The Higher Study of English

The group of addresses and essays by Professor A. S. Cook, of Yale, now published under the general title of The Higher Study of English, is a partial record of the author's contributions to the better teaching and study of English in the United States. For the past two decades Professor Cook has been prominent among the men who have given stimulus and intelligent direction to this work, both in colleges and in secondary schools. The present volume contains a study of the province of...
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The group of addresses and essays by Professor A. S. Cook, of Yale, now published under the general title of The Higher Study of English, is a partial record of the author's contributions to the better teaching and study of English in the United States. For the past two decades Professor Cook has been prominent among the men who have given stimulus and intelligent direction to this work, both in colleges and in secondary schools. The present volume contains a study of the province of philology, an essay on the teaching of English, an exposition of the relations of words and literature, and an inquiry into the needs and standards of graduate study in English. All of these papers are prepared rather for the specialist than for the lay reader. But they are neither dull nor over technical. In the author's view English literature is not a dry-as-dust subject, or the exclusive property of the scholar. He urges on the one hand, that scholarship must not divorce itself from the aesthetic and ethical elements of literature; for literature expresses the higher ideals of the race, and is thus its greatest treasure. This view of the subject has been that of the great philologists. On the other hand, he censures the superficial and indolent kinds of study, and shows that the severe methods of the true scholar are the road to full appreciation. "The fundamental problem in the teaching of English is," he says, "how to combine discipline with delight." Upon the question whether English can be taught his comment is apt: "Suppose we change the terms, and ask, not whether literature can be taught, but whether people can be taught by means of literature."
The book is not only richly suggestive to teachers of English, but to us of the present generation it is especially interesting for its historical placing of our subject: first, against the general background of earlier linguistic and literary study; and, secondly, against the immediate background of the past twenty years, within which time these studies have been rapidly expanding and taking form.
-The School Review, Vol. 15