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On the Art of Reading

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Typing practice book cover: On the Art of Reading

15 CHAPTERS

Ongoing Story

On the Art of Reading

On the Art of Readingis a collection of lectures delivered byArthur Quiller-Couch, a literary critic and professor at Cambridge, between 1916 and 1918. In these lectures, Quiller-Couch argues for the study of the masterpieces of English literature—Shakespeare, Milton, and so on. He opines that the most effective way of appreciating literature is to experience it as “What Is,” which is to say feeling as if one has become part of the...

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CHAPTERS

15

Dedication

To H. F. S. and H. M. C....

Preface

The following twelve lectures have this much in common with a previous twelve published in 1916 under the title On the Art of Writing⁠—they form no compact treatise but present their central idea as I...

Lecture I - Introductory

In the third book of the Ethics, and in the second chapter, Aristotle, dealing with certain actions which, though bad in themselves, admit of pity and forgiveness because they were committed involunta...

Lecture II - Apprehension Versus Comprehension

Let us attempt today, Gentlemen, picking up the scent where we left at the conclusion of my first lecture, to hunt the Art of Reading (as I shall call it), a little further on the line of common-sense...

Lecture III - Children’s Reading (I)

I have often wished, Gentlemen, that some more winning name could be found for the thing we call Education; and I have sometimes thought wistfully that, had we made a better thing of it, we should lon...

Lecture IV - Children’s Reading (II)

In our talk, Gentlemen, about Children’s Reading we left off upon a list, drawn up by Mr. Holmes in his book What Is, and What Might Be, of the things that, apart from physical nourishment and exercis...

Lecture V - On Reading for Examinations

You, Gentlemen, who so far have followed with patience this course of lectures, advertised, maybe too ambitiously, as “On the Art of Reading,” will recall to your memory, when I challenge it across th...

Lecture VI - On a School of English

It is now, Gentlemen, five years less a term since, feeling (as they say of other offenders) my position acutely, I had the honour of reading an Inaugural before this University and the impudence to l...

Lecture VII - The Value of Greek and Latin in English Literature

I have promised you, Gentlemen, for today some observations on The Value of Greek and Latin in English Literature: a mild, academic title, a camouflage title, so to say; calculated to shelter us for a...

Lecture VIII - On Reading the Bible (I)

“Read not to Contradict and Confute,” says Bacon of Studies in general: and you may be the better disposed, Gentlemen, to forgive my choice of subject today if in my first sentence I rule that way of ...

Lecture IX - On Reading the Bible (II)

We left off last term, Gentlemen, upon a note of protest. We wondered why it should be that our English Version of the Bible lies under the ban of schoolmasters, Boards of Studies, and all who devise ...

Lecture X - On Reading the Bible (III)

My task today, Gentlemen, is mainly practical: to choose a particular book of Scripture and show (if I can) not only that it deserves to be enjoyed, in its English rendering, as a literary masterpiece...

Lecture XI - Of Selection

Let us hark back, Gentlemen, to our original problem, and consider if our dilatory way have led us to some glimpse of a practical solution. We may restate it thus: Assuming it to be true, as men of Sc...

Lecture XII - On the Use of Masterpieces

I do not think, Gentlemen, that we need to bother ourselves today with any definition of a “classic,” or of the stigmata by which a true classic can be recognised. Sainte-Beuve once indicated these in...

Endnotes

The reader will kindly turn back to the start of the chapter, and observe the date at the head of this lecture. At that time I was engaged against a system of English teaching which I believed to be t...