Book Description
Excerpt from The Beginnings of English Literature The only satisfactory way to teach English literature to beginners is to put the literature itself in their hands, and try to aid them in getting an intelligent appreciation of it. The study of literary evolutions is important even at first, but only in so far as it is an aid to such appreciation. It is especially desirable that the student should not think of the study of the poets, for example, as consisting chiefly in the study of what other people have written about them. Yet it is hardly practicable to dispense with the textbook altogether. The earliest authors that have usually been read by the under-classmen in Yale College, for example, are Spenser and Shakespeare. The writers who cannot be enjoyed without some preliminary linguistic study have been reserved for a later place in the curriculum; but ever Spenser and Shakespeare, and their period, can best be taken up after at least a slight knowledge of the earlier history of our literature has been acquired. This book has been written to supply what the author's experience has shown to be a real need. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
