Literary institution

“ At this day, when the sphere of the Novel is broadening and expanding, when it is beginning to be the serious, impassioned, living form of literary study and social investigation, when it is becoming, by virtue of analysis and psychological research, the true History of contemporary morals, when the novel has taken its place among the necessary elements of knowledge, it may properly demand its liberty and freedom of speech. ”

“ Then too literature surely, the literary line of study which this University has pursued, has its great and manifest advantages. The literature of the world represents the freedom and activity of the human spirit. ”

“ A Literary Society has also been formed for the encouragement of popular literature, and the formation of a complete dictionary of the language—the seal of which represents an uncultivated field, with the rising sun shining on a monument bearing the arms of Servia. ”

“ The history of literature is but an applied history of civilization. As in the history of civilization we watch the play of the three constituent classes of society,—clergy, nobility, and commoners,—we can see, in the history of literature, how that class which is supreme politically shows for the time being its supremacy in the literary productions of the age, and impresses its mark on the works of poets and philosophers. ”

“ They are now all defunct but the parent chapter, and that is in a prosperous condition.
The society proclaims its object to be social and literary culture and the exalting of the Western standard of literary excellence. ”

“ The transfer of literary composition from a Court circle to a republican community was of high importance as a substitution of freer influences for those by which it had hitherto been moulded, and we speedily see the new literature ceasing to be a mere amusement, and becoming in some measure an organ of thought and opinion. Political poems, satires, didactic pieces, moral exhortations in verse become frequent. ”

“ These societies also began sedulously to cultivate rhetorica, or literature, and soon became nothing less than an association of literary guilds, bound together in a sort of social Hanseatic league, designed for their own defence and for the fostering of their beloved art. ”

“ The political, social, ecclesiastical, and economical factors, and their complex actions and reactions, would all have to be taken into account, the literary historian would be concerned with the ideas which find utterance through the poet and philosopher, and with the constitution of the class which at any time forms the literary organ of the society. The critic who deals with the individual work would find such knowledge necessary to a full appreciation of his subject ”

“ The whole circle of the arts is pervaded by institutions between which and this I can descry no difference. The painters’ art has four or five such institutions. The musicians’ art, so generously and charmingly represented here, has likewise several such institutions. ”

“ The will of the artist and his artistic effect constitute a force which may abrogate the laws of cause and effect, or of precedence and subsequence in time.
The interest in story is instinctive and universal; the merest string of incidents will attract and hold attention. Interest and attention naturally increase and deepen with the greater organization of the material. It is this principle of organization that gives to literary stories some of their unique and distinctive values in education. ”

“ Chief among them is the existence of a vigorous professional literary craft, with the inevitable accompaniment of rigid literary conventions. Thus alone can the collective fancy and wit of the community assume definite shape and form, thus alone are they assured of permanency. Traditional literature, collective in its appeal to the sympathies of the community, reflecting, as it must, collective emotion and judgment, is even more dependent than conscious, individual, deliberately artistic literature upon the strong organisation of its professors. ”

“ Seeing, however, that a very large proportion of the community read nothing but novels, it has been felt that the novel might be used as a vehicle of instruction, and the didactic or historical novel has become an institution. ”

“ To have lived among books, in an atmosphere of books, is itself in some sort an education.
Now, with this feeling for learning diffused throughout a great nation, showing itself in its chief organs of public opinion, in its selection of public officers, and even to some extent in its popular elections, and centring above all in a great city, the headquarters of all the social, political, and literary activity of the nation—its book-making, book-branding, book-buying centre—we come to see why translations from the classics should have more vogue across the water than with us. ”

“ From the historical point of view, then, popular fiction has an important place in literary education. But in and for itself also, without regard to historical standards, this great body of writings possesses a direct human interest not inferior to that of the literature of art. ”

“ Literature lorded it over society with a high hand; kings sought the favor of authors, or revenged themselves for their contempt by burning them,—them and their books. This, too, was a way of recognizing literary sovereignty.
Today we have manufacturers, lawyers, doctors, bankers, merchants, professors, engineers, librarians, etc.; we have no men of letters. Or rather, whoever has risen to a remarkable height in his profession is thereby and of necessity lettered: literature, like the baccalaureate, has become an elementary part of every profession. ”

“ Considering the intensity with which the classics have been studied in the old universities and public schools of the United Kingdom, the fine flower of scholarship achieved, the sure touch of style and criticism, one cannot help being amazed at the low standard of literary culture in the rank and file of the classes from which this élite has been drawn. How rare has been the power, or even apparently the desire, of a Bradley or a Verrall or a Murray, to carry the flower of their classical culture into the fields of modern literary study! ”

“ But when all these things have been allowed for to the very fullest, what an enormous advance there is on anything that had gone before! The ornate prose writers of the seventeenth century had too frequently regarded their libraries only; they had seldom looked abroad to the vast field of nature, and of art other than literary art. ”

“ But if his powers belonged to the order which is called talent, he would have to do one of two things: either stumble upon these rules one by one and learn them by experience—or be taught them in their true order by others, in which case an Institute of Literary Art would already exist in an embryonic stage. ”

“ But just think of the beneficial and deterrent effect of such an institution on the horde of scribbling men and women who bury all the good literature of our time under their huge mountain of silly novels! ”

