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Composition and rhetoric based
on literary models
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SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
LIBRARY
STANFORD \^^ UNIVERSITY
LIBRARIES
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DEPARTMENT OF
EDUCATIOM.
FEB 25 1904
LELAND STANFORD
JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.
DEPAETMEKT OF EDUCATIOl!) UBBAfiT.
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I
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
LIBRARY
lit
TEXTBOOK COLLECTION
GIFT OF
THE PUBLISHERS
/^
STANFORD ^^^/ U N I V E R S I TY
LIBRARIES
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THE SONG OF THE LARK
{See page 22)
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COMPOSITION
AND
RHETORIC
BASED ON LITERARY MODELS
B7 ROSE M. KAVANA,
Teacher of English in the
Medill High School, Chicago;
and ARTHUR BEATTY,
Instructor in English in
the University of Wiscon-
sin^ Madison, Wisconsin
ILLUSTRATED
RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY
EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS
Chicago New York London
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Copyright y iqo2^
By Rose M. Kavana and ARTHUR Beatty
C!
Leland Staufo""^
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T'
THE PREFACE
^ HIS is primarily a book of technique, which aims
at stimulating an interest in good workmanship
and at preventing the purposeless wandering
characteristic of much of the work in secondary English.
It applies to the study of composition the studio method
familiar to students of other arts. An explanation of
this method as developed in this book is given in the
Introduction. Another distinctive feature is its plan for
correlating literature, rhetoric, and composition by de-
riving from particular masterpieces a number of typical
forms for various kinds of themes. In this way literature
is made to furnish not only the subject-matter but the
form of some of the student's themes. The authors hope
thus to secure in the study of rhetoric and composition a
breadth of treatrfent otherwise impossible and to keep
the study from becoming a matter of abstract science
on the one hand or mere mechanical detail on the other.
The book is intended for three years* work in high
schools or for beginning courses in academies, semina-
ries, and normal schools. It is recommended that high •
school students devote the first year to narration and
description, thus closing with Part III.; the second
year to exposition and its combination with narration
and description, with special emphasis upon the book
review, the historical or biographical essay, and the
nature sketch; and the third year to argumentation
and persuasion as found combined with the other three
forms of discourse in the debate and the oration.
To Mr. George B. Aiton, State Inspector of High
Schools for Minnesota, and to Mr. R. W^. Brufere, of the
<^ Department of English, The University of Chicago, the
^ authors are indebted for the reading of the work in
V proof, and for many valuable suggestions.
R. M. K.
if A. B.
i October /, /po^.
4
• (3)
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A LIST OF THE PLATES
PAGE
The Song of the Lark Frontispiece
From a painting by Jules Breton.
Morning ... 24
From a painting by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot.
The Haymakers 40
From a painting by Juiien Dupri.
Joan of Arc — Listening to the Voices 62
From a mural painting in the Pantheon by Jules Eugine Lenepveu.
Joan of Arc — The Departure for Battle 78
From a mural painting in the Pantheon by Jules Euglne Lenepveu.
Joan of Arc— Burning at the Stake 106
From a painting by Alphonse Cordonnier.
The Catechism 132
From a painting by Jules Munier.
The Departure for Sainte-Evette 152
From a painting by Charles Duvent.
Lost Illusions 178
From a painting by Charles Gabriel Gleyre.
The Night- Watch 196
From a painting by Briton Riviire.
The Man with .the Hoe 216
From a painting by Jean Frangois Millet.
Portrait of My Mother . . . . 242
From a painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
The Shepherdess 268
From a painting by Jean Frangois Millet.
L^ghouat, Sahara Algerien 294
From a painting by Gustave Guillaumet.
The Circus Maximus 316
From a painting by Jean Lion Gir6me.
Milton Dictating Paradise Lost 336
From a painting by Mihdly Munkacsy.
The Primary School of Boys 358
From a painting by Jean Geoff roy.
Hymn to Silence 390
From a painting by Albert Thomas.
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THE TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
The Preface 3
A Ust of the Plates 4
The Introduction 7
Part I.
NARRATION
Chapter I. The Situation 15
Chapter II. Sentence Studies 31
Chapter III. Situation-types I. and II. ...... 45
Chapter IV. A Series of Situations 58
Chapter V. Retrospective Narrative 75
Chapter VI. Retrospective Narrative (concluded) . . 114
Part II.
