I (October, 1912), 509-11. , "An Experiment in High-School English," The School Review, X I I (September, 1904), 550-58. Aberdeen, South Dakota, English Course of Study for Senior High School, Grade XIIB, by Beryl de Haven. Aberdeen, South Dakota, 1939. Ainslie, Douglas, "Benedetto Croce," The Anglo-Italian Review, II (October, 1918), "9-3'· Akron, Ohio, A Tentative Presentation of the Contemporary English Course of Study in World Literature. Akron, Ohio: T h e Akron Board of Education, Publication N o · 7-g. ' 9 3 8 · Andress, James Mace, Johann Gottfried Herder as an Educator. New York: G. E. Stechen, c. 1916. Andrews, Isabella M., "A World-Literature," The Century Magazine, X L I (January, 1891), 479. Annales internationales d'histoire. CongTès de Paris, 1900. 6° section. Histoire comparée des littératures. Paris: Armand Colin, 1901. Atkins, J o h n William Hey, Literary Criticism in Antiquity; a Sketch of Its Development. Cambridge, England: University Press, 1934. T w o volumes. Babbitt, Irving, "Croce and the Philosophy of Flux," Yale Review (New Series), X I V (January, 1925), 377-81. , "Ferdinand Brunetière," The Atlantic Monthly, X C I X (April, 1907), 530-36. , "Ferdinand Bruneticre and His Critical Method," The Atlantic Monthly, L X X I X (June, 1897), 757-66. , "Genius and Taste," The Nation, CVI (February 7, 1918), 138-41. of the Modern Lan, "Impressionist versus Judicial Criticism," Publications guage Association of America, X X I (New Series, XIV, September, 1906). 687-705. , " T h e Modern Spirit and Dr. Spingarn," The Journal of Philosophy, X I (April 9, 1914), 215-18. , The New Laokoon; an Essay on the Confusion of the Arts. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910. , "Reply to Dr. Spingarn," The Journal of Philosophy, X I (June 4, 1914). 328-29. , "Schiller and Romanticism," Modern Language Notes, X X X V I I (May, ig22), 257-68. Baker, George Pierce, Dramatic Technique. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1919. Baldensperger, Fernand, "Littérature comparée: le mot et la chose," Revue de Littérature comparée, I (January-March, 1921), 5-29. Baldwin, Charles Sears, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (to 1400) Interpreted from Representative Works. New York: Macmillan, 1928. , Renaissance Literary Theory and Practise; Classicism in the Rhetoric and Poetic of Italy, France and England, 1400-1600. Edited with introduction by Donald Lernen Clark. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939. Bärenbach, Friedrich von. Herder als Vorgänger Darwin's und der modernen Natur-

134

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

philosophie·, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Entwickelungslehre im 18. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Grieben, 1877. Beacon Lights of Literature, edited by R u d o l p h W . Chamberlain. Syracuse, New York: Iroquois, >933-34. T h r e e volumes. I. Book One, c.1933. II. Book Two, c.1933. III. Book Three, c.1934. IV. Book Four, c.1934. Behrens, Irene, Die Lehre von der Einteilung der Dichtkunst. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, X C I I . Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1940. Beiden, Henry Marvin, " T h e Relation of Balladry to Folk-Lore," Journal of American Folk-Lore, XXIV (January-March, 1911), 1-13. Boas, Franz, " T h e Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology," Science (New Series), IV (December 18, 1896), 901-8. Anthropology, , "Literature, Music, and Dance," Boas, Franz, editor. General pp. 589-608. New York: D . C. Heath, c.1938. , " T h e Methods of Ethnology," American Anthropologist (New Series), X X I I (October-December, 1920), 311-21. , "Mythology and Folk-tales of the North American Indians," Anthropology in North America, by Franz Boas and others, pp. 306-49. New York: G. E. Stechert, •915· , "Stylistic Aspects of Primitive Literature," Race, Language and Culture, pp. 491-502. New York: Macmillan, 1940. Boas, George, review of Irving Babbitt, On Being Creative and Other Essays, Modern Philosophy, X X X (November, 1932), 217-20. Boas, R a l p h Philip, " T h e Introduction to English Literature," The English Journal, II (December, 1913), 630-36. Bolenius, Emma Miller, Teaching Literature in the Grammar Grades and High School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1915. Bolenius, Emma Miller, editor, Widening Horizons. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1929· Bosanquet, Bernard, A History of Aesthetic. Second edition. London: Allen & Unwin, 1934. Bosker, Aisso, Literary Criticism in the Age of Johnson. Groningen: Wolter, 1930. Bray, René, "Des Genres littéraires, de leur hiérarchie et du principe de cette hiérarchie dans la littérature classique," Recueil de travaux publiés a l'occasion du quatrième centenaire de la fondation de l'université, pp. 103-11. Lausanne: Librairie de l'Université, 1937. Brewster, William T e n n e y , " T h e Logic of Literary Criticism," Anniversary Papers, by colleagues and friends of George Lyman Kittredge presented on the completion of his twenty-fifth year of teaching in Harvard University, June, 1913. Boston: Ginn, 1913. Briggs, T h o m a s Henry, and others, editors, American Literature. Literature in the Senior High School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1933. , and others, editors, American Literature. Literature in the Senior High School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1941. , and others, editors, English Literature, New and Old. Literature in the Senior High School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1941. , and others, editors, New Frontiers. Literature in the Senior High School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1940. , and others, editors, Romance. Literature in the Senior High School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1940. B[right], J[ames] W[ilson], review of Joel Elias Spingarn, Creative Criticism; Essays on the Unity of Genius and Taste (initialed), Modern Language Notes, X X X I I (November, 1917), 442-45.

Bibliography

*35

Brightfield, Myron Franklin, The Issue in Literary Criticism. Berkeley: University oí California Press, 193s. Brumbaugh, Robert Sherrick, The Role of Mathematics in Plato's Dialectic. Chicago: Private Edition, Distributed by the University of Chicago Libraries, 1942. Brunetière, Ferdinand, " L a Critique littéraire," La Grande encyclopédie, X I I I , 4 1 1 - 1 4 . Paris: Lamirault, 1891. , " L a Doctrine évolutive et l'histoire de la littérature," Revue des deux mondes, L X V I I (February 15, 1898), 874-96. , L'Evolution des genres dans l'histoire de la littérature. Tenth edition. Paris: Hachette, 1931. , L'Evolution de la poésie lyrique en France au dix-neuvième siècle. Seventh edition. Paris: Hachette, 1922. T w o volumes. , " L a Littérature européenne," Annales internationales d'histoire, pp. 5-38. Paris: Armand Colin, 1901. Bryan, William Frank, review of Hugh Walker, The English Essay and Essayists, Modern Language Notes, X X X I (June, 1916), 347-56. Buck, Philo Melvin, Literary Criticism; a Study of Values in Literature. New York: Harper, 1930. Burke, Kenneth Duva, Attitudes toward History. New York: T h e New Republic, 1937. T w o volumes. Butcher, Samuel Henry, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art with a Critical Text and Translation of the Poetics. Fourth edition. London: Macmillan, 1 9 1 1 . Bywater, Ingram, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. Oxford: T h e Clarendon Press, 1909. California, University (Berkeley), Register, 1885-1941. Campbell, Oscar James, Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. San Marino, California: Huntington Library Publications, 1938. , "Introductory Course in Literature," The English Journal (college edition), X V I I (November, 1928), 740-48. , "What Is Comparative Literature?" Essays in Memory of Barrett Wendell, by his assistants. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1926. Canby, Henry Seide), The Short Story in English. New York: Henry Holt, 1909. , and Dashiell, Alfred, A Study of the Short Story. New York: Henry Holt, c. '935Carli, Armando Ralph, "First Courses in English Literature in Selected Liberal Colleges." Unpublished Doctor's dissertation, University of Buffalo. Buffalo, 1937. Carpenter, George Rice, and others, T h e Teaching of English in the Elementary and the Secondary School. New York: Longmans, Green, 1903. Chandler, Frank Wadleigh, "Comparative Literature: Is It Dead?" Books Abroad, X (Spring, 1936), 136-38. , The Literature of Roguery. T h e Types of English Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907. T w o volumes. —, Romanees of Roguery; an Episode in the History of the Navel. In two parts; part I; " T h e Picaresque Novel in Spain." Columbia University Studies in [English and Comparative] Literature. New York: Published for the Columbia University Press by T h e Macmillan Company, 1899. Charlton, Henry Buckley, Castelvetro's Theory of Poetry. Publications of the University of Manchester, Comparative Literature Series, No. 1. Manchester: University Press, 1913. Charvat, William, The Origins of American Critical Thought, 1810-1835. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936. Chew, Samuel Claggett, "Lyric Poetry," Modern Language Notes, X X I X (June, 1914). 173-78· Chicago, University, Announcements of the College and the Divisions, 1930-41. , Annual Register, 1892-1930.

