THE
LITERARY DISCIPLINE
OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN ERSKINE
THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE INTELLIGENT
and Other Essays
THE KINDS OF POETRY
and Other Essays
DEMOCRACY AND IDEALS
GREAT AMERICAN WRITERS
(With W. P. Trent)
POETRY
ACTÆON AND OTHER POEMS
THE SHADOWED HOUR
HEARTS ENDURING
A Play in one Scene
COLLECTED POEMS
1907-1922
THE
LITERARY DISCIPLINE
By
JOHN ERSKINE
Professor of English at Columbia University
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1923
Copyright, 1922, by the
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
Copyright, 1923, by
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
Printed in U. S. A.
TO
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
| PAGE | ||
| Preface | ix | |
| I. | Decency in Literature | 3 |
| II. | Originality in Literature | 47 |
| III. | The Cult of the Natural | 91 |
| IV. | The Cult of the Contemporary | 137 |
| V. | The Characters Proper to Literature | 187 |
The following chapters were first publishedserially in The North AmericanReview, from November, 1922, to March,1923. For their reappearance in this volumeI have made slight changes in themall, and have inserted in the fourth chaptera few paragraphs written for TheBookman of July, 1922. The editors ofboth magazines have my thanks for permissionto reprint.
The title of the book will disclose atonce the critical theory underlying thes