Journeys Through Bookland Volume X Part 38

CHAPTER XII

READING ALOUD

Silent reading is selfish, while oral reading is for the benefit and pleasure of others. The ordinary individual in daily life reads but little aloud, and probably makes no attempt whatever to improve his style after he leaves the schoolroom. But parents and teacher are incessantly called upon to read--to read intelligently and effectively.

To some this power appears to come naturally, but most people acquire it only by serious study and continuous practice, and will find their greatest a.s.sistance in a thorough knowledge of those things which are essential to pleasing oral expression.

1. ARTICULATION AND ENUNCIATION. Articulation is one thing; enunciation is another. A person articulates the sounds of a language; he enunciates the syllables and words. A clear and distinct enunciation is as necessary as the perfect articulation on which it is based. Indistinct enunciation comes from a natural slovenliness of mind, from nervousness, haste or over-excitement.

Any one who can articulate correctly can acquire a perfect enunciation.

Knowing this fact, and knowing the causes which lead to poor enunciation, it is comparatively easy to correct the faults and give drill which will overcome the carelessness or remove the difficulty.

2. EMPHASIS AND INFLECTION. The primary facts upon which rests intelligibility in reading are emphasis and inflection. Let it be said at the start that no one can read well who has not thoroughly mastered the thought in the selection he is rendering. If he is compelled to search his mind for the meanings of words or to grasp the complete idea of a sentence, he unwittingly pauses and hesitates and confuses the ideas of his hearers. But if the thought of a selection is thoroughly mastered, he places the emphasis almost unerringly and by so doing raises no conflicting ideas in the mind of the listener. Moreover, if the meaning of a sentence is clear to a reader his inflections are ordinarily correct.

3. EMOTIONAL STATES. A person may read with perfect inflection and the most correct emphasis, yet fail altogether to convey the real feeling of the author. Not only must a reader master the thought, but it is essential that he be able to feel the emotions that possessed the author or manifested themselves in the characters he describes. If anyone is thoroughly possessed by the sentiment of any given poem, the quality of his voice will modify itself and respond to the behests laid upon it. He will unconsciously pitch his voice at the proper key, will use the right amount of force, and speak at the rate which most suitably expresses his feelings. When this is done, we have perfectly natural reading, the highest art.

Pitch, rate, quality and force are the particular characteristics of good reading which depend almost entirely upon the mental state of the reader.

a. Pitch. Much depends upon the proper pitch of the voice. The key upon which one reads may be medium, or low, or high, and what it is depends upon certain physiological conditions. If the vocal chords are tense, the pitch is high. Accordingly, any state of mind that produces tense vocal chords produces high pitch in the voice. A person can forcibly tighten his vocal chords and utter sounds at high pitch, but they are strained, artificial and unnatural. If a certain amount of feeling goes with the effort, the tones become more agreeable.

If a person's voice is pitched too high, is harsh and unmelodious, the remedy is by way of a process of forgetting. He must forget that he is reading and feel that he is talking. If his conversation is marked by the same faults as his reading, he may gain something by imitation in the way of raising his standards of expression. In general, he reads harshly because he thinks he _must_ read. The nervous tension which this feeling produces has affected his vocal chords without any intention on his part. He cannot read more expressively while he feels as he does.

Harshness and unnatural pitch will disappear from his voice when he can forget that he is reading from compulsion.

For practice the following selections are excellent:

_Gettysburg Address_, IX, 321.

_Boat Song_, VII, 17.

_Battle of Waterloo_, VIII, 176.

b. Rate or Time. The rate at which a person reads, or the time consumed in any one selection, is regulated by the extent or breadth of thought and by the rapidity of action. There is a certain medium or ordinary time in which those selections that are in no way emotional are read.

Commonplace selections, not calculated to stir the feelings, are of this character, as are simple narratives where the incidents are unexciting.

This medium or standard time may be varied in two ways: first, by the quant.i.ty of time taken in the utterance of certain words or syllables, and second, by pauses between sentences or groups of words. Rate, however, usually depends more upon the grouping of words and the length of the pauses between groups than upon the utterance of syllables. The rate of syllabic utterance is usually a personal characteristic. Some of us articulate rapidly, while others of more phlegmatic temperament speak slowly.

In conversation or in perfectly natural reading, we usually utter with one impulse of the voice those words which are closely related in meaning. These words so uttered form groups that are usually quite independent of punctuation. Punctuation marks are for the eye and are intended to make clear the meaning. They do not separate the sentence into units of expression. Only the terminal marks are of any great importance either in suggesting the inflection or indicating the length of the pause. A good reader notices the marks insomuch as they make clear the thought, but largely disregards them in his reading.

