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Syllabus for a Tutorial Class in Modern English Literature, Second Year's Work
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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London: University of London Press, 1917. Characteristics of New England literature of the time. Emerson’s relation to English men of letters. The society in which he lived. Religious and philosophical environment: Unitarianism and Transcendentalism. Emerson’s style as an essayist. His aloofness; contrast with Carlyle, Arnold, and Ruskin. Quality of his thought. Read: Emerson as a poet. Read Original impulse and meaning of “Pre-Raphaelitism.” His relation to Ruskin. Morris’s life and personality. His place as a poet; obligations to Tennyson. His mediaevalism. Morris as a ballad writer and as a writer of narrative verse. Read: Selections from the Morris’s attitude towards art. His experiments; beginnings of the arts and crafts movement. Read: Morris as a prose writer. His prose romances. Read: Morris’s social philosophy. Communism. Comparison with Ruskin. His original contribution towards social progress. Read: Transition of the mediaeval movement in literature from Ruskin to Rossetti. Rossetti the individualist, and detached artist. Temperament. His use of ballad form. Read: Rossetti as poet and painter. His aesthetic creed. Read: The pure romantic. Relation to Pre-Raphaelitism. “Paganism.” His early attitude. His championship of liberty. Merits and faults of his poetry. Read: Selections from Swinburne as prose writer. Comparison with Shelley, as a poet. The pure aesthete: “art for art’s sake.” Qualities of his style; its elaborateness. His works of imagination, his criticism, and his gospel of life. His influence. His enthusiasm for art at the opposite pole from Ruskin’s, though both react against industrialism. Read: A solitary figure, neglected until he received the enthusiastic praise of Shaw. His eccentric career. Versatility: Butler is important for his theories of Evolution, his social satires, his novels, and for his ideas on all subjects as found in his Butler’s social satires. His influence upon Shaw. His wit. His philosophy of life. Read: Butler as a novelist. Read: Butler’s criticism of art, science, literature, life. His greatness as a satirist. Read: Selections from the A dilettante of letters. His reputation as a prose writer. Influence of Meredith. Characteristics of his generation: Stevenson and Henley. His style, and rank as a novelist. The novel of adventure: a predecessor of the seven-penny, but better written: comparison with the popular novels of a previous generation. Stevenson and the short story. Read: Stevenson as an essayist and letter writer. His philosophy of life. Read: Stevenson as a poet. Read: Characteristics of the group of the “Yellow Book.” Influence of Walter Pater. Their attitude toward life. Some personalities: Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, Aubrey Beardsley, Francis Thompson, W. B. Yeats, and Bernard Shaw (in his earlier phase). The “Celtic Movement”: Yeats, Synge, A. E., Fiona Macleod. Read: Oscar Wilde:
