Fifteen Prose Pieces: A New Approach to Literature

206 Pages·1964·14.78 MB·English

by  Ph.D. (auth.), W. A. Thornton M.A., A. R. Tomkins M.A.

FIFTEEN PROSE PIECES
To PIP
FIFTEEN
PROSE PIECES
A New Approach to Literature
W. A. THORNTON, M.A.
and
A. R. TOMKINS, M.A., Ph.D.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
1964
Copyright© W. A. Thornton and A. R. Tomkins 1964
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1964
MACMILLAN AND COMPANY LIMITED
StMartin's Street London WC 2
also Bombay Calcutta Madras Melbourne
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
Toronto
ST MARTIN'S PRESS INC
New Tork
ISBN 978-1-349-00396-9 ISBN 978-1-349-00394-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-00394-5
Preface
PEOPLE who have learned to read good books perceptively
and receptively know that they have acquired a skill that
is also an enrichment of life. Those who are teachers feel
that this acquirement is one of the most valuable things
they can pass on to their pupils. But the process of passing
it on is not easy, and many English teachers would prob-
ably agree that in the important pre-sixth form period it is
peculiarly difficult- that the well tried methods of taking a
class through texts of recognized merit too often result in
the pupil's conviction thatjane Austen, Dickens, Conrad,
etc., are not for him.
The old prescriptive method of 'teaching' literature is
therefore on its way out and is being replaced by more
tentative approaches designed to enable boys and girls to
find literary merit and the deeper pleasures of reading
through a process of personal experience and discovery.
The aim of this book is to speed and assist this process: to
help teachers and their fourteen- to sixteen-year-old pupils
in a co-operative quest for what is most moving, most
entertaining, and most satisfying in good writing.
The claim that the approach is new is based on the kind
of piece presented, and on the ways in which it is con-
sidered. The suggestions for class work and discussion,
which follow each passage, are not intended to be worked
through laboriously nor are they in any way exhaustive:
it may well be that one question will start a discussion that
will last until the bell goes; it may very well be that the
piece provokes a line of inquiry that had not occurred to
us. What we hope- and what we have found in our own
use of the material- is that these suggestions will provoke
discussion and disagreement and give-and-take and the
v
Vl PREFACE
airing of opinions, and that they will produce the kind of
directed digressiveness which leads to a deeper under-
standing of the human issues and literary qualities in-
volved in good writing. As for the written work, we have
tried to cater for the matter-of-fact and the imaginative,
the critical and the creative; and we have borne in mind
that it is nearly impossible to write about literature if one
isn't interested.
One of the most important requirements of this
approach is that each piece should be read aloud as well
as possible- usually, that is to say, by the teacher himself-
and it may be that the class should listen rather than follow
the text in their books. The reading time varies between
about fifteen and thirty minutes, and obviously each
should be read at a single sitting.
If each piece is read, browsed on, argued over and
written about, in a leisurely manner, the book will provide
work for a whole school year. On average, a chapter may be
expected to keep things going fruitfully for three or four
lessons, spread over a fortnight, and to provide an oppor-
tunity for written work as well; but how long is spent on it
will depend on the claims of other things in English, and
on the teacher's discretion. We believe that the approach
is genuinely and readily accessible, as literature itself
should be accessible, not to one particular sort of person
but to all; and we hope that the book will commend itself
for use in all the various kinds of secondary school. It
had its origin in work done with fourth-year grammar
school pupils; it has also been successfully used in the fifth