136

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

Child, Francis James, "Ballad Poetry," Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia, I, 464-68. New York: D. Appleton, 1896. , Child Manuscripts. Unpublished letters and papers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University . , editor, English and Scottish Ballads. Boston: Little, Brown, 1857-58. Eight volumes. , editor, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882-98. Five volumes, ten parts. Chubb, Percival, The Teaching of English in the Elementary and the Secondary School. New York: Macmillan, 1902. Cicero, Marcus Tullius, De optimo genere oratorum [Opera] II. 1685-96. Ex editione Jo. Aug. Ernesti, cum notis et interpretatione. London: Valpy, 1830. , Brutus; with an English translation by G. L. Hendrickson. T h e Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1939. Clark, Donald Lemen, Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance; a Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism. Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1922. College Entrance Examination Board, Documents. New York: 1900-43. Colorado, Course of Study for Secondary Schools, English. Denver: State of Colorado, Department of Education, 1940. Colum, Mary Maguire, From These Roots; the Ideas that Have Made Modern Literature. New York: Scribner, 1937. Columbia College, Annual Report, 1891-93. —, Catalogue, 1893-96. , Handbook of Information, 1888-91. Columbia University, Catalogue, 1896-1941. Commission on English, Examining the Examination in English; a Report to the College Entrance Examination Board. Harvard Studies in Education, X V I I . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1931. Cook, Albert Stanburrough, editor, The Art of Poetry; the Poetical Treatises of Horace, Vida, and Boileau; with the translations by Howes, Pitt and Soame. New York: G. E. Stechert, 1926. , " T h e College Teaching of English," from a collection of clippings and pamphlets, the source of which is unknown, in the library of Teachers College, Columbia University. , The Higher Study of English. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. , A Summary of the Proceedings of the Meetings of the National Conference on Uniform Entrance Requirements in English, 1894-1899. New York: 1899. Cook, Luella Bussey, and others, editors, Adventures in Appreciation. Second edition. Adventures in Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941. , and others, editors, Challenge to Grow. Adventures in Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941. , and others, editors, Hidden Treasures in Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934. Three volumes. Book One. Book Two. Book Three. Cooper, Lane, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922. , editor, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. New York: Harcourt, Brace, n.d. , The Poetics of Aristotle; Its Meaning and Influence. Boston: Marshall Jones, c. 1923. Cory, Herbert Ellsworth, "Modern Humanism," The Dial, LIV (February 16, 1913), i3°-34·

Bibliography

»37

Coryell, Nancy Gillmore, An Evaluation of Extensive and Intensive Teaching of Literature; a Year's Experiment in the Eleventh Grade. Teachers College Contributions to Education, No. 275. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1927. Cox, Edward Godfrey, "Croce and Criticism," The Pacific Review, II (March, 1922), 624-30. Croce, Benedetto, Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic. Translated by Douglas Ainslie. Second edition. London: Macmillan, 1922. Croll, Morris William, review of E. N. S. Thompson, The Seventeenth-century English Essay, Modern Language Notes, X L I I (December, 1927), 563-64. Cross, Wilbur Lucius, The Development of the English Novel. New York: Macmillan, •9'7· Curti, Merle Eugene, The Growth of American Thought. New York: Harper, c. 1943. D'Alton, John Francis, Roman Literary Theory and Criticism. London: Longmans, '93'· Dante Alighieri De vulgari eloquentia, A Translation of the Latin Works of Dante Alighieri, pp. 3-124. Translated by A. G. Ferrers Howell and Philip H. Wicksteed. London: J . M. Dent. 1904. Davidson, Thomas, "Prof. Child's Ballad Book," The American Journal of Philology, V (December, 1884), 466-78. Deering, Robert Waller, "History of the Novel," Modern Language Notes, X (November, 1895), 215-18. De Vane, William Clyde, " T h e English Major," College English, III (October, 1941), 4752· Diomedis Artis grammaticae libri III, Keil, Heinrich, editor. Grammatici Latini, I, 297-529. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1857. Dowden, Edward, New Studies in Literature. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner, •895Dryden, John, Essays. Selected and edited by William Paton Ker. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900. T w o volumes. Du Bellay, Joachim, La Defence et illustration de la langue francoyse. Edition critique par Henri Chamard. Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1904. Dubois, Pennsylvania, Tentative Course of Study in English, Junior High School. Dubois, Pennsylvania, 1938. Duffey, Isabelle, "Teaching Literature by Types," Illinois Association of Teachers of English, Bulletin, X X I (April, 1929), 20-24. Dunbar, John R., "Modern Trends in Teaching Literature," Oregon Education Journal, X I (April, 1937), 14-15. Ehrlich, Clara, " T r i b a l Culture in Crow Mythology, ' Journal of American Folh-Lore, L (October-December, 1937), 307-408. Eliot, Thomas Stearns, Selected Essays, IC/IJ-IQJI. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c. 1932. Elliot, Hugh Samuel Roger, "Herbert Spencer," Dictionary of National Biography, second supplement, III, 360-69. New Y'ork: Macmillan, 1912. , Herbert Spencer. Makers of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Henry Holt, '9'7· " T h e English and Scottish Popular Ballads," The Atlantic Monthly, LI (March, 1883), 404-8. Erskine, John, The Kinds of Poetry and Other Essays. New York: Duffield, 1920. Feder, Daniel D., "Colleges and Universities—VII. Student Personnel Work—2. Student Population Statistics," Encyclopedia of Educational Research, pp. 253-59. New York: Macmillan, 1941. Feuillerat, Albert, "Scholarship and Literary Criticism," Yale Review (New Series), XIV (January, 1925), 309-24. Foerster, Norman, The American Scholar; a Study in Litterae Inhumaniores. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1929.

138

The "Types

Approach"

