American society for extension of university Teaching UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECTURES SYLLABUS OF A COURSE OF SIX LECTURES ON NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE (1. Scott. 2. Bulwer-Lytton. 3. Thackeray. 4. Dickens. BY CLYDE FURST LECTURER IN LITERATURE FOR THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE Series G. No. 1. Price, 10 Cents. Copyright, 1897, by The American Society for the Extension of University Teaching Nineteenth Century Literature: The Greater English Novelists. "Aesthetic teaching is the highest of all teaching, because it deals with life in its highest complexity." -George Eliot. The lectures of the following series have been planned to form what might be called a course of method in literary criticism. A single typical book from each author treated is selected for study, and from this book there is deduced, with the necessary caution, a general conception of the characteristics of the author. By comparing and contrasting these conceptions, comparative appreciations of the authors and some idea of their period and its tendencies are derived. Acting upon Goethe's suggestion, that it is better to attempt "to learn from the man himself what he thought, rather than to hear from some one else what he ought to have thought," only the single books selected as typical are recommended for reading, together with as many other works of the author treated as possible. Biography being used for purposes of illustration only, the briefest and most accessible works alone are recommended. Since the course is intended to stimulate critical ability in those who follow it, no criticism is recommended for reading. The books mentioned in the references following the abstract of each lecture should, in each case, be read, if possible, before the lecture. LECTURE I. Sir Walter Scott. (b. 1771; 'Waverley,' 1814; d. 1832.) "An eminently well-conditioned man, healthy in body, healthy in soul; we will call him the healthiest of men." -Carlyle's Essay on Scott. Few authors so supremely rule the country in which they lived and about which they wrote, and very few have so strongly extended their wider sway as Sir Walter Scott. He was the descendant of a healthy and vigorous hunting, sporting, and fighting clan of which his father was the first member who had ever adopted sedentary employment |