year and as an introduction to General Studies English in
the science sixth.
We have arranged the pieces in three sections, one for
each term.
Contents
Preface v
Acknowledgements Vlll
Introducing Mr Squeers CHARLES DICKENS
2 Sredni Va shtar 'SAKI' 14
3 The Winter Journey APSLEY CHERRY-GARRARD 23
4 Boy for Sale CHARLES DICKENS 41
5 The Rebellion GEORGE ORWELL 55
6 The Idealist FRANK o'CONNOR 73
7 Mr Collins Proposes JANE AUSTEN 87
8 Losing and Finding MARK TWAIN 99
9 The Tell- Tale Heart EDGAR ALLAN POE 109
10 Baa Baa, Black Sheep: RUDYARD KIPLING 117
The Third Bag
I I The Doll's House KATHERINE MANSFIELD 133
12 Christmas at the Lambs' IVY COMPTON-BURNETT 145
13 Conversation Piece P. G. WODEHOUSE 158
14 University Days JAMES THURBER 168
15 The Battle D. H. LAWRENCE 177
Appendix 195
vii
Acknowledgements
THE compilers and publishers wish to acknowledge their
indebtedness to the following, who have kindly given per-
mission for the use of copyright material: Mrs. Bamb ridge,
for 'Baa Baa, Black Sheep', from Wee Willie Winkie, by
Rudyard Kipling; The Bodley Head, Ltd., for 'Sredni
V asht ar', from The Short Stories cif Saki; Messrs. Cassell &
Co., Ltd., for the extract from Billy Bunter cif Greyjriars
School, by Frank Richard; Messrs. Victor Gollancz, Ltd.,
for the extract from Manservant and Maidservant, by Ivy
Compton-Burnett; Messrs. Hamish Hamilton, Ltd., for
'University Days', from The Thurber Carnival, by James
Thurber; Messrs. Herbert Jenkins, Ltd., for the extract
from The Code cif the Woosters, by P. G. Wodehouse; Mrs.
Gordon Mathias, for the extracts from The Worst Journey in
the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard; Mr. Frank O'Con-
nor, for 'The Idealist', from Traveller's Samples; Messrs.
Laurence Pollinger, Ltd., and the Estate of the late Mrs.
Frieda Lawrence, for the extracts from The Rainbow, by
D. H. Lawrence; Messrs. Martin Seeker& Warburg, Ltd.,
for Chapters I and II, from Animal Farm, by George Or-
well, and The Society of Authors as the literary represen-
tative of the Estate of the late Katherine Mansfield, for
'The Doll's House', by Katherine Mansfield.
viii
Introducing Mr Squeers
BY CHARLES DICKENS
Charles Dickens was born in I 8 I 2 and lived most of his life in
or near London. He particularly loved the two Medway towns
of Chatham (where he was brought up) and Rochester, and
spent the last thirteen years of his life at Gadshill Place, near
the city of Rochester. He died in I87o at the age of 58- an
early death, accelerated, probably, by the strenuous series of
readings from his own novels that he gave, in Britain and
America, between I858 and I86g.
His father, a navy pay clerk, never had very much money,
but what is more important is that he seems to have lost what
little he had when Charles was about twelve years old. The
boy's education, consequently, came to an abrupt halt, and he
had to go to work in a blacking factory; at the same time, his
father was arrested for debt. Though he was not in any way ill-
treated, Charles thus learned, at an early age, what it was like
to be really poor and, more important still, to feel abandoned
(he felt that his parents were pleased to be rid of responsibility
for him). These experiences made Dickens the champion of the
helpless, the unhappy and, above all, the unwanted - par-
ticularly when the victims were children- and they also made
him the foe of all institutions that organized or permitted the
ill-treatment or neglect of such people.
In his second novel, Oliver Twist, Dickens attacked one such
institution- the Workhouse- and through it the Poor Laws
that made such crimes against humanity possible. In the next
book, Nicholas Nickleby (the first part was written in alternating
fortnights with the last part of Oliver Twist) he exposed what he
called the 'cheap schools', most of them near Barnard Castle
on the border between Yorkshire and Durham. For very low
fees the owners of these schools would take boys off the hands
of their London parents or guardians and 'educate' them in the
obscure remoteness of the North Riding. Since these schools
did not admit the luxury of holidays, this was often the last the