to Literature

, and others, Literary Scholarship; Its Aims and Methods. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941. Ford, Jeremiah Denis Matthias, Main Currents of Spanish Literature. New York: Henry Holt, 1919. , and Ford, Mary Α., editors, The Romances of Chivalry in Italian Verse; Selections. New York: Henry Holt, igo6. Fort Worth, Texas, Language Arts, a Tentative Course of Study for the Senior High School. Fort Worth, Texas: Fort Worth Public Schools, Curriculum Bulletin Number 155, 1939. Francke, Kuno, A History of German Literature as Determined by Social Forces. New York: Henry Holt, 1901. French, Joseph Milton, "The Introductory Course in Literature," College English, III (October, 1941), 53-63. Fries, Charles Carpenter, and others, The Teaching of Literature. New York: Silver, Burdett, c. 1926. Garnett, James M., "The Course in English and its Value as a Discipline," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (formerly, Transactions and Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America), II (1886), 61-73. Gayley, Charles Mills, The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art. Boston: Ginn, 1911. , "The Development of Literary Studies During the Nineteenth Century," Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904, (edited by Howard J . Rogers) III, 323-56. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. , "A Society of Comparative Literature," The Dial, XVII (August 1, 1894), 57. , "What is 'Comparative Literature'?" The Atlantic Monthly, XCII (July, i9°3). 56-68. —, and Bradley, Cornelius B., Suggestions to Teachers of English in the Secondary School. Berkeley, California: University of California, 1894. , and Kurtz, Benjamin Putnam, Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism; Lyric, Epic and Allied Forms of Poetry. Boston: Ginn, c. 1920. , and Scott, Fred Newton, An Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism. Boston: Ginn, 1899. , and Young, Clement C., The Principles and Progress of English Poetry with Representative Masterpieces and Notes. New York: Macmillan, 1904. , and others, English Poetry; Its Principles and Progress, with Representative Masterpieces from 1390 to 1917 and with Notes. New Edition, revised and enlarged. New York: Macmillan, 1922. Gerould, Gordon Hall, Saints' Legends. The Types of English Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916. Gode—von Aesch, Alexander Gottfried Friedrich, Natural Science in German Romanticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941. Good Reading, edited by Tom Peete Cross and others. Revised edition. Boston: Ginn, 1938-40. Four volumes. I. Adventure, c. 1938. II. Achievement, c. 1938. III. American Writers, c. 1939. IV. English Writers, c. 1940. Good Reading for High Schools, edited by Tom Peete Cross and others. Boston: Ginn, 1930-31. Four volumes: I. Adventure, c. 1930. II. Achievement, c. 1930. III. American Literature, 1931. IV. English Literature, 1931.

Bibliography

»39

Greene, William Chase, "Plato's View of Poetry," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology( X X I X (1918), 1-75. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1918. Greenlaw, Edwin, The Province of Literary History. Johns Hopkins Monographs in Literary History, I. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, c. 1931. , and Miles, Dudley, editors, Literature and Life, Book Three. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1923. , and Miles, Dudley, editors, Literature and Life, Book Four. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1924. , and Stratton, Clarence, editors, Literature and Life, Book Two. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1922. , and others, editors. Literature and Life, Book One. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1922. , and others, editors, Literature and Life (revised edition), Book One. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, c. 1933. Greenough, Chester Noyes, Collected Studies. Introduction by Wilbur Cortez Abbott. Cambridge: Harvard Cooperative Society, 1940. Greenough, R u t h Hornblower, Chester Noyes Greenough. Cambridge: Harvard Cooperative Society, 1940. "Grocer-shop Criticism," The Dial, L V I I (July 1, 1914), 5-7. Gummere, Francis Barton, The Anglo-Saxon Metaphor, Halle: E. Karras, 1881. , " T h e Ballad and Communal Poetry," Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, V (Child Memorial Volume), 1896. , The Beginnings of Poetry. New York: Macmillan, 1901. , Democracy and Poetry. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1 9 1 1 . , Germanic Origins; a Study in Primitive Culture. New York: Scribner, 1892. , A Handbook of Poetics for Students of English Verse. Boston: Ginn, 1886. , Old English Ballads. Boston: Ginn, 1894. , The Oldest English Epic; Beowulf, Finnsburg, Waldere, Deor, Widsith, and the German Hildebrand. Translated in the original metres with introductions and notes. New York: Macmillan, 1923. , The Popular Ballad. T h e Types of English Literature. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907. , "Primitive Poetry and the Ballad, II," Modern Philology, I (October, 1903), 217-34· , " T h e Relation of English Literature to Other Sciences," Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904, (edited by Howard J . Rogers) III, 401-14. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. Hack, Roy Kenneth, " T h e Doctrine of Literary Forms," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, X X V I I (1916), 1-65. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1916. Hamelius, Paul, Die Kritik in der englischen Literatur des ιη. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Bibliothèque de la faculté de philosophie & lettres de l'université de Liège, Fascicule III. Bruxelles: Société belge de librairies, 1897. Hanes, Ernest, and McCoy, Martha Jane, editors, Readings in Literature. New York: Macmillan, 1925. T w o volumes. Hart, James Morgan, " T h e College Course in English Literature, how it may be Improved," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (formerly, Transactions of the Modern Language Association of America), I (1884-85), 84-95. , "Rhetoric—Style—Metre," Modern Language Notes, I (April, 1886), 51-52. Hart, Walter Morris, "Professor Child and the Ballad," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, X X I (1906, New Series, XIV), 755-807. Harvard University, Catalogue, 1885-1941 Hatfield, Walter Wilbur, "Instead of the Survey," English Journal (college edition), X X (December, 1932), 840-46.

140

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

Hays, Edna, College Entrance Requirements in English" Their Effects on the High Schools; An Historical Survey; Teachers College Contributions to Education, No. 675. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1936. - , "Comparative Literature and the Modern Humanities." Unpublished paper (published in part as "Comparative Literature in American Universities," Comparative Literature News-Letter, II [October, 1943], 2-4). Hazard, Paul, "Les Récents travaux en littératures comparées; essai de classification," Revue universitaire, X X I I I (1914), 112-24, 212-22. Helicon; revue internationale des problèmes généraux de la littérature, I, II (1938, 1939). Amsterdam: Editions académiques panthéon, 1938, 1939. Hellems, Fred Burton Ranney, review of R . K. Hack, " T h e Doctrine of Literary Forms," Classical Philology, X V (January, 1920), 101-2. Herder, Johann Gottfried, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man. Translated by Thomas Churchill, London: J . Johnson, 1803. Two volumes. Hewett, Waterman Thomas, " T h e Aims and Methods of Collegiate Instruction in Modern Languages," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (formerly, Transactions of the Modern Language Association of America) I (1884-5), 25-36. Heydrick, Benjamin Α., How to Study Literature; a Guide to Intensive Study of Literary Masterpieces. New York: Hinds & Noble, c. 1903. Hocking, Elton, Ferdinand Brunetiire·, the Evolution of a Critic. University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, Number 36. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1936. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, and Pollock, Sir Frederick, Holmes-Pollock Letters; the Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874-1932. Edited by Mark Anthony De Wolfe Howe. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1941. T w o volumes. Hosic, James Fleming, editor, Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools; Report of the National Joint Committee on the Reorganization of English in the Secondary Schools to the National Education Association. United States Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 2. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917. , "Reorganization of the High School Course in Literature," Teachers College Record, X X I V (September, 1923), 338-43. Hoskins, John Preston, "Biological Analogy in Literary Criticism," Modern Philology, VI (April, 1909), 407-34; VII (July, 1909), 61-82. Houston, Percy Hazen, Doctor Johnson; a Study in Eighteenth Century Humanism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1923. , and Bonnell, John Kester, editors, Types of Great Literature. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1919. Hubbard, Frank G., " T h e Undergraduate Curriculum in English Literature," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, X X I I I (1908, New Series, XVI), 254-68. Hunt, Theodore W., " T h e Place of English in the College Curriculum," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (formerly, Transactions of the Modern Library Association of America), I (1884-85), 118-32. Hustvedt, Sigurd Bernhard, Ballad Books and Ballad Men; Raids and Rescues in Britain, America, and the Scandinavian North since 1800. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930. Inglis, Rewey Belle, and others, editors, Adventures in American Literature. [Third edition.] New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942. , and others, editors, Adventures in English Literature. [Third edition.] New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942. , and Stewart, William K., editors, Adventures in World Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936.

