The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880The Elephants Teach is a captivating account of how creative writing has become an integral part of our culture since the last decades of the nineteenth century. A story of the American will-to-art, it also offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the development of English as a field of study. D.G. Myers argues that English has been split into three rival and antagonist fields: composition, literary scholarship, and the constructive art of literature, which includes both creative writing and literary criticism. He traces this split from the earliest days of the discipline, when it was called philology, through the rise of English composition and the critical wars of the thirties, down to the present. Along the way, he tells how poets and writers turned to university teaching as a means of economic support, restoring a neglected chapter in the history of American authorship and literary education. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
When Philology Was in Flower | 15 |
The Founding of English Composition | 35 |
Copyright | |
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academic aesthetic Allen Tate American Colleges artists ative writing Boston Brander Matthews Briggs Bynner Carmel Chicago classroom Cleanth Brooks course creative writing Creative Youth criticism culture curriculum Dewey discipline English composition English department English literature Essays Ezra Pound fiction George George Sterling graduate Harvard Henry Henry Seidel Canby Higher Education History Houghton Mifflin Hughes Mearns human humanistic ideas Iowa Writers J. V. Cunningham John Journal knowledge language learning Letters linguistic literary scholarship literary study magazine means Mearns's merely method modern Moody nineteenth century Norman Foerster original philology poem poetry poets practical Princeton principles professional professor progressive education published quoted R. P. Blackmur reading Review rhetoric Robert says School Stegner story study of literature taught teacher Teaching Creative Writing teaching of writing theory tion University Press Wallace Stegner Wendell's William William Vaughn Moody Woodberry words Workshop writ writing instruction Writing Programs York