Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics: In the Grades of the Common SchoolMcMurry, Charles A. (Charles Alexander)
General
Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics: In the Grades of the Common School
McMurry, Charles A. (Charles Alexander)
American literature -- Study and teaching; English literature -- Study and teaching
3. The moral effect of a complete masterpiece is deeper and more
permanent. Not only do we see a person acting in more situations,
revealing thus his motives and hidden springs of action, but the thread
of his thought and life is unravelled in a steady sequence. Later acts
are seen as the result of former tendencies. The silent reign of moral
law in human actions is discovered. Slowly but surely conduct works out
its own reward along the line of these deeper principles of action. Even
in the books read in the early grades these profound lessons of life
come out clear and strong. Robinson Crusoe, Theseus, Siegfried,
Hiawatha, Beauty and the Beast, Jason, King Arthur, and Ulysses are not
holiday guests. They are face to face with the serious problems of life.
Each person is seen in the present make-up and tendency of his
character. When the eventual wind-up comes, be it a collapse or an
ascension, we see how surely and fatally such results spring from such
motives and tendencies. Washington is found to be the first in the
hearts of his countrymen; Arnold is execrated; King Lear moves on
blindly to the reward which his own folly has prearranged; Macbeth
entangles himself in a network of fatal errors; Adam Bede emerges from
the bitter ordeal of disappointment with his manly qualities subdued but
stronger. Give the novelist or poet time and opportunity, and he is the
true interpreter of conduct and destiny. He reveals in real and yet
ideal characters the working out in life of the fundamental principles
of moral action.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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