DESCRIPTION
Chapter VII. The Descriptive Paragraph 145
Chapter VIII. Ornamentation in Description ..... 185
Chapter IX. The Descriptive Theme 237
Chapter X. Parallel Construction ......... 245
Part III.
NARRATION AND DESCRIPTION COMBINED
Chapter XI. The Short Story Containing Description . 257
Part IV.
EXPOSITION
Chapter XII. Expository Motives and Material . . . . 271
Chapter XIII. The Expository Paragraph 283
Chapter XIV. The Expository Theme 314
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6 The Table of Contents
Part V.
NARRATION, DESCRIPTION. AND EXPOSITION
COMBINED
PAGE
Chapter XV. The Traveler's Sketch, the Character
Sketch, the Nature Study, and the Bio-
graphical Essay 351
Part VI.
ARGUMENTATION, PERSUASION, NARRATION,
DESCRIPTION, AND EXPOSITION
COMBINED
Chapter XVI. The Debate, the Oration, and the Drama . 365
THE APPENDIX
Part I. Rules for Punctuation 403
Part II. Selections for Reproduction 412
A List of the Readings 416
The Index . 417
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THE INTRODUCTION
THE present volume will be found to be a frank
attempt to apply to the teaching of composition
the studio method so long practiced in the art of
painting. This method resembles the so-called labora-
tory and other inductive methods of studying English
in that it contains little theory and provides for much
practice. The authors feel that the difficulties which
beset composition are not theoretical but practical ones,
that the student's own theme should be the starting
point for the instruction he receives, and that therefore
he should write daily, if possible, from the very begin-
ning of his course. The method of this book is dis-
tinctly a literary, not a rhetorical method, and differs
from all others in its use throughout of a system of
typical paragraph and theme models derived from par-
ticular pieces of literature and from conversation in our
daily life.
The secret of the importance of practice, guided by
good models and a modicum -of theory, was long ago
discovered in all the other departments of the arts and
crafts, and this book follows in the path of that discov-
ery. When the student sees that his composition is fol-
lowing the outlines of the free and large utterances of
men who had no thought of cramping themselves in
order to furnish some model demanded by this or that
particular theory of literature, criticism, or education,
he will not regard his theme-work as a mechanical, un-
natural exercise which the perversity of the teacher or
the text-book has isolated for him.
The correspondence between the method of composi-
tion here presented and that of the other arts and crafts
may be further seen in the way the student is taught to
analyze a piece of literature before attempting to use it
as a pattern. A boy who is making a box which shall
resemble another box, first analyzes his model into its
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8 The Introduction
necessary features, those common to all boxes — sides,
generally four, a bottom, and a cover. He observes the
form of each of these elements and their relation to
each other. Similarly, an architect who has a build-
ing to design studies the anatomy of other buildings ;
that is, he examines, in their relation to each other, the
necessary features of all architecture — the arch, wall,
pier, buttress, roof, and apertures. One building differs
from another only in the way in which these elements
are combined. As a piece of literature is an organic
product quite as much as is a box or a building, the first
step in learning how to write is to be able to analyze a
piece of literature anatomically; that is, to resolve it
into elements or units found differently combined in
other specimens of literature.
The word, the sentence, and the paragraph are not
the units we are seeking in this analysis ; they are to a
composition only what the separate bricks are to a build-
ing or the separate notes to a piece of music. We are
looking for certain units of experience found both in
literature and in life as expressed in our conversation,
of which some of the more important pointed out in
this volume are the description of character, place,
personal appearance, mood, mode of life, occasions, re-
trospective narrative, the situation, forward-moving nar-
rative, and the general reflection. Students are made
to see that all possible literature is a combination of
these and other specified elements according to designs
as various as the figures \^ a kaleidoscope.
Let us now see how these constructive units, of
which literature makes use, sometimes appear in our
conversation. We may imagine ourselves listening to a
group of persons conversing on ordinary subjects. One
who has been traveling in a foreign country is describ-
ing a celebrated cathedral or the scene from his window
in one of the places he has visited. This gives us place-
description. A second person has just met an old
friend whom he has not seen for years, and is telling
how changed he is in looks — an example of the descrip-
tion of personal appearance. Still another of the com-
pany is giving his opinion of the character of some man
in public life. This is character-description. One who
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The Introduction 9
is interested in social settlements is describing the way
in which the poor live. This is description of mode of
life. A fifth is giving an account of a meeting he at-
tended in the afternoon — description of an occasion or
assemblage. It will not be necessary to carry these
illustrations further. It may be readily seen that these
motives are found in literature because they are units
of experience unorganized in life but organized in litera-
ture into larger and unified wholes. When these ele-
ments of literary construction are once understood, the
problem of composition is merely that of their effective
combination ; and the problem of literary analysis on
the side of form is the separation of a piece of literature
into its component motives.