Bibliography

141

Irion, Theophil William Henry, Comprehension Difficulties of Ninth Grade Students in the Study of Literature. Teachers College Contributions to Education, No. 189. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1925. Isidori Hispalenses Episcopi Etymologarum sive originum libri XX. Edited by W. M. Lindsay. Oxford: Clarendon Press, c. 1 9 1 1 . T w o volumes. Jaeck, Emma Gertrude, Madame de Staël and the Spread of German Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1915. James, Henry, The Art of the Novel; Critical Prefaces. Introduction by Richard P. Blackmur. New York: Scribner, 1941. James, Thelma G., " T h e English and Scottish Popular Ballads of Francis J . Child," Journal of American Folk-Lore, XLVI (January-March, 1933), 51-68. James, William, The Letters of William James. Edited by his son, Henry James. Boston: Atlantic Monthly, c. 1920. T w o volumes. Jantz, Harold S., " T h e Factor of Generation in German Literary History," Modern Language Notes, L I I (May, 1937), 324-30. , " T h e Fathers of Comparative Literature," Books Abroad, X (Autumn, 1936), 401-3. Jennings, Blandford, "Place of the Chronological Survey," Illinois Association of Teachers of English, Bulletin, X I X (March-April, 1927), 18-19. Johnson, Samuel, Lives of the English Poets. Edited by George Birkbeck Hill. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905. Three volumes. Kallen, Horace, Art and Freedom, A Historical and Biographical Interpretation of the Relations Between the Ideas of Beauty, Use and Freedom in Western Civilization from the Greeks to the Present Day. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, c. 1942. T w o volumes. Kefauver, Guy N., and others, The Secondary-School Population. United States Office of Education Bulletin, 1932, No. 17. National Survey of Secondary Education, Monograph 4. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1932. Ker, William Paton, Form and Style in Poetry; Lectures and Notes. Edited by R . W. Chambers. London: Macmillan, 1928. Kurtz, Benjamin Putnam, Charles Mills Gayley. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943. LaBrant, Lou L., The Teaching of Literature in the Secondary School. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931Landman, Jacob Henry, "Primitive Law, Evolution, and Sir Henry Maine," Michigan Law Review, X X V I I I (February, 1930), 404-25. Letourneau, Charles, "Origin of Literary Forms," The Popular Science Monthly, X L I I I (September, 1893), 673-82. Lippincott, Benjamin Evans, Victorian Critics of Democracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, c. 1938. Literature for the High School, edited by Henry Garland Bennett. New York: American Book, c. 1935. Four volumes: I. Trail Breaking. II. On the High Road. III. American Literature. IV. English Literature. Loewenberg, Bert James, "Darwinism Comes to America, 1859-1900," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, X X V I I I (December, 1941), 339-68. Long, Orie William, Literary Pioneers; Early American Explorers of European Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1935. Lovejoy, Arthur Oncken, "Reply to Professor Babbitt," Modern Language Notes, X X X V I I (May, 1922), 268-74.

142

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

, review of Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, Modern Language Notes, X X V (May, 1920), 302-8. Lowes, John Livingston, Convention and Revolt in Poetry. London: Constable, 1930. Lowie, Robert Harry, An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. New and enlarged edition. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, c. 1940. McEachran, Frank, The Life and Philosophy of Johann Gottfried Herder. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939. McGraw, Hiram Ward, and others, editors, Prose and Poetry for Enjoyment. Syracuse: L. W. Singer, c. 1935. , and others, editors, Prose and Poetry for the Ninth Year. Syracuse: L. W. Singer, 1927. f, and others, editors, Prose and Poetry for the Tenth Year. Syracuse: L. W. Singer, c. 1928. Mcllwaine, Shields, " 'Sophomore Lit.': a Sad Case," The English Journal (college edition), X X I I (January, 1933), 52-57. Mackenzie, Alastair St. Clair, The Evolution of letterature. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1 9 1 1 . McKenzie, Gordon, Organic Unity in Coleridge. University of California Publications in English, VII, 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1939. Maclean, Norman Fitzroy, "Theory of Lyric Poetry in England." Unpublished Doctor's dissertation, University of Chicago. Chicago, 1940. Maine, Sir Henry Sumner, Ancient Law; Us Connection with the Early History of Society and Its Relation to Modern Ideas. Introduction and notes by Sir Frederick Pollock. Fourth American from the tenth London edition. New York: Henry Holt, 1906. Manly, John Matthews, "Francis Barton Gummere, 1855-1919," Modern Philology, X V I I (September, 1919), 241-46. , "Literary Forms and the Origin of Species," Modern Philology, IV (April, »907). 577-95, The Outlook; the Presidential Speech for 1922-23 before the Modern Humanities Research Association. Cambridge, England: Bowes and Bowes, 1923. Mantz, Harold Elmer, "Types in Literature," The Modern Language Review, X I I (October, 1917), 469-479. Marsh, Arthur Richmond, " T h e Comparative Study of Literature," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, X I (1896, New Series, IV), 151-70. Mather, Frank Jewett, " A 'Laokoön' for the Times," The Nation, X C (June g, 1910), 578-81. Matthews, Brander, These Many Years; Recollections of a New Yorker. New York: Scribner, 1917. Mead, George H., Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Edited by Merrit H. Moore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936. Merz, John Theodore, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Second unaltered edition. Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1912. Four volumes. Meyer, Martha Α., " A Study of the Changes Found in Texts in English Literature Used Extensively in High Schools since 1920." Unpublished Master's thesis, State University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1936. Michigan, University, Calendar, 1875-1941. Miles, Dudley, and Kec!k, Christine S., editors, Literature and Life [third edition], Book One. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, c. 1940. , and Pooley, Robert C., editors, Literature and Life in America. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, c. 1943. , and Pooley, Robert C., editors, Literature and Life in England. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, c. 1943. , and others, editors Literature and Life (revised edition), Book Two. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, c. 1936.

Bibliography

»43

, and others, editors, Literature and Life (revised edition). Book Four. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, c. 1935. , and others, editors, Literature and Life [third edition], Book Two. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, c. 1941. , and others, Literature and Life, Student's Guide; Teacher's Manual, Book Four. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, n.d. Miller, Harry Augustus, and others, editors, Adventures in Prose and Poetry. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c. 1929. Mississippi, The Place of English in the Secondary School Curriculum. Bulletin of the Mississippi State Department of Education. Jackson: Mississippi State Department of Éducation, 1941. Missouri, Literature and Dramatics. Missouri at Work on the Public School Curriculum. Secondary School Series. Fine Arts. Bulletin 8. C. Jefferson City, 1941. Modern Language Association of America, Proceedings at Nashville, Dec. 29, jo, 1890. Edited by Aaron Marshall Elliott. Baltimore, Maryland: Modern Language Association, 1891. Morison, Samuel Eliot, editor. The Development of Harvard University Since the Inauguration of President Eliot, 1869-1929. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930. Mott, Lewis F., "Modern Literature," Modern Language \'otes, X (February, 1895), 55-56· Moulton, Richard Green, The Literary Study of the Bible; an Account of the Leading Forms of Literature Represented in the Sacred Writings; Intended for English Readers. Boston: D. C. Heath. 1896. , The Modern Study of Literature; an Introduction to Literary Theory and Interpretation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1915. Myers, Irene T., A Study in Epic Development. Yale Studies in English, X I . New York: Henry Holt, 1901. National Council of Teachers of English, Conducting Experiences in English; a Report of a Committee of the National Council of Tcachers of English, Based on the Contributions of 27./ Cooperating Teachers of English. Angela M. Broening, Chairman. New York: D. Appleton—Century, c. 1939 , A Correlated Curriculum; a Report of the Committee on Correlation of the National Council of Teachers of English. Ruth Mary Weeks, Chairman. New Y'ork: D. Appleton—Century, c. 1936. , An Experience Curriculum in English; a Report of the Curriculum Commission of the National Council of Teachers of Ejiglish. W. Wilbur Hatfield, Chairman. New York: D. Appleton—Century, c. 1935. , Pupils Are People; a Report of the Committee on Individual Differences, National Council of Teachers of English. Nellie Appy, Chairman. New York: D. Appleton-Century, c. 1941. National Education Association of the United States, "Report of the Committee on College-Entrance Requirements in English," Journal of Proceedings and Addresses, 1912, pp. 707-13. Nettleton, George Henry, English Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1642-1J80). New Y'ork: Macmillan, 1932. Neville, Mark Α., and Payne, Leonidas Warren, editors, Broadening Horizons. New York: Rand McNally, c. 1942. Nevinson, Henry, A Sketch of Herder and His Times. London: Chapman and Hall, 1884. " T h e N'ew Criticism," The Dial, L (April, 1911), 249-51. New Hampshire, Tentative Report of Educational Council Committee on the Reorganization of the Program in English, Grades VÌI to XII. Concord: State Board of Education, 1938.

144

The "Types Approach"

to Literature

New York, Syllabus in English for Secondary Schools, Grades 7-/2. Albany: T h e University of the State of New York Press, 1941. Reprint of syllabus issued in 1935. North Carolina, University, Catalogue, 1884-1941. Norton, Winifred Quincy, Entrance English Questions . . . 1901-1936. Third edition. Boston: Ginn, c. 1937. Osborn, Henry Fairfield, From the Greeks to Darwin; an Outline of the Development of the Evolution Idea. Columbia University Biological Series. New York: Macmillan, 1894. Padelford, Frederick Morgan, Select Translations from Scaliger's Poetics. Yale Studies in English, X X V I . New York: Henry Holt, 1905. [Paris, Gaston], "Résumé de l'allocution de M. Gaston Paris" (unsigned). International Congress of Historical Sciences, Paris, 1900, Annales internationales d'histoire, 6e section (1901), pp. 39-41. Parker, Roscoe Edward, The Principles and Practice of Teaching English. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937. Partridge, Eric, A Critical Medley. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1926. , Literary Sessions. London: Eric Partridge, 1932. Patterson, Warner Forrest, Three Centuries of French Poetic Theory. University of Michigan Publications, Language and Literature, XIV-XV. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1935. T w o volumes. Payne, Leonidas Warren, editor, American Literary Readings. Chicago: Rand McNally, c. 1917. , and others, editors, Interesting Friends. Enjoying Literature. Chicago: Rand McNally, c. 1936. Payne, William Morton, editor, English in American Universities, by professors in the English departments of twenty representative institutions. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1895. Pearson, Norman Holmes, "Literary Forms and Types; or, A Defense of Polonius," English Institute Annual, 1940, pp. 61-72. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941. Pearson, P. H „ The Study of Literature. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1913. Perry, Bliss, And Gladly Teach; Reminiscences. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1935. , "Literary Criticism in American Periodicals," Yale Review (New Series), I I I (July, 1914), 635-55. , A Study of Prose Fiction. Revised Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1920. Phelps, William Lyon, Autobiography with Letters. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939. Plato, Ion, The Dialogues of Plato, I, 285-98. Edited by B. Jowett. New York: Random House, 1937. , Laws; with an English translation by R . G. Bury. T h e Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1936. Two volumes. , Republic; with an English translation by Paul Shorey. T h e Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1930. T w o volumes. [Pollock, Sir Frederick], "Sir Henry Maine as a Jurist" (unsigned), Edinburgh Review, C L X X V I I I (1893), 100-21. Pooley, Robert C., "Varied Patterns of Approach in the Teaching of Literature," The English Journal, X X V I I I (May, 1939), 342-53. Posnett, Hutcheson Macaulay, Comparative Literature. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, 1886. Price, Thomas R., " T h e New Function of Modern Language Teaching," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, X V I (1901, New Series, IX), 77-91· Princeton University, Catalogue, 1885-1941. Puttenham, George, The Arts of English Poesie. Edited by G. D. Willcock and Alice Walker. Cambridge, England: University Press, 1936.

Bibliography

145

Quintilian, The Institutio oratoria; with an English translation by H. £ . Butler. T h e Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1921-22. Four volumes. Rapin, René, Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie; Containing the Necessary, Rational, and Universal Rules for Epick, Dramatick, and the other Sorts of Poetry. Translated by Thomas Rymer. London: H. Herringman, 1674. Reed, Edward Bliss, English Lyrical Poetry from Its Origins to the Present Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 191«. Reichard, Gladys Α., "Literary Types and Dissemination of Myth," Journal of American Folk-Lore, X X X I V (1921), »69-307. Rich, Mabel Irene, A Study of the Types of Literature. New York: Century, c. 1921. , A Study of the Types of Literature. Revised edition. New York: D. AppletonCentury, c. 1937. Rosenblatt, Louise M., Literature as Explora ti»n. New York: D. Appleton-Century, c. 1938. Routh, Harold Victor, " T h e Future of Comparative Literature," The Modern Language Review, VIII (January, 1913), 1-4. Russell, J o h n Dale (with the cooperation of Theodore Harris), "Colleges and Universities," Encyclopedia of Educational Research, pp. 203-6. New York: Macmillan, 1941. Sapir, Edward, Language; an Introduction to Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 19*1· Schelling, Felix E., The English Lyric. T h e Types of English Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913. Sichinz, Albert, "Ferdinand Brunetière," Modern Language Notes, X X I I (February, '907), 56-57· , " L a Superstition du genre littéraire," Mercure de France, LVIII (November 15, 1905), 161-77. Schütze, Martin, Academic Illusions in the Field of Letters and the Arts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933. Schweikert, Harry Christian, and others, editors, Adventures in American Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c. 1930. , and others, editors. Adi'entures in English Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931. Seward, Samuel Swayze, editor, Narrative and Lyric Poems for Students. New York: Henry Holt. c. 1909. Shafer, Robert, editor, American Literature; Texts Selected and Edited. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, c. 1926. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc. Edited by J . M. Robertson. London: Grant Richards, 1900. T w o volumes. , Second Characters or the Language of Forms. Edited by Benjamin Rand. Cambridge, England: University Press, 1914. Shipley, Joseph, The Quest for Literature; a Survey of Literary Criticism and the Theories of the Literary Forms. New York: Richard R . Smith, 1931. Shoemaker, Francis, Aesthetic Experience and the Humanities; Modern Ideas of Aesthetic Experience in the Reading of World Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. Shorey, Paul, "American Scholarship," The Nation, XCII (May 1 1 , 1911), 466-69. Simon, Henry W „ "On the Place of the Study of Literature in a Progressive College," College English, III (February, 1942), 459-70. Smith, Dora V. Instruction in English. United States Office Bulletin, 1932, No. 17. National Survey of Secondary Education, Monograph No. 20. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1932. Smith, George Gregory, editor, Elizabethan Critical Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904. T w o volumes.

146

The "Types

Approach"

to

Literature

Smith, James, "Croce," Scrutiny, II (June, 1933), 28-44. Smith, James Harry, and Parks, Edd Winfield, editors, The Great Critics; an Anthology of Literary Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton, c. 1932. Spencer, Herbert, An Autobiography. New York: Appleton, 1904. Two volumes. , First Principles of a New System of Philosophy. New York: D. Appleton, 1864. , Principles of Sociology. Second edition. New York: Appleton, 1885-97. Three volumes. Spingarn, Joel Elias, " T h e Ancient Spirit and Professor Babbitt," The Journal of Philosophy, XI (June 4, 1914), 326-28. , Creative Criticism and Other Essays. New and enlarged edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931. , editor, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903-09. Three volumes. , A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1930. , "Literary Criticism," Columbia University, Lectures on Literature, pp. 355-73. New York: Columbia University Press, 1911. , "A Note on Dramatic Criticism," English Association, Essays and Studies, IV (1913, collected by C. H. Herford), 7-28. , review of Irving Babbitt, The Masters of Modern French Criticism, The Journal of Philosophy, X (December 4, 1913), 693-96. , review of Benedetto Croce, Estetica (unsigned), The Nation, L X X V (September 25, 1902), 252-53. , " T h e Rich Storehouse of Croce's Thought," The Dial, LXIV (May 23, 1918), 485-86. , A Spingarn Enchiridion; Being Passages from the Writings of J. E. Spingarn in Reply to Paul Elmer More's Charge. . . . Collected by Alain T . Peters. New York: T h e Minaret Press, 1929. Springfield, Massachusetts, Senior High English, a Tentative Course of Study for Senior High Schools. Springfield: Springfield Public Schools, 1939. Stoddard, Francis Hovey, The Evolution of the English Novel. New York: Macmillan, 1900. Struckmeyer, Otto Keith, Croce and Literary Criticism. Cambridge, Englánd: University Press, 1921. Sully, James, "Evolution," The Encyclopaedia Britannica (ninth edition), VIII, 74472. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1878. Symonds, John Addington, Essays Speculative and Suggestive. New edition in one volume. New Υ ο Λ : Scribner, 1894. , Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama. London: Smith, Elder, 1906. Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe, History of English Literature. Translated by H. Van Laun. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, [1873]. Four volumes. , The Philosophy of Art. Translated from the French and revised by the author. London: H. Baillère, 1865. Taylor, Archer, Problems in German Literary History of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. T h e Modern Language Association of America, General Series, VIII. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1939. Thomas, Calvin, A History of German Literature. London: Heinemann, 1909. Thomas, Charles Swain, The Teaching of English in the Secondary School. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c. 1917. Thompson, Guy Andrew, Elizabethan Criticism of Poetry. Menasha, Wisconsin; George Banta, 1914. Thornbury, Ethel Margaret, Henry Fielding's Theory of the Comic Prose Epic. University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, No. 30. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1931.