“ Can we hope to improve the conditions of literary production, to make our literature more varied, quintessential and abundant, to enforce it with honour and help, to attract to its service every man and woman with gifts of value, and to make the most of these gifts? ”

“ Without taking into account this process by which the organ of the nation gradually became transformed into the organ of the class which was entirely alienated from the general body of the nation, it is, I think, impossible to understand clearly the transformation of the drama. It illustrates the necessity of accounting for the literary movement, not only by intellectual and general causes, but by noting how special social developments radically alter the relation of any particular literary genus to the general national movement. ”

“ The altered conditions of social life will also thoroughly revolutionize our literature. The theological literature, which furnishes the largest number of works in the annual catalogues of literary productions, will be eliminated, together with the judicial literature. ”

“ Never was literature in any age closer to the ideals of a social class. So true is this that it is difficult to determine whether social practices called forth the literature, or whether, as in the case of the seventeenth-century pastoral romance in France, it is truer to say that literature suggested to society its ideals. ”

“ As in all countries it their first awakening to an era of literary culture, this culture had gone deep enough to produce a multitude of authors, but not deep enough to generate a literary public capable of supporting them. ”

“ While the older literary class was dying out, a glance beneath the surface shows us the stir of a new interest in knowledge amongst the masses of the people itself. The very character of the authorship of the time, its love of compendiums and abridgements of such scientific and historical knowledge as the world believed it possessed, its dramatic performances or mysteries, the commonplace morality of its poets, the popularity of its rimed chronicles, are proof that literature was ceasing to be the possession of a purely intellectual class, and was beginning to appeal to the nation at large. ”

“ As soon as possible he started a class, which all the young people attended, and, to further help them, organized a literary society of over forty, in which every member took part, and which was thoroughly enjoyed as long as it was kept up. ”

“ In my early days, in every community existed what was called a literary society, composed of young men who there experienced themselves in the arts of composition, declamation and debate. With such facilities as they afforded, many a youth strengthened himself for the later and perhaps more serious combats of life. ”

“ It would be hard to estimate how much they have done in creating an atmosphere for the truly artistic and literary element in various communities throughout the United States. No doubt they have in this way encouraged the production of literature and other forms of art; while, in humbler fashion, they have brought pleasure and an outlook into many narrow circumscribed lives. ”

“ It is believed that the advancement of art and literature in this country will be promoted by the organization of the producers of literature and art. This is in strict analogy with the action of other professions and of almost all the industries. No one doubts that literature and art are or should be leading interests in our civilization, and their dignity will be enhanced in the public estimation by a visible organization of their representatives, who are seriously determined upon raising the standards by which the work of writers and artists is judged. ”

“ Everybody now reads novels,--bishops, statesmen, judges, scholars, as well as young men and women. The shelves of libraries groan with the weight of novels of every description,--novels sensational, novels sentimental, novels historical, novels philosophical, novels social, and novels which discuss every subject under the sun. Novelists aim to be teachers in ethics, philosophy, politics, religion, and art; and they are rapidly supplanting lecturers and clergymen as the guides of men, accepting no rivals but editors and reviewers. ”

“ But the High-Church party, in accordance with its own predecessors and patterns in the seventeenth century, always maintained, during its earlier and better period, a higher standard of scholarship and of general literary culture. Its early efforts in fiction—according to the curious and most interesting law which seems to decree that every subdivision of a kind shall go through something like the vicissitudes of the kind at large—were not strictly novels but romance, and romance of the allegorical kind. ”

“ It is, I understand and believe, pretty much the same in more modern institutions for the encouragement of the Fine Arts. The end is lost in the means: rules take place of nature and genius; cabal and bustle, and struggle for rank and precedence, supersede the study and the love of art. ”

“ I wonder what poetry or even painting will do, if they shall rise to such a state in this country that we shall find our masters of literature holding audience with this degree of interest like Fort, or as did all the great masters of literature in Paris, hold forth in the name of art, a divine Tuesday set apart for the admirable worship of poetry, or of things esthetic. ”

“ The inculcation of literary ideals, the stimulation of original talent and the enriching of our national letters are all excellent themes for papers to be read before high-brow clubs and respectable societies, but as practical propositions, in a practical world, they do not lead anywhere. ”

“ The commonwealth of literature embraces many states and distinct divisions, of which only those are particularly referred to in these pages that are usually comprehended under the title of polite or elegant literature, including works of the imagination, such as poetry and fiction, as well as authentic narratives, set off, as in history, with the graces of polished composition. ”

“ After discussing the character of modern French literature, there remains the important question to determine, how far the state of literature represents the state of society—how far the one is a faithful picture of the other. ”

“ Instead of becoming, as they ought to do, the oracle of the age and their nation, our men of letters content themselves with being the echo of that dread tribunal; hence the abject state of literature in the capital. We have some, however, who boldly think for themselves, trust to the judgment of the public, and laugh at the award of the Academy. ”

“ While we are on the subject of political eloquence let us glance at literature.
Imagine a hall in the Academy full of noise and confusion. A crowd of poets, novelists, and writers of every sort, nearly all of them having a French air in their expression and manner, although very studious to conceal it. They are reading and declaiming from their own works, each one trying to drown the voice of the others, to the end that he may make himself heard by the people who crowd the galleries, while they, on their part, put through the time by reading the papers and discussing politics. ”