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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 042 741 TB 001 605 AUTHOR Leary, Lewis, Fd. TITLE The Teacher and American Literature. Papers Presented at the 1964 Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Champaign, Ill. PUB DATE 65 NOTE 194p. EDITS PRICE EDRS Price MF-$0.75 HC-$9.80 DESCRIPTORS American Culture, *American Literature, Authors, Biographies, Childrens Books, Elementary School Curriculum, Literary Analysis, *Literary Criticism, *Literature Programs, Novels, Poetry, Short Stories ABSTRACT Eighteen papers on recent scholarship and its implications for school programs treat American ideas, novels, short stories, poetry, Emerson and Thoreau, Hawthorne and Melville, Whitman and Dickinson, Twain and Henry James, and Faulkner and Hemingway. Authors are Edwin H. Cady, Edward J. Gordon, William Peden, Paul H. Krueger, Bernard Duffey, John A. Myers, Jr., Theodore Hornberger, J. N. Hook, Walter Harding, Betty Harrelson Porter, Arlin Turner, Robert E. Shafer, Edmund Reiss, Sister M. Judine, Howard W.Webb, Jr., Frank H. Townsend, Richard P. Adams, and John N. Terrey. In five additional papers, Willard Thorp and Alfred H. Grommon discuss the relationship of the teacher and curriculum to new.a7proaches in American literature, while Dora V. Smith, Ruth A. French, and Charlemae Rollins deal with the implications of American literature for elementary school programs and for children's reading. (MF) U.S. DEPAIIMENT Of NE11114. EDUCATION A WOK Off ICE Of EDUCATION r--1 THIS DOCUMENT HAS KM ITEPtODUCIO EXACTLY AS IHCEIVID 1110D1 THE 11115011 01 014111I1.1101 01,611111116 IL POINTS Of TIM PI OPINIONS 4" SIAM 00 NOT IKESSAIllY INPINSENT OFFICIAL OW Of IDS/CATION N. POSITION 01 POLICY. Mi 4- THE TEACHER AND c, AMERICAN LITERATURE cm UJ Papers Presented at the 1964 Convention of the National Counfil of Teachers of English Edited by LEWIS LEARY Columbia University NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS COPY RIGHTED MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRAN/ED E tt,pteL tudkeit.. TO ERIC AND ORGANIZATIONS OPERATING UNDER AGREEMENTS WITH THE US OFFICE OF EDUCATION FURTHER REPRODUCTION OUTSIDE THE ERIC SYSTEM REQUIRES PEP MiSSIONOF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER Copyright 1965 National Council of Teachers of English 508 South Sixth Street Champaign, Illinois 61822 NCTE Committee on Publications JAMES R. SQUIRE,NCTE Executive Secretary, Chairman GLENN LEGGETT, GrinnellColiegc VIRGINIA NI. REID, Oakland Public Schools, California FRANK E. ROSS, Oakland County Schools, Pontiac., Michigan ENID M. OLSON, NCTE Director of Publications I1 Contents Introduction Lewis Leary v I.The Teacher and New Approaches to American Literature Willard Thorp 3 The Curriculum and New Approaches to American Literature Al /red H. Grornmon 11 II. The Teacher and the American Novel:1964 Edwin 11. Cady 21 The Novel: Implications for School Programs Edward J. Gordon 31 Recent Developments in the American Short Story , IVO/tarn Peden 35 The Short Story: Implications for School Programs Paul II. Krueger 42' Recent Approaches to American Poetry Bernard Duffey 47 Poetry and Modem Criticism: Implications for School Programs John A. Myers, Jr. 57 Recent Scholarship In American Ideas Theodore Ilornherger 84 Scholarship in Ideas: Implications for School Programs I. N. Hook 74 III.Recent Scholarship on Emerson and Thoreau Walter !larding 81 Emerson and Thoreau: Impli- cations for School Programs Betty Harrelson Porter 89 Recent Scholarship on Hawthorne and Melville Arlin Trarr er 95 Teaching Sequences in Hawthorne and Melville Robert E Shafer 1I0 Recent Scholarship on Whitman and Dickinson Edmund Reiss 115 Whitman and Dickinson: Implications for School Programs Sister !if. Judine, 1.11.1d. 128 Recent Scholarship on Mark 'Twain and Henry James Iloward W. Webb, Jr. 134 Mark Twain and Henry James: Implications for School Programs Frank 11. Townsend 144 Recent Scholarship on Faulkner and Hemingway Richard P. Adorns 149 Faulkner and Hemingway: Implica- tions for School Programs John N. Terrey 157 IV, American Literature for the Elemen- tary School Dora V. Smith 185 American Literature for Children: Implication.- for School Programs Ruth A..Prench 184 American Literature: Implications for Chiklren's Reading Charlemae Rollins 187 NI/4 Introduction The following papers were read at the 1964 meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English in Cleveland. Because several of them were presented concur- rently, so that hearing one meant missing others, and because many who did hear one or more of them expressed a wish to have all of the papers available for future study, they are now gathered for distribution to members of the Council or to others who are interested in the relationship between scholarship and teaching. A number of the papers have been expanded beyond the limits impos, d by time when originally presented, with the result, itis hoped, of providing an even fuller and more useful consideration of these relationships as they apply to genres or to important writers of American literature. Activity in the study and critical interpretation of literature produced in the United States continues to move at an increasingly accelerated pace. The writers about whom we most like to talk are not greatly increased in number, but the number of us who talk about those writers has escalated quite beyond easily controllable proportions. So much literary commentary appears that even bibliographers concerned with aca- demie bookkeeping are bewildered by the task of recording itall. Estimations are even now being made that, if the present rate of increase continues, all the pages of each issue of the periodical American Literature mill be needed just to register them. Some people have supposed that quite too much is written. Only half jokingly, they call for a moratorium in public discussion of literature. They admit that today's multitude of critical voices does provide an impressive and swelling chorus, except that some members of it are undertrained, and some r.re overtrained to a shrillness which does not always seem harmoniously appropriate. No voice goes quite to the extreme of twittering that Moby Dick is a badly conceived novel because Captain Ahab was not practically a realist: if he had really wanted to annihilate that white whale, he would have mounted a cannon on the foredeck of the Pcquod and blasted the monster out of the ocean. But variations of interpretation there are, many of them ex- cellent, some accepted as provisional or provocative, others simply not good at all. How then is one to distinguish the spurious from the genuine article? How indeed is he to find time to read them all? Or even to discover what has been talked about? Faced with such an onslaught, with Playboy and Esquire competing with MLA, College English, Commentary, and the Partisan Review in printing essays in literary interpretation, what is the beleaguered teacher already half buried beneath an ava- lanche of paperbacked critical studiesto do? lie has been led to suspect that much of the material which does come to his attention has been written by people more con- cerned m ith parading knowledge for the sake of professional advancement than for love of knowledge itself. His recreational reading in the pages of Life magazine has informed him of the doctrine of publish-or-perish which according to vulgar opinion is a motivating principle in institutions of what is called higher learning. However well he may understand that these things are exaggerated and political or are set forth by people who for quite other reasons have failed, they are disturbing. They nibble at his good intentions. Suppl) does exceed any reac:er's demand. And yet the supply of writing about literature also far exceeds the space available for it in periodicals. Almost every literary magazine refuses three times Ito numb r of articles that it accepts. Five books are rejected for every one published. The result may be that one is overwhelmed now by an additional sense of a tremendous and surging reserve of commentary which has not found its place in print, but which is menacingly waiting to overtake us al!. Some of it, even in doctoral dissertations or seminar papers, is very good indeed, more helpful to most teachers than much of what is easily available; but it is there, discouragingly because unattainable. Looking up then from the mass of opinion and counteropinlon under which heand perhaps literature itselfis buried, the teacher Ibis reason to be tempted to retreat from itall in dismay. Did not Emerson counsel self - reliance? Perhaps it is not necessary to keep up. It may even be unwise to try. More than one of the papers which follow suggest by statement or implication the sensible truth that there is no substitute for the literature itself. A fifth or a tenth reading of Mobil Dick or "Song of Myself' may reveal more than half a hundred articles reveal. To recognize the Mississippi River as a "great brown god" may not be as important as to live with the adventures of Jim and Huck and to interpret them against the background of one's own experience. Thoreau's residence beside Walden Pend needs little explana- tion which Thoreau himself does not provide. If Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals, cannot one man's wit solve his riddle as well as another's? To lead our students toward the habit of reading and of reading as widely and as intelligently as possible is, after all, our icresistible responsibility. Neither they nor we are really interested in off -beat interjiletations. White boy and dusky donor indeed! Nothing takes the place of the book, the story, the poem before us. My measure is as good as yours. But is it really? Every teaches knows how revelatory but finally attenuated the do-it-yourself approach to literature can become. It can measure with some perhaps pleasing accuracy what the commentator, whether student or teacher, is prepared at the time he reads to bring to the literature which he then reads.

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