Art principles in literature

ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO
ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE
By FRANCIS P. DONNELLY, S.J.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MCMXXV
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. SET UP AND PRINTED. PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1923. REPRINTED APRIL, 1925.
REPRINTED JULY, 1928.
WYNKOOP HALLENBECK CRAWFORD COMPANY, NEW YORK, U. S. A.
In the Art of Interesting (Kenedy, 1920) the writer began a discussion of the principles of art and of their application to writing and speaking. In this work the discussion is carried further and is not restricted to the one feature of arousing and fixing attention, especially in oratory, which was the chief topic of the Art of Interesting . The following chapters represent the reactions of the writer to literature both as composed today and as taught in our schools. Any active mind, bewildered by the ceaseless experimenting in literature and education, and not satisfied with a passive acceptance of even excellent critics, is necessarily forced back upon first principles. Such a mind will not yield to the despair of skepticism, that there are no first principles, nor to the despair of agnosticism, that there may be such principles but we cannot know them, nor yet to the despair of pragmatism, that we must wait and see whether the human race ages from now will give us assurance that there really are principles of art because the last man has seen that these principles have been found to work up to the moment prior to which he joined Tutankhamen.