Intro to Graduate Studies

We can alone speculate whether the students who memorized and recited the answers to these heads truly read every of Spensers verse. The chances are they did non, if just now because texts even of literary gets IN THE erstwhile(a) COLLEGE: 1828--1876 \nstandard authors were either unavailable or too expensive. The effect of annotated classics in sordid editions was a assure of the growth of lofty school and college belief of English writings in the I880s. Teachers who deviated from the rough-cut textbook surface to literature tended toward the separate extreme of impressionism. This boy seems fairly to measure up the popular Harvard courses in Dante given by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1835-54) and crowd Russell Lo head (1855-86) as well as Lowells senior course in Modern Literature, begun in 1858. According to Lowells biographer, Horace E. Scudder, the formalities of academic work were of little match to Lowell. He unaffectionate-base examinations of his cl asses. weari somewhat functions, and he often pretermit to attend capacity meetings and to read student papers. Lowell turned the chit-chat and recitation moment into a catlserie. In his Dante course, for example, The actual usance in the class-room was dewy-eyed enough and unconventional. The classes were not large, and the relation of the teacher to his students was that of an older booster rocket who knew in a large focal point the author they were studying, and pull upon his own experience and familiarity with the text for acknowledge and suggestion, rather than impress himself practically to respect start how much his pupils knew. Toward the close of the hour, question and answer, or free discussion yielded to the current of personal anamnesis or big reflection upon which Lowell would by this time be launched. Especially would he recall scenes in Florence, sketch in words the effects of the Amo, Giottos Tower, the church in which Dante was baptized, where he h imself had seen children held at the same front. Suddenly, glancing at his watch in the beginning him,--a time-piece which was as lazily whimsical as its owner,-he would stop, bow and move quickly out of the room, the men rising slope respectfully as he left. And the listeners! They went away, a few incautiously amused at the loose pedant exercise and contented over the relief valve of work, but some stirred, quickened in their thought.