A third way in which this book connects literary
method with that of the other constructive arts is
through the distinction which it makes between the
structural and the decorative problems in the art of
writing. Let us once more make use of architecture
for purposes of analogy. The structural elements in
architecture, the arch, pier, etc., give strength, order,
symmetry, and organization to a building and express
the intelligence of the architect, while the ornamenta-
tion adds beauty to the work and displays the feeling
of the builder. "The two virtues of architecture which
we can justly weigh," says Ruskin, "are its strength or
good construction and its beauty or good decoration."
It is possible to weigh in the same manner the virtues
of a piece of literature, to separate in it the structural
from the decorative elements. What is meant by the
structure or anatomy of a piece of literature has already
been explained. The decorative or purely aesthetic
element is secured by means of various rhetorical de-
vices and turns of expression, such as figures of speech,
the rhetorical question, the periodic sentence, and par-
allel construction, all of which lend minor beauties to
the whole. It is through the ornamental side of the
subject that the book brings certain phases of the study
of formal rhetoric into the student's work in actual con-
struction. While the problem of composition does not
deal primarily with ornamentation, no textbook can
altogether neglect this aspect of it, for all good writing
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lO The Introduction
is in a measure beautiful. As the builder first puts his
stones into order and afterward learns "to touch them
into beauty with the graceful and delicate forms he
finds in nature — foliage and birds, shells and clouds and
waves" — so the writer must not negjlect either the con-
structive or the ornamental side of his art, or his writing
will be deficient either in clearness or in grace.
It will be seen that this method of studying com-
position is intended to react on the study of literature.
It makes possible a correlation between these two
departments which will lead to power in construction
and to skill in real literary analysis, which means an
appreciation of literature on both its anatomical and
decorative sides.
The method of composition and literary analysis
thus outlined is the most novel feature of the book.
Students, however, need direction, not only in the organ-
izing of material into themes, but in the selection of the
material itself. The book, therefore, deals with the
question of material. Literature, art, and common life
are the sources from which the student is expected to
draw his subject-matter. The plates which the book
contains furnish some of the material in narration and
description, and the method herein suggested for the
description of these paintings seeks to avoid the mere
cataloguing of the details found in them — a most per-
nicious exercise in composition, though it may stim-
ulate the student's general power of observation. The
social side of composition has been kept well to the front
by showing the origin of some of the models in collo-
c^uial speech, by carrying on oral and written composi-
tion side by side throughout the book, and by suggesting
subjects from common life that will open to the student's
eyes the possibilities of his every-day surroundings as
subjects for themes, and so show him that the materials
of poetry and art are very near, even on " the pathway
of our lives." In the early part of the book the theme-
material is drawn very largely from literature. While
the student is struggling with the elements of form, it
is thought wise to furnish him with subject-matter.
One piece of literature is, therefore, used for a pattern,
and another for material to be reproduced, or made
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The Introduction il
over, as it were, according to a given pattern. Before
selecting the matter to be used in this way, the authors
obtained lists of readings from twenty-five of the leading
high schools in the country, and have taken from those
lists the selections that seem to commend themselves
most generally to teachers of secondary English.
While due prominence has been given to the common
divisions of composition into narration, description,
exposition, argumentation, and persuasion, an effort
has been made to keep before both student and teacher
the fact that these do not, as a rule, occur in either life
or literature in their pure form. No author sets out
with the intention of making a description, for instance,
to the exclusion of narration, exposition, or any other
form of composition. Indeed, the forms of composition
are mere abstractions, useful only for analytical pur-
poses. Although at least one theme-model has been
given upon each of the five divisions of composition, in
its pure form, more emphasis has been placed upon the
mixed types. There are theme-models on narration
and description combined, also on narration and exposi-
tion, and on narration, description, and exposition com-
bined. The various models provide forms for the short
story, the character sketch, the traveler's sketch, the
oration, the book review, the debate, and the biograph-
ical or historical essay.
