MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLERIDGE By the same Author THE COMMON PURSUIT
REVALUATION NEW BEARINGS IN ENGLISH POETRY EDUCATION ANB THE
UNIVERSITY THE GREAT TRADITION With Denys Thompson CULTURE AND
ENVIRONMENT Edited by the same Author DETERMINATION MILL ON BENTHAM
AND COLERIDGE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY F. R. Leavis CONTENTS
Introduction page Mill on Bentliam Mill on Coleridge INTRODUCTION
This present volume represents an ambition to make Mills Bentham
and Coleridge current classics for the literary student. But there
was more to the actual operative purpose that moved me than this
suggests, and for the literary student doesnt, without some
explaining, really convey my intention. And in the explaining I
have to avow that, essentially, I have been concerned to take a
propagandist opportunity. I have been concerned to do something
more by way of promoting that particular approach to the problem of
liberal education which I outlined in Education and the University.
I contend there that while, on the one hand, if the study of
literature is to play its central part it must be informed and
governed by a more athletic conception of criticism as a discipline
of intelligence than it commonly is, on the other a serious study
of literature inevitably leads outwards into other studies and
disciplines, into fields not primarily literary, and that the
problem of liberal education at the university level, particular
discipline being duly provided for, is to exploit this
outwardleading to the best advantage. A liberal education cannot
confine itself to the critical study of literature, and the profit
of a real literary training will show itself very largely in
otherthan literary fields. It is with the meaAs of cultivating and
relating these fields that a serious attempt to grapple with the
problem must be very largely preoccupied. This insistence on
extraliterary studies may seem superfluous, the need being
recognized in time honoured and universal academic practice. My
point is that my preoccupation with vindicating the study of
literature aswhat it so rarely isa real discipline and one without
which there can be no real liberal education carries with it, in
the nature of things, a more exacting preoccupation with
extraliterary studies than academic practice anywhere bears wit
ness to. In the English Tripos, for instance, with which my own
work has been associated, the period papers which the candidate has
to take are headed Literature, Life and Thought. But no one should
suppose from this that candidates for the English Tripos will have
been guided through courses of work planned in the interests of an
extended and unified understanding of any period or any part of
itor anything at all. It means merely that, if an odd candidate, in
picking, after a study of back papers, the minimum safe number of
topics on which to acquire so much knowledge as will show to
advantage in a halfhours to an hours un loading, decides in favour
of one coming under Life and Thought, he can count, if he is
judicious and moderately lucky, on finding his opportunity. It will
be a very unusual and fortunate student who has the grasp, the
energy and the character to make it any thing else. Most will not
even glimpse what else it might and should be. And if we ask how
anything better is to be arrived at, the answer is that nothing
substantially better can, under a system that for guidance leaves
the student, for the most part, to lectures, and reckons to test
his quality by an endofcourse standanddeliver against the clock.
Study under such a system inevitably tens to be an acquiring and
arranging of clichematerial. The academic authorities believing in
such a system will tend to take as their firstclass man a type that
may be described as the complete walking clieh6the man its often a
woman who unloads with such con fident and accomplished ease in the
examinationroom because he has never really grappled with anything,
General
Imprint: |
Read Books
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
November 2006 |
First published: |
November 2006 |
Authors: |
F.R. Leavis
|
Dimensions: |
216 x 140 x 10mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
176 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-4067-3728-8 |
Categories: |
Books >
Humanities >
History >
General
Books >
History >
General
|
LSN: |
1-4067-3728-3 |
Barcode: |
9781406737288 |
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!