The Uses of Prose [antikvár]

PREFACE Most freshman anthologies have two main purposes: to inform the student and to aid him in writing better. The emphasis upon one or the other of these two objectives varies. Thus many recent collections of readings have tended to offer a kind of outline of general education, with essays in the social sciences, the humanities, and even the natural sciences. In such volumes both selection and organization have emphasized the content of the essays themselves. English departments may, however, be accused of a certain presump-tuousness in attempting to teach the whole curriculum in a single course. Certainly a collection of essays, however admirably chosen, does not constitute the basis of a general education. On the other hand, the anthology which emphasizes student writing is often organized to illustrate the traditional forms of discourse—exposition, persuasion, narration, description—or the various types of structure—comparison and contrast, definition, time arrangement, cause-to-efFect arrangement, process analysis, and the like. But there is at least a question whether this sort of training bears any close relationship to the normal methods of thinking and writing. In the ordinary course of adult life one is not asked to prepare an essay or a talk illustrating a rhetorical method. Rather he is expected to write an editorial, a book review, or a magazine article, to prepare a business report, to explain a technical process. And in practice the traditional rhetorical forms are often fused or overlapping. A Nenv Yorker "Talk of the Town" item, a report in Time, or an article in Harper's may use three or four of the types sometimes presented as isolated forms by the academic rhetorician. The conflict between content and method is not easily resolved. It is obvious that before a student can write he must have something to write about. Hence the emphasis upon content in many college anthologies. The advice "Look in thy heart and write" has limitations when offered to young people with limited experience and even more limited tools for emotional and intellectual exploration. The present collection of readings therefore shares with most others the purpose of providing some of the materials and tools for this emotional and