English Exhumed

The appearance this spring of English 181, a course dealing with novels from three centuries, underlines, by its lonely uniqueness, the need for different approaches to teaching English at Harvard. The undergraduate courses in English are designed for the concentrator who is diligently satisfying the demands of the tutorial bibliography, without consideration for the overwhelming demands of any student who looks for something more than covering a period in a literature course.

Despite the presence within the English Department of a variety of critical methods, the courses are organized, with extremely rare exceptions, on an historical basis. Since the essences of a work of literature is not only that it "belongs" to its historical background, it seems illogical to plan courses only on this basis.

But even on its own terms of historical analysis, the Department fails, the non-concentrator in its accomodations of the concentrator. Its policy of subdividing periods appears calculated to drives off the non-concentrators; these extremely limited courses are dry and historically incomplete because of a seemingly willful exclusion of major works in favor of secondary material, very often of little interest of merit. Elizabethan literature is now taught in three different courses: porse poetry, and drama; the Eighteenth Century receives as many, while such courses as "English Literature from 1603 to the Restoration, exclusive of Drama" can attract only the most esoteric of concentrators.

This type of course preserves coherence and completeness at the expense of a broad view and general interest which the non-concentrator looks for. But even the concentrators would benefit from considering together the now-divorced writers, such as Fielding, Swift, and Johnson, without having to wade through the 17th Century romances and 18th Century letter-writers as well.

The most difficult problem for the English Department appears to be striking a balance between these courses on the one hand, and the specialized single author courses on the other. Assuming that the "great" poets--Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Milton--can only be considered in literary vacuo, these authors are glossed over or omitted from the period courses in order to receive full treatment on overlong courses of their own. The contemporaries of these authors are barely mentioned, although there is opportunity to consider sources exhaustively.

The result of the Department's policy is that the general students flock to a select few courses, while concentrators dutifully attend the others, consoling themselves with the thought that they are plowing through the tutorial bibliography. Perhaps the serious student ought not to be deterred by a dull reading list, but in practice many are, and needlessly.

One solution to the problem would be to include more courses organized on a non-historical basis. Consideration of genres, of traditions, of critical theories, of myths, or of moral ideas are possible approaches which transgress historical decorum and are presently ignored.

A second method would be to consolidate the existing historical courses about reading lists which emphasize great literature, leaving the secondary work to private study in further courses for concentrators. The sacrifice of representative fulness would be more than compensated for by the increase in quality and comprehensiveness, and such a policy might help considerably in securing a wider interest throughout the College in literature written before 1850.