Literary Taste: How to Form It

Literary Taste: How to Form It

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Literary Taste: How to Form It, by
Arnold Bennett
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Title: Literary Taste: How to Form It
Author: Arnold Bennett
Release Date: October 25, 2004 [eBook #13852]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY
TASTE: HOW TO FORM IT***
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LITERARY TASTE: HOW TO FORM IT
With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of
English Literature
by
ARNOLD BENNETT
1913

CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

THE AIM


CHAPTER II
YOUR PARTICULAR CASE


CHAPTER III
WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC


CHAPTER IV
WHERE TO BEGIN


CHAPTER V
HOW TO READ A CLASSIC


CHAPTER VI
THE QUESTION OF STYLE


CHAPTER VII
WRESTLING WITH AN AUTHOR


CHAPTER VIII
SYSTEM IN READING

CHAPTER IX
VERSE


CHAPTER X
BROAD COUNSELS


CHAPTER XI
AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD I


CHAPTER XII
AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD II


CHAPTER XIII
AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD III


CHAPTER XIV
MENTAL STOCKTAKING


CHAPTER I
THE AIM

At the beginning a misconception must be removed from the path.
Many people, if not most, look on literary taste as an elegant
accomplishment, by acquiring which they will complete themselves,
and make themselves finally fit as members of a correct society. They
are secretly ashamed of their ignorance of literature, in the same way as
they would be ashamed of their ignorance of etiquette at a high
entertainment, or of their inability to ride a horse if suddenly called
upon to do so. There are certain things that a man ought to know, or to
know about, and literature is one of them: such is their idea. They have
learnt to dress themselves with propriety, and to behave with propriety
on all occasions; they are fairly "up" in the questions of the day; by
industry and enterprise they are succeeding in their vocations; it
behoves them, then, not to forget that an acquaintance with literature is
an indispensable part of a self-respecting man's personal baggage.
Painting doesn't matter; music doesn't matter very much. But "everyone
is supposed to know" about literature. Then, literature is such a
charming distraction! Literary taste thus serves two purposes: as a
certificate of correct culture and as a private pastime. A young
professor of mathematics, immense at mathematics and games,
dangerous at chess, capable of Haydn on the violin, once said to me,
after listening to some chat on books, "Yes, I must take up literature."
As though saying: "I was rather forgetting literature. However, I've
polished off all these other things. I'll have a shy at literature now."
This attitude, or any attitude which resembles it, is wrong. To him who
really comprehends what literature is, and what the function of
literature is, this attitude is simply ludicrous. It is also fatal to the
formation of literary taste. People who regard literary taste simply as an
accomplishment, and literature simply as a distraction, will never truly
succeed either in acquiring the accomplishment or in using it
half-acquired as a distraction; though the one is the most perfect of
distractions, and though the other is unsurpassed by any other
accomplishment in elegance or in power to impress the universal
snobbery of civilised mankind. Literature, instead of being an accessory,
is the fundamental sine qua non of complete living. I am extremely
anxious to avoid rhetorical exaggerations. I do not think I am guilty of
one in asserting that he who has not been "presented to the freedom" of

literature has not wakened up out of his prenatal sleep. He is merely not
born. He can't see; he can't hear; he can't feel, in any full sense. He can
only eat his dinner. What more than anything else annoys people who
know the true function of literature, and have profited thereby, is the
spectacle of so many thousands of individuals going about under the
delusion that they are alive, when, as a fact, they are no nearer being
alive than a bear in winter.
I will tell you what literature is! No--I only wish I could. But I can't. No
one can. Gleams can be thrown on the secret, inklings given, but no
more. I will try to give you an inkling. And, to do so, I will take you
back into your own history, or forward into it. That