Bibliography

»47

Thorndike, Ashley Horace, "Letters," A Quarter Century of Learning, 1904-1929, pp. 1892-98. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931. , " T h e Pastoral Element in the English Drama before 1605," Modern Language Notes, X I V (April, 1899), 114-23. , Tragedy. T h e Types of English Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908. Thwing, Charles Franklin, The American and the German University. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Tucker, Samuel Marion, Verse Satire in England before the Renaissance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1908. Upham, Alfred Horatio, review of Charlotte E. Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners, Modem Language Notes, X X V I I (November, 1912), 2*0-24. Valentin, Veit, "Poetische Gattungen," Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturgeschichte, V (1892), 35-51. Van Kranendonk, A. G „ " T h e Study of the Novel," English Studies, II (April, 19*0), 54-57Van Tieghem, Paul, La Littérature comparée. Paris: Armand Colin, 1931. Viëtor, Karl, "Probleme der literarischen Gattungeschichte," Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift für Litteraturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, IX (1931)· 4 S 5'47· Vincent, Abbé Ch., Théorie des genres littéraires. Paris: Poussielgue, 1903. Vossler, Karl, "Benedetto Croces Aesthetik als Wissenschaft des Ausdrucks," Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, Wednesday, September 10, 1902, pp. 481-84. , The Spirit of Language in Civilization. Translated by Oscar Oeser. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932. Walkley, Arthur Bingham, "Criticism and Croce," The Times (London), Monday, March 20, 1 9 1 1 , p. 12. , Dramatic Criticism; Three Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution, February 190J. London: J . Murray, 1903. Warren, Austin, Alexander Pope as Critic and Humanist. Princeton Studies in English, Number 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1929. Wellek, René, The Rise of English Literary History. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1941. Wéndell, Barrett. Barrett Wendell and His Letters. Edited by Mark Anthony De Wolfe Howe. Boston: T h e Atlantic Monthly Press, c. 1924. , The Temper of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature. New York: Scribner, 1904. Wesenberg. Alice B., "Conversion to Types," Education, LVIII (February, 1938), 353-57· Wilamowitz-Mocllendorff, Ulrich von, " T h e Character and Extent of Greek Literature," The Greek Genius and Its Influence; Select Essays and Extracts (edited by Lane Cooper), pp. 163-67. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917. Will, Joseph Stanley, "Comparative Literature: Its Meaning and Scope," University of Toronto Quarterly, V I I I (January, 1939). Wolfe, Samuel Lee, "Scholars," The Cambridge History of American Literature, IV, 444-91. New York: G. P. Putnam, c. 1921. Woodberry, George Edward, The Appreciation of Literature. New York: Baker 8: Taylor, 1909. , "Editorial," Journal of Comparative Literature, I (January-March, 1903), 3-9. Wright, Edward, "Development of Literary Criticism in France," Contemporary Review (London), L X X I (January, 1902), 46-60. Yale University, Catalogue, 1885-1941. Zeitlin, Jacob, and Rinaker, Clarissa, editors. Types of Poetry. New York: Macmillan, 1927.

Index An asterisk before a page number indicates a main entry. A b b o t t , A l l a n , 4, »83-84, 89, 93 A b e r c r o m b i e , Lascelles, 59-60 A b e r d e e n , S o u t h D a k o t a , course of s t u d y in English, 108 Adams, J . C., 77 Adventures series, 104-7 Adventures in American Literature, 101, 105, 106 Adventures in Appreciation, 101, 106 Adventures in English Literature, 100-101, 105-6 Adventures in Literature, 104-5, Adventures in Prose and Poetry, 105 Adventures in Reading, 106 Adventures in World Literature, 106 Aeneid, 11 Aeschylus, 79 Agamemnon, 79 Ainslie, Douglas, 43 A k r o n , O h i o , COUTS« of study in world lite r a t u r e , 109 Albertazzi, Adolfo, 58 American Literary Readings, 101 American Literature (Briggs), 107 American Literature (Shafer), 100 Ancient Law, 85 Andress, J . M., 21 Apology for Poetrie, 13 Aristotle, *io, 12, 15, 67, 79 Armes, W . D., 70 "Ars Poetica," 12 Art and Craft of Letters, '59-60 Ascham, R o g e r , »13 Atkins, J . W . H., 9 Atlantic Monthly, 33 Axson, Stockton, 78 B a b b i t t , Irving, 46, *47-49. 53. 73» " 4 Bacon, L e o n a r d , 71 Baer, K. E. von, 23 Baker, F. T . , »87 Baker, G. P., 72, 73 B a l d w i n , C. S., 11, 77 Beacon Lights of Literature, 107 Beers, Η . Α., 75, 76 Beersheba, 67

Behrens, Irene, 6, 9, 11, 16 Beiden, Η . M., 6 Bellay, J o a c h i m d u , · ΐ 4 Benêt, W . R., 100 B e n n e t t , H . G., 107 Berlin, University, s8 Bible, 35 Biological analogy, 18, 26-27, 32, *s8-42, 55-56, 76 B l a n c h a r d , F. T . , 70 Boas, Franz, 8, 49, 50, 51, 52 Boas, George, 49 Boas, R . P., 64 Bohn, W . E., 68 Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, *14, 15 Bolenius, E. M., *88, 101, 107 Bonnell, J . Κ., ι ο ί Book of the Dead, 8 B o s a n q u e t , B e r n a r d , 50 B o w m a n , 101 Bradley, C. B., 69, 70, 85 Brewster, W . T . , 54 Briggs, T . H., 101, 107 Bright, J . W . , 46 Brightfield, M y r o n , 22, 40 Broadening Horizons, 102 Bruce, H . L., 71 B r u n e t i è r e , F e r d i n a n d , 27, 35, 38, *39-4o, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 58, 70 B u r k e , K e n n e t h , 54, 113, 115 B u r n s , R o b e r t , 76 B u r t , B. C„ 67 Butler, N. M „ 86 B u t l e r University, 65 Byzantine writing, 11 California, University, 51, 66, 67, '69-78 C a m p b e l l , O. J., 7, 21, 37 Canby, H . S., 77 Carli, A. R . , 65 Carlyle, T h o m a s , 22 C a r p e n t e r , G. R „ 80, 87 Casket Library, 58 Castelvetro, Lodovico, * i 2 Challenge series, 106 Challenge to Grow, 106 C h a m b e r l a i n , R . W . , 107 C h a m b e r s , E. K., 57, 58

Index

M 9

Chandler, F. W., 36, 56-57 Channels of English Literature, 46, '58-59 Chapman, Ν. E., 100 Chaucer, 76 Chicago Teachers College, 64 Chicago, University, 66, '81-82 Child, Francis James, '27-30, 41, 66, 72 Chialett, William, 71 Chubb, Percival, 85, »86-87 Cicero, ' i o Classic Myths in English Literature and Art, 32 Classics, see Graeco-Roman classics Coleridge, S. T., 22, 97 College courses in types, effect upon high schools, 82 College Entrance Board, 4, 83, »85-86 College entrance requirements, '85-86 Colorado course of study in English, 1 1 1 Col um, M. M., 18, 24 Columbia University, 64, 66, '79-80, 87 Columbia University Studies in English