It will thus be seen that narration is the one form that
is carried through the book and gives the work its unity.
There are two reasons why narration has been given
such prominence. One is that it is the most common
type of literature and the one which interests the largest
number of people. The epic, the drama, the novel, the
short story, the narrative poem, history, and biography
are all primarily narrative, and constitute the greater
part of the average person's reading. It is, therefore,
important that our natural taste for narrative literature
should be properly educated, in order that we may not
be satisfied with what is inferior in conception or execu-
tion. The other reason is the need of duly limiting the
scope of the work attempted in an elementary course. It
is impossible for the young student to gain a complete
working knowledge of all the forms of composition in
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12 The Introduction
the time generally allotted to the subject in secondary-
schools. For these reasons the book aims to concentrate
the attention upon the leading form, and to give thought
to the other kinds of composition, for the most part, only
as they enter into combination with this.
The minor features of the book may be briefly
summarized. Special exercises in punctuation, choice
of words, sentence structure, and other minor matters
are given as they are needed in particular themes.
In this way grammatical, mechanical, and rhetorical
details are brought in incidentally, as they should be,
and only as they are required in thfe student's compo-
sition. The young writer should be taught to handle
the word, the sentence, and the paragraph as parts of
a concrete and larger whole which he is creating, just
as the mason learns to handle and fit his bricks by lay-
ing them in an actual wall. By interspersing a few
spelling exercises and review lessons in grammar, the
authors aim to make the student feel that the break
between high-school English and grammar-school Eng-
lish is not very marked. In the themes drawn from
life an effort has been made to keep the commonplace
from deteriorating into the trivial or the insipid, by sug-
gesting a treatment of these subjects which is vivid and
dramatic. If both theme and treatment are allowed to
be ordinary, there is little chance for growth in vocab-
ulary or general literary appreciation. Thus, the social
side of composition, that which connects it with every-
day life, has two problems : one to open the student's
eyes to the heroic element in common life, and the
other to teach him how to make the unheroic and the
ordinary interesting, by the manner in which he deals
with his subject. The authors urge that students be
encouraged to select their own subjects.
The Teacher's Manual, which accompanies the book,
suggests certain departures from the order in which
subjects are presented in the student's book. The logi-
cal order which is demanded in a text-book is not
always, as every teacher knows, the pedagogical order,
that demanded by the natural interests of the child.
This guide is also intended to enable teachers to antici-
pate certain errors to which students are prone in the
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The Introduction 13
use of the method of composition here outlined. The
Manual is practically the work of students, for it is
made up of their exercises and themes written accord-
ing to the directions in the student's book. The com-
ments on the errors in these exercises, the suggestions
interspersed at various points, and the additional exer-
cises which the Manual contains, represent the larger
part of the authors' contribution to this guide.
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Part L
NARRATION
CHAPTER L
THE SITUATION
I. How to Beg^in a Story, In our work in
composition we shall study first the art of telling a
story naturally. Most of us are more interesting
when we talk than when we write, because we are
then more spontaneous ; that is, more informal. The
art of being natural when we are writing is some-
thing most of us have to learn, and we must learn it
by studying the methods by which stories are told
in our ordinary conversation.
First let us ask, " How does a person naturally
begin in conversation to tell of something he has
witnessed?" It is by listening to people talking
that we shall learn how to begin a story. Litera-
ture, in order to be spontaneous, must derive its
method as well as its material from life. The origin
in colloquial speech of certain types of literary con-
struction is one of the subjects that will recur again
and again in our work.
Imagine a dinner table around which the mem-
bers of a family are assembled for their evening
meal. The father is saying, "As I was on my way to
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1 6 Composition and Rhetoric
the office this morning I met Henry Jones in front ^rj
of Smith's drug store, hurrying for the doctor." :ti
Does this sound natural and familiar to you? ^^^
Would it be likely to lead to further conversation in
which perhaps the story of an accident to some mem-
ber of Mr. Jones's family would be told? Might it
lead to the story of a long illness dating back several ^
years? ^
2. Elements of a Good Beg^inning. When we
examine the beginning quoted above we find that
it contains the following elements :
1. A mention of the time, " this morning."
2. A mention of the characters, "Henry Jones"