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PROFESSION OF ENGLISH by G.B. Harrison

PROFESSION OF ENGLISH

By

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

The eminent scholar and teacher, who is perhaps best known as a scholar and clearan in the Shakespearean field, has written a ""personal record of my own prejudices and observations"". Without popularly pampering his audience (i.e., spoonfedding Culture), it can be hoped that he may reach some of the readers of Barzun's Teacher in America or Highet's The Art of Teaching. He is a formal writer, but one of great delight. Professor Harrison writes about literature and finally reaches a definition of literature as ""a means of evoking pleasure"". He discusses many of its forms, the great works (the more immediate- the least likely to survive), the common reader. He ranges over the teaching of English; education particularly in the public schools; study, and his own childhood reading; scholarship whose ""pleasures begin where the pleasures of literature end""; criticism- ""of critics, the reviewer is the lowest form of life,"" but like the earthworm, necessary; teaching, whether in the college or the university, England or America academic publications; etc., etc. Professor Harrison's ambient discussion is wise, tolerant and witty. It is also a civilizing experience.