Dan, 67 Dante, ' 1 1 - 1 2 , 114 Darwin, C. R., 20, 22, 24, 27 Davidson, Thomas. 28, 29 De arte poetica, 12 De Haven, Beryl, 108 Demmon, I. N., 67 De Vane, W. C., 65 De vulgari eloquentia, 11 Dial, 46 Diomedes, · ι ι , 12 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 1 1 Dixon, W. M., 58-59 Dowden, Edward, 25 Drama and Tragedy, 58 "Dream Children," 92 Dryden, John, ' 1 5 , 17, 73 Dubois, Pennsylvania, course of study in English, 108 Dunn, W. H., 59 Duffey, Isabelle, '92-94 Dunbar, J . R., 99 Dunsany, Lord, 92

and Comparative Literature, 56 Comedy, 58 Committee of Ten, 85 Commission on English, 86 Comparative literature, 18, 21, 26, 33, 57, 73; and genology, 35-38, 56 Comparative Literature, 39 "Comparati visin," 26 Comte, Auguste, 22, 24, 43 Condillac, Ε. Β., 24 Conducting Experiences in English, 99 Conference on Uniform Entrance Requirements in English, 85, 86 Cook, A. S., 6g, 75 Cook, L. B., 101, 106 Cooper, Α. Α., see Shaftesbury Cooper, A. C., 100 Copeland, C. T., 73 Corneille, Pierre, 25 Correlated Curriculum, 97-98 Cory, Η. E., 46, 49, 71 Coryell, Ν. G., ' 9 1 -92 Cox, E. G., 44 Criticism, see Literary criticism Croce, Benedetto, 27, 42, '43-44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 58, 114 Croll, M. W „ 52, 53, 78 Cross, T . P., 107 Cross, W. L „ 76 Curti, Merle, 22 Curtius, Georg, 30

Ecole des Beaux Arts, 24 Ecole Normale Supérieure, 39 Ehrlich, Clara, 52 Eichorn, K. F., 25 Elizabethan criticism, ' 1 2 - 1 3 , 14 Elliott, Α. M., 64 Eloquence, 58 Elson, W. H., 102 Emerson, R . W., 47, 48 English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 27 English Biography, 59 English Drama, 59 English Epic and Heroic Poetry, 58-59 English Letter-Writers, 58 English Literature, New and Old, 107 English Lyric, 57 English Pastorals, 57 English Poetry, Its Principles and Progress, 34 English romanticism, 18 Epic (Abercrombie), 59-60 Epic (Levrault), 58 Epopée, 58 Erskine, John, 42 Estetica, 45 Evangeline, 88 Evolution of literature, 18, 19-20, 25-26, 33. See also Biological analogy, Genology Evolution of Literature, 34 Evolution of the English Novel, 41 Experience Curriculum in English, 96-97

15°

Index

Fable, 58 First Principles, as Fletcher, J. B., 72, 73, 80 Foerster, Norman, 18, 22, 101 Ford, J. D. M., 74 Fort Worth, Texas, course of study in English, 110 France, Anatole, 47, 48 Francke, Kuno, 21 Freiburg, University, 50 French, J. M., 65 Fries, C. C., 85, »91 Frogs, 7g Garnett, J. M., 63-64 Gates, L. E., 73 Gayley, C. M., 17, 18, »32-34, 37, 40, 41, 54, 58, 66, 67, 68, «69-71, 85, 87 Gehlman, 101 Genology, *i7-6o; American, 27-35; and comparative literature, 35-38; definition, 4. See also Evolution of literature Genres, definition, 4-5 Genres, research and scholarship, see Genology Genres littéraires, »58 Georgics, 11 German romanticism, 16, 18-19 Germanic Origins, 30 Gerould, G. H., 57, 78 "Ghost Theory," 23 Glessen, University, 32 Gode -von Aesch, A. G. F., 20 Goethe, J. W. von, 16, ig Good Reading for High Schools, 107 Gordon, R. W., 71 Göttingen, University, 28 Graeco-Roman classics, 9, 16 Greenlaw, Edwin, 55, 102, 108 Greenough, E. N., 74 Griffin, N. E„ 78 Grimm, Hermann, 30 Grimm, Jakob, 28 Gummere, F. B., 22, 25, »30-32, 34, 41, 56, 57 Halle, University, 32 Hamann, J. G., 18 Hanes, Ernest, 103 Hanford, 85 Harcourt, Brace and Company, 104 Harper, G. M., 78 Harris, W. F., 74 Hart, J. M., 30, 63 Hart, W. M., 30, 70

Harvard University, 4, 36, 66, '72-74, 80 Hatfield, W. W., 64-65 Hathaway, C. M„ 80 Hays, Edna, 75 Hedge, F. H „ 22 Hegel, G. W. F., 16, 24, 43 Hempl, George, 67 Herder, J. G., 16, »18-21, 22, 23, 24, 35 Herford, C. H„ 57-58 Herzberg, M. J., 101, 107 Hewett, W. T., 63 Heydrick, Β. Α., »87-88 Hiawatha, 88 Hidden Treasures in Literature, 106 High school population, 83 Hill, A. S., 72 History, 58 History of English Literature, 24, 25 History of Italian Literary Genres, 58 Hobbes, Thomas, »14 Hocking, Elton, 40 Holmes, O. W., 22, 24 Home, Henry, 15 Homer, 114 Horace, *io, 12, 13, 14, 15, 73 Horace Mann School, 4, 84 Hosic, J. F., 89-91 Hoskins, J. P., 41-42 Houston, P. H., 101 Hubbard, F. G., 64 Hume, Thomas, 63, 64, 68 Hunt, T . W., 63, 77 Hustvedt, S. B„ 28, 29 Huxley, T . H., 22 Iliad, 23, 50 Inglis, R. B., 100, 101 Interesting Friends, 100, 101-02 Irion, T . W. H „ »91 Isidore of Seville, * n Jackson, 101 Jaeger, Werner, 115 James, William, 22 Jantz, H. S., 54 Jennings, Blandford, »92 Jonson, Ben, »14 Johnson, Samuel, »15, 17 Journalism, 58 Juvenal, 73 Kallen, Horace, 24 Kames, Lord, see Home, Henry Kant, Immanuel, 18,43

Index Kardiner, Abraham, 1 1 5 Keck. C. M., 10a Kentucky, State University, 34 Ker, W. P., 6 Kinds, definition, 4-5; philosophy, 5-8. See also Three major kinds Kittredge, G. L „ 28, 72, 74 Kranendonk, A. G. Van, 54 Krapp, G. P., 80 Kurtz, Β. P., 71 LaBrant, Lou, '94-95 L'Allegro, 88 I.ange, A. F., 70 Lawrence, W. W„ 80 Laws, g Lessing, G. E., 18. 4g Laokoön, 4g Letter, 58 l.cvrault, Léon, 58 Literary criticism, 9-16 Literary Criticism, 58 Literature, evolution, see Evolution of literature Literature and Life, 102-3 Literature for the High School, 107 Literature in the Senior High School, 107 Literature of Roguery, 56 Littérature comparée, 55 Longfellow, H. W., 22 Louis X I V , 24 Lovejoy, A. O., 49 Lovelace, Richard, 88 Lowe, M. E., 105 Lowell, J . R., 2« Lowes, J . L., 7, 54 Lowie, R . H., 51 Lyric Poetry (Levrault), 58 Lyric Poetry (Rhys), 59 Maca lester College, 97 Macbeth, 87 McCall, W. Α., io6 MacClintork, W. D., 81 McCoy, M. J., 103 McEachran, Frank, 20 Mcllwainc, Shields, 65 Mackenzie, A. S., 22, 26, *34-35 McLaughlin, E. T., 75 Maine, Sir Henry, 22, ' 2 5 Manly, J . M., 30, 41, 81 Mantz, H . E., 53 Marsh, A. R „ 36, 72, 73 Matthews, Brander, 64, 79-80, 87 Maynadier, G. H., 72, 74

»51

Maxims and Characters, 58 Meyer, Μ. Α., loo Michigan, University, 32, *66-68, 6g, 87 Middle Ages, g, * n , 45, 72, 7g Miles, Dudley, 108 Mill, J . S., 22 Millay, E. S., 8 Miller, Η. Α., 105 Milton, John, 6, ' 1 4 , 88, 114 Mississippi State Department of Education, 109 Missouri course of study in English, 108 Modern Study of Literature, 35 Molière, 79 Moore, C. H „ 74 Morgan, Morris, 73 Mott, L. F., 54 Moulton, R . G., "35, 54, 66, 81 Müller-Freienfels, 1 1 3 , 1 1 5 Murray, M. O., 77-78 National Council of Teachers of English, gg; Committee on Correlation, 97-98; Committee on Individual Differences, gg; Committee on Types of Organization of High School English, 8g; Curriculum Commission, g6-97 National Education Association, 85 National Survey of Secondary Education, 95 Neilson, W. Α., 55-56, 74. 8o Neo-classicism, 7 Nettleton, G. H., 77 Neville, Μ. Α., too, 101, 102 New Frontiers, 107 New Hampshire course of study in English, 110 Mew Laokoon, 48, 73 New York State Syllabus in English, 109I 10 Newton, Isaac, 23 Norfolk Female College, 68 North Carolina, University, 63, 66, · 68-69 Norvell, G. VV\, 106 Novel (Albertazzi), 58 Novel (Levrault), 58 Noyes, G. R., 70 Odyssey, 50 Oedipus, 7g Old English Ballads, 30 On Imitation, 11 "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont," 88 "Organic form," g7 Origin of Species, 22

Index Osgood, C. G., 77 Paris, Gaston, 37 Parker, R. E., «98 Partridge, Eric, 17-18 Pastoral, 58 Payne, L. W., 100, 101, 102 Payne, W. M., 63, 64 Pearson, Ν. H., 53 Pearson, P. H., *88 Pendennis, Arthur, 80 Perry, Bliss, 46, 66, 73, 74, 77-78, 79 Phelps, W. L „ 66, 75-76, 79 Place of English in the Secondary School Curriculum, 109 Plato, *9"io, 43 Platonic archetypes, 7, *g-io Poetics, 67 Pollock, Frederick, 25 Pooley, R. C., 99-100, 108, 111 Pope, Alexander, ' 1 5 , 73 Popular Ballad, 56 Posnett, H. M., 22, 25, '39, 70 Potter, Μ. Α., 73 Price, T . R., 79 Princeton University, 66, '77-78 Principles of Sociology, 23 Progressive Education Association, Committee on Human Relations, 98 Prose and Poetry, 104 Pupils Are People, 99 Puritanism, 12 Puttenham, George, ' 1 3 Racine, Jean, 25 Radio Gity Music Hall, 3 Raleigh, W. Α., 58 Rand, Benjamin, 15 Rapin, René, *i4, 15 Readings in Literature, 103-4 Reed, E. B., 76 Reichard, G. Α., 51, 113, 115 Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools, 89, 90 Renaissance, 9, 10, 15, 45; Italian, 12, 53, 79 Republic, 9 Reynolds, Myra, 81 Rhys, Ernest, 59 Rich, M. I., *8g-go, 93, 94, 101, 107 Rinaker, Clarissa, 104 Rockford, Illinois, Senior High School, 93 Romance, 107 Romanticism, English, see English romanticism

Romanticism, German, see German romanticism Romanzo, 58 Rosenblatt, L. M., 84, '98, 113 Ross, J. M., 104-5 Roustan, Marius, 58 Routh, Η. V., 36* Sainte-Beuve, C. Α., i8, 24 Saints' Legends, 57 Sanford, T . F., 70 Sapir, Edward, 50 Satire, 58 Savigny, F. K. von, 25 Scaliger, J. C., *i2, 13 Schelling, F. E., 57, 59 Schevill, Rudolph, 77 Schinz, Albert, 45 Schlegel, A. W., 22 Schlegel, Friedrich, 22 Schofield, W , H„ 66, 73 Schweikert, H. C., 105 Scott, F. N., 67, 87 Seminary of Literature and Philology, 68 Seward, S. S., *88 Shafer, Robert, 100 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl, *t5 Shakespeare, 7, 66, 70, 76, 86, 88, 98 Sheridan, R. B., 77 Shipley, J. T., 53 Siceloff, J. H., 108 Sidney, Sir Philip, '13, 17 Simon, H. W „ 66 Singer, L. W., 104 Smeaton, Oliphant, 58 Smith, C. Α., 68 Smith, D. V., 82, *95 96 Smith, G. G., 12 Smith, Η. Α., 76 Smith, Reed, 107 Spencer, Herbert, *22-24, 25, 43 Spingarn, J. E„ 12, 14, 37, *45-49, 50,53, 80, 114 Spinoza, Baruch, 18 Springfield, Massachusetts, Curriculum Revision Committee, 108 Staël, Mme. de, 22 Stauffer, E. C., 107 Steeves, H. H., 85 Stoddard, F. H., 41, 69 Storia dei generi letterari italiani, '58 Strauss, L. Α., 68 Study of the Types of Literature, »89, 93, 101

Index Sturdevant, Μ. Α., loo Sully, James, ig Symonds, J . Α., »6. 2η, J 4 , '38-39, 58, 68 Taine, Η. Α., '24-25, 34 Taylor, Archer, 55 Taylor, E. G., 77 Taylor, John, 82 Teachers College, Columbia University, 80, 84.87 Teaching Literature, 88 Teaching of English (Carpenter, Baker, Scott), 87 Teaching of English (Chubb). 86-87 Teaching of Literature, 85, 91 Teaching of Literature in the Secondary School (I.aBrant), 94-95 Ten Brink, Bernhard, 30 Thomas, Calvin, si Thomas, C. S„ '88-89 Thompson, G. Α., is Thorndike, A. H., 42, 57, 80 Tilley, M. P.. 68 Tragedy, 57 Three major kinds, 16, 18, 30-32, 33-34 Ticknor, George, 22 Tinker, C. B., 77 " T o Lucasta, on Going to the Wars," 88 Tolman, A. H., 81 Trent, W. P.. 80 Triggs, O. L., 81 Troilus and Cressida, 7 Tucker, S. M „ 36 Tyler, M. C „ 67-68 Tyndall, John, 22 Types, colleges courses, 63-82; definition, 4-5

"Types approach," definition, 1 1 2 ; devolpment, 1 1 2

Types Types Types Types

J

of of of of

53

English Literature, 46, '55-57 Great Literature, 101 Literature, 58 Poetry, 104

Utter, R . P., 71 Van Dyke, Henry, 78 Van Tieghem, Paul, 55 Vergil, ι · , 114 Vico, G. Β., ι8 Vida, M. G., · ΐ 2 Vincent of Beauvais, ' i l Vossler, Karl, 44 Walkley, A. B „ 44, 46, 48 Ward, F. E „ 97-98 Warnke, 30 Warren, Austin, 54 Warwick Library of English Literature, •57-58 Webbe, William, »13 Weber and Fields, 79 Wellek, René, 38, 54 Wells, C. W., 71 Wendell, Barrett, 72 Wesenberg, A. B., 65 White, J . W., 73 Whittem, A. F., 74 Widening Horizons, 107 Wilamowitz-Moellendoiff, Ulrich von, 16 Will, J . S., 37 Winans, J . Α., 70 Woodberry, G. E., '37-38, 54, 80 Wordsworth, William, 18, 88 World War, 112, 1 1 3 Wright, Edward, 40 Yale University, 66, 69, '74-77, 79 Zeitlin, Jacob, 104