LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Under present distribution requirements it is possible to elect either French 2 or German 2 as a course in literature. Few would doubt that an appreciation of at least one literature is essential to a liberal education, yet these two courses which are so frequently used to fulfill the requirement are not primarily concerned with literature. Their popularity among students rests on the fact that if one already has a reading knowledge of the language, or if one desires to pass off the language requirements at the same time, German 2 and French 2 involve little or no additional work.

But for the student interested in literature, the meetings of these courses are hardly instructive. There is translation, translation, and translation. Occasionally an important remark is made by the instructor, which could be found in almost any standard history of the literature. The student not concentrating in German, who has taken German 2 for distribution, may dimly recall years later that Goethe wrote masterpieces, that Schiller was sentimental, and that Minna von Barnhelm is the best comedy in German literature, though he may have forgotten his instructor's reasons for these statements.

It is clear that these courses deal primarily with grammar and translation; several courses in the other languages which are counted for the literature requirement likewise overstress linguistics. It is obvious that an understanding of the grammar and vocabulary of a language is a necessary prerequisite to a literary appreciation of works read in that language, but the "language requirements" are designed to assure that the student has acquired these elements before his graduation The true appreciation of a literature must include the understanding and enjoyment of the work in the whole and of the literature in its historical and humanistic relations; the minutiae of the language can in themselves never give this appreciation. To allow men to count a knowledge of these minutiae in place of a genuine understanding of a literature confuses the purpose of the distribution requirement and omits from the required curriculum a prime essential of a college education.