BOOKS
FRENCH WITH TEARS - AND LAUGHTER
THE CLASSICAL MOMENT. Studies of Corneille, Moliere, ond Rocine.
By
Mortin Turnell. New Directions. $4.50.
There are one or two very good reasons for singling out this
book for review, and consequently one or two, perhaps more, ways to
approach it.
One way is suggested by the sight of a fat book now in reach of my
hand on the shelf: an anthology of English literature, compiled for the
use of college students by six professors at the most prominent univer–
sities in America (the names do not matter). It is a good anthology,
providing very many pages of well-selected text as well as copious and
detailed information by the editors. But what catches my attention at
the moment is something else: a long introduction, intended to spur
the student on to diligent scholarship by extolling the glories of English
literature, comparing it with all the other literatures of the world, and
concluding by awarding it the palm as the greatest of all.
To dispute this conclusion is not my aim; probably it is right,
though I am not sure that the argument itself is a very profitable one
or that the grounds on which in this case it is argued are very relevant
or very profound; but what I am .quite sure of is that the presentation
of other literatures by the professorial editors is very much less than
adequate, does not show a very intimate understanding of those litera–
tures-and, conversely, an understanding of the ways in which English
literature itself is deficient, the themes it has not touched, the depths
not sounded, limited as it is by the peculiar national experience of the
English people. Now, if this particular anthology represents, as I think
it does, the highest level of ordinary academic culture
in
America, then
certain questions may be put and certain conclusions must be drawn
about the kind of influences which we Americans absorb, consciously
or otherwise, during our youthful exposures to literature. Most of us
take our first courses in literature in an "English Department" (the
rubric itself is very significant), and during college days "literature"
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