Preparatory School
Throughout the 80s, students in the English curriculum in the Preparatory School studied grammar, orthography, reading, and composition. The textbooks included Whitney’s Essentials of Grammar; Swinton’s Composition; Critical Study with Tancock’s Grammar and Reader; Reading, Spelling, and Penmanship; Language Lessons; Reading, with Subject Analysis; Hudson’s Classical English Reader; Critical Study; English History. American literature was introduced to the courses in reading. In 1889, the Preparatory School became the Parks Institute. The curriculum remained largely the same.
Collegiate Curriculum
The 1886 Catalog provides a rare view into the details of the undergraduate curriculum in English. It provides an “approximately complete list” of the textbooks and readings that were assigned, in the order they were assigned. They were
Bain’s Composition Grammar; Lounsbury’s English Language; Irving’s “Old Christmas” and “Bracebridge Hall,” illustrated by Randolph Caldecott; Scott’s “Lady of the Lake” or “Marmion,” or “Select Poems of Tennyson” (Rolfe’s editions); “Typical Selections from the Best English writers (of the 18th century) or Hales’ “Longer English Poems”; Arnold’s Addison; Bain’s “English Composition and Rhetoric”; Collier’s “History of English Literature” and Brooke’s Primer; Richardson’s “Primer of American Literature;” Shakespeare’s Henry V or King Lear or The Tempest (Rolfe’s editions); Dowden’s Shakespeare Primer; Sprague’s Milton; Chaucer’s “Prologue, Knightes Tale, &c,” edited by Morris.
In the 1886 catalog, the English curriculum is defined by three branches, Language, Literature and Rhetoric, “in other words, English in its philological, literary, and practical aspects. Courses in all three areas are continuous throughout the four years of study.”
And, according to the catalog statement, these three branches were “mutually auxiliary.” That is, the study of literature would provide subject matter and models for composition; the compositions (“analyses, summaries, paraphrases, reviews and biographical sketches”) would provide a clearer understanding of the literature; the courses in rhetoric included the study of style and the “lost art of reading aloud;” and the study of language provided a “clearer conception of the meaning and uses of important words at different periods of their history.”
Rhetoric: The first term of the Freshman year was devoted to the study of the “treatise.” This was meant to provide a transition between the work of the Preparatory School and the more advanced work of the Junior year. In the first half of the Sophomore year (the first two terms, that is), students were assigned declamations, readings, and essays on assigned themes. Attention was given to the “much-neglected art of reading aloud.” Juniors would apply the lessons of their rhetorical studies by preparing a study of the style of various authors. Juniors and Seniors were required to deliver eight orations before the collected students of the College.
Language: While there is not enough time, the catalog says, for a thorough study of the history of the English language, “an effort will be made to show the continuity of the language from the period of the Saxon settlement to the present day, and to follow the history of important root-words and grammatical forms….The works of Marsh, Earle, Skeet, Morris, and others are used to supplement the textbook."
Literature: The second half of the Junior year was devoted to a study of the “whole field” of British and American literature. “Special effort is made to guard the student against becoming confused by a mass of names and dates. Writers are grouped, both according to period and ‘schools’ and to the form of literature they cultivated, and the foremost in the several groups are made prominent and dwelt upon, while, at the same time, some attempt is made to indicate the relative place and important of authors of secondary rank.” Over the course of the four year curriculum, students begin with recent literature and move back to the early periods, ending with Chaucer. One and one half hours per week were given to recitations.
When, for example, students were assigned Scott’s “Marmion” or “Lady of the Lake,” they were required to read one of the Waverly novels and to write a review of it, to memorize “several long passages from the poem,” to prepare summaries and paraphrases of sections of the poem, “and to write a sketch of the life of Scott, based on Hutton’s biography.” When studying Shakespeare, students were assigned readings in Dowden’s Shakespeare Primer, followed by several written examinations.
A Tabular View of the College Courses: Beginning in 1886, the catalog provides a tabular view of the full curriculum. Below are the listings for 1889.