The person who reads too rapidly has a mind that is very quick in its action or one that is not fully occupied with the thought of his selection; he may have a vague understanding, but does not realize the full extent and import of the idea. If he reads too slowly, he is naturally slow in thought, or the words come to him slowly through his eyes, his organs of speech are not sufficiently under control, or he does not appreciate the difference between the princ.i.p.al ideas and those of minor importance. Find the central idea, group others about it in proper degrees of subordination, feel the sentiment in what is being read, and the time usually will be correct. There are worse faults in reading than undue rapidity or slowness, for we can make our minds keep pace with the reader, if in other respects his expression is good.

The following selections afford considerable variety in rate:

_Exciting Canoe Race_, VII, 79.

_Those Evening Bells_, VII, 340.

_Charge of the Light Brigade_, VII, 147.

_Marco Bozzaris_, VIII, 90.

c. Quality. The quality of the voice is almost entirely dependent upon the emotions. Tenderness, love, joy, awe, fear, all produce their effect upon the voice. In an unemotional state the person speaks in normal quality and in the tone that is natural to himself. If the same person is frightened or if his animosity is aroused, he speaks in an aspirated tone; if he feels harshly toward anyone or is angry, his voice possesses that guttural quality which indicates the severer and harsher emotion; when he is moved by grandeur and sublimity, his voice naturally takes a full, round quality.

d. Force. The quant.i.ty of mental energy the person possesses usually regulates the force of his utterance, and that mental energy is stimulated by his emotions. If he feels thoroughly in earnest in what he is trying to accomplish, his voice becomes loud and full of force. It is then a natural force and is usually agreeable, unless the emotion which causes it is of an unpleasant type.

But it is often true, particularly of teachers who have been long in service and those persons who have talked under unfavorable conditions to large numbers of people, that their voices have become too loud and too much strained to be pleasant to the ear. A soft, pleasing voice, loud enough to be distinctly audible, is always better than a strident, forcible utterance that compels attention whether one will or not.

Extremes of force may be found in the following selections:

_Sweet and Low_, VI, 122.

_To a Waterfowl_, VII, 395.

_The Destruction of Sennacherib_, VI, 141.

_Little Red Riding Hood_, I, 79.

CHAPTER XIII

LITERATURE AND ITS FORMS

It is not everyone who can tell readily what is meant by literature, nor can anyone in a few words define it. What the study of "literature"

(only the adult's manner of saying "reading") is expected to accomplish was aptly described by Cardinal Newman when he wrote: "The object of literature in education is to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and adjust its knowledge, to give it power over its faculties--application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address and expression." Reading at home and in the public schools as well as in the high school and colleges helps to accomplish these ends to a great extent.

Many persons fail to understand what literature is, and if they do realize its importance they do not comprehend the great variety of its forms nor the significance of each. To help such persons to a more comprehensive knowledge and a deeper insight into the functions of literature this chapter is written.

In its widest sense the word literature covers nearly every kind of printed matter, but it is in its more restricted meaning that the term is used here. Only that which is beautiful in form and expression, inspiring and helpful in spirit, n.o.ble and righteous in sentiment can be called literature as we are considering it. There may be weak and frivolous books, well-meaning but inept books, and really bad books, but none of them can be cla.s.sed as literature.

Literary masterpieces are either prose or poetry, and in print the two are easily recognizable by their difference in form. Coleridge once said that prose consisted of words in their best order, while poetry was the best words in their best order, a poetic definition that does not convey a very accurate knowledge of the distinction. Poetry differs from prose not only in the choice and arrangement of words, but also to a lesser degree in sentiment and feeling. However, much verse, though faultless in form, can never be considered real poetry, while much prose has real poetic beauty.

_Prose_

The great bulk of the writings of the world is in prose. It is the medium of hard sense, of practical knowledge, of argument and of dialogue. Yet often it appeals to the imagination, charms with its beauty and inspires to heroic deeds.

It seems to be generally accepted that four methods of expression are to be found in prose: _narration_, _description_, _exposition_ and _argumentation_. Narration deals with things in action, description with the appearance of things, exposition explains the relations ideas bear to one another, and argumentation not only does this, but tries at the same time to convince. Theoretically, this distinction is very easy to make, for action is the life of narration, appearance the theme of description, explanation and exposition are synonymous, and no one argues but with the hope of convincing. What can man do more than to tell what has been done, tell how a thing looks, show how one thing follows from another or is related to it, and endeavor to bring another person to the same state of mind?

The accuracy and completeness of the cla.s.sification is most evident until one attempts to apply it practically to existing literature, and then he finds that no literary masterpiece belongs entirely to any one of the cla.s.ses, but that these mingle and unite, one or the other usually predominating. This ruling element, the one which is proportionