MODERN LITERATURE
II
in doing this as to describe the actual circumstances in which
the experience took place. These circumstances are pedagogic–
they consist of some problems in teaching modern literature to
undergraduates and my attempt to solve these problems. And
perhaps I ought to admit at once that, as much as about modern
literature itself, I am talking about the teaching of modern litera–
ture. I know that pedagogy is a depressing subject to all persons
of sensibility, and yet I shall not apologize for speaking about it
because the teaching of literature and especially modern litera–
ture constitutes one of the most salient and significant character–
istics of the culture of our time. Indeed, if we are on the hunt
for
the
modern element of modern literature, we might want to
find it in the susceptibility of modern literature to being made
into an academic subject.
Here, then, is my experience.
For some years I have taught the course in modern litera–
ture in Columbia College. I did not undertake the course without
misgiving and I have never taught it with an undivided mind.
My doubts do not refer to the value of the literature itself, only
to the educational propriety of its being studied in college. These
doubts persist in the face of my entire awareness that the rela–
tion of our collegiate education to modernity is no longer an
open question. The unargued assumption of most curriculums is
that the real subject of all study is the modern world; that the
justification of all study is its immediate and presumably prac–
tical relevance to modernity; that the true purpose of all study
is to lead the young person to be at home in, and in control of,
the modern world. There is really no way of quarreling with this
belief, nor with what follows upon it, the framing of curriculums
of which the substance is chiefly contemporary or at least makes
ultimate reference to what is contemporary.
It might be asked why anyone should
want
to quarrel with
this assumption. To that question I can only return a defensive,
eccentric, self-depreciatory answer. It is this: that to some of us,
as we go on teaching, if we insist on thinking of our students as
