Chapter II: Introduction

Connection with author’s _Art of Interesting_—Need of principles
of an art amidst violent experimentation in art and
education—Aristotle’s principles valid except where the basis
of his deductions has been modified—With Greek literature
leaving our schools, Greek taste is needed against excessive
modernism—Recent art discussions— Croce’s _Æsthetic_; Puffer’s
_Psychology of Beauty_; De Wulf’s _L’Œuvre d’Art et la Beauté_ v

ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE

PART FIRST

ART IN THE APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE

I

ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL

1. INDIVIDUALISM AND RESPONSIBILITY 1

Talking to oneself in art—Chaos in religion, morals
and art from unchecked individualism—Altruism a better
principle—Responsibility inevitable—Responsibility a
help, no hindrance to the artist—Greek drama; Italian
Madonnas; Horace.

II

ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL

2. VAGARIES OF INDIVIDUALISM 8

Modern literature and art and a sense of humor—Fiction,
biographical and pathological—New poetry shallow—Riot
of emotionalism—Novel of satire, European continental
type originating in low comedy—Novel of Scott, epic
in origin—Nature, experience, wisdom, the remedies of
individualism.

III

ART AND HUMAN NATURE

1. THE UNIVERSAL ELEMENT 14

Art movements begin in nature—Art is social—Permanence
of literature due to universal appeal—The camera and the
canvas—Personality and individuality—Shock of nerves not
the mental thrill of art.

IV

ART AND HUMAN NATURE

2. REALISM AND REALITY 20

Real cake of soap on a painted wave—Art a distinct world
from reality—Motivation, not through logical discussion
but through probable incident—Painting in the cake of
soap—Realism depressing because of cynic moralizing—Evil
in Shakespeare and Homer, relieved by pathos and humor,
not depressing.

V

ART AND THE DIVINE

1. RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF ART 26

Rich tombs of the past testify to belief in
immortality—Cro-Magnon cave pictures probably
religious—Earliest art of all nations due to
religion—Dancing, song, music, sculpture, architecture,
drama, epic—Gothic cathedral of religious middle-ages,
synthesis of all arts.

VI

ART AND THE DIVINE

2. THE KINSHIP OF ART AND RELIGION 31

Hebraism, Puritanism, Islamism, reacting against art
and the result—Explanation of the origin of art—Taine’s
environment theory—Spencer’s play theory—Theory of fear
and magic spells—Adequate explanation found in man’s
intellectual nature—Art like religion intellectual—Art
and religion idealistic—Personal and emotional—Art and
religion social in appeal—Sublimity of art and the
revelation of _Genesis_—Harmonious equation between soul
and the truth of reality, between soul and the good of
morality, same as equation between soul and beauty, all
founded on the fact that both soul and triple reality are
images of God.

VII

ART AND THE DIVINE

3. ART IN ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE 39

The theomorphism of man in the threefold tendency
of science, morality and art—Religion, a virtue;
art, a function of perceptions—Ruskin’s school of
the religion of beauty—Moralizing not a function of
art—Estheticism neither asceticism nor sensualism—Evil
in art to be represented as evil—Evil to be a
rationalized element—Contemporary evil excites feelings
of reality—Art and religion ennobling—Art and religion
purifying—Creation and disinterestedness most divine
elements in art.

VIII

THE VISCERAL TEST OF BEAUTY

The critic’s equipment—Defective philosophy of
some modern critics, Mencken, Murry, Cohen—Ugly
in art and its subdual—Esthetic feeling not
concupiscence—Disinterestedness of beauty excludes
sensuality of appetites—Visceral reactions not from beauty 48

PART SECOND

ART IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE

IX

LOOKING FORWARD IN LITERATURE

Literature taught for use in Greece, Rome, and
elsewhere—Science and history always changing; literature
lasting—Object of literature in university—True humanism,
equipping man’s faculties with art—Every school subject
teaches its like—Correlations of literature and
creation—Contemporary literature not suitable—Scientific
study partly; artistic study is wholly satisfying 57

X

UNIFYING EDUCATION THROUGH LITERATURE

Necessity of unity—In university through profession—No
unity in college electivism—Unity impaired by
departments and by specializing—Unity in France, Germany
and England—Departmental system destroying the art appeal
of literature—Science through knowing; art through
doing—Recent mental tests accentuate expression and
language—General education through art of literature 64

XI

THE INTERESTING TEACHER OF LITERATURE

Spread of science—System and eliminating of
personality—Dissertations for the doctorate—Scholarly
means encyclopedic—The impersonal lecturer—Justin
McCarthy’s teacher and his methods—Not scientific
specialization, but exercise of mental powers—Formulas
and personality—Another interesting teacher—Literature
educates equally with science—The ideal 70

XII

EDUCATING THE EMOTIONS

Life full of emotions—Emotions intense in our crowded
civilization—Morale, organized emotion—Emotions
neglected in education—Education of facts dominating
schools—Twofold nature of emotions—Emotions from concrete
imagining—Kindled by contact—Literature embodiment of
emotions—Emotions developed by self-expression and
controlled by exercise 83

XIII

KEEP THE CLASSICS BUT TEACH THEM

Classics to be kept but taught differently—Former help of
translation—Literature overwhelmed by erudition—Germany,
France, England, America—True use of erudition—Natural
sciences change; art endures—Reproduction, the soul of
literary teaching—Method of training—Modern literatures
not yet able to supplant ancient literatures 91

XIV

THE VITALIZER OF THE WORLD

Literary renaissances associated with Greek
literature—Revivals through Irish monks—Spain,
France, Scholasticism—Germany with Wolf, Winckelmann,
Lessing—England under Queen Anne and Queen Victoria—Youth
of civilization in Greece 100

XV

TRUE PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC CRITICISM

Story of Phidias’ statue and Homer—Homer tested
by art—Flaws in material—Absorption in immediate
effects—Told story different from story read—Outline of
a study on a broad scale—Variety, alternation, growth in
Homeric battling—Homeric palace, the place of Homer’s
recital 106

XVI

THE CHILD-TEST OF LITERATURE

Child-test in religion and morals, in the Bible—Homer’s
mother and child—Hector and Andromache—Child in later
literature rare—Latin writers—Conventionality instead of
Homeric naturalness 114

XVII

THE CHRIST-CHILD TEST OF LITERATURE

Christ-Child in art—Christmas and the drama—In
Ireland—Medieval and Renaissance writers—Milton’s
war-like child—Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson,
Longfellow—Return of naturalness in Stevenson, Carroll
and others—Faith and its effects in Thompson and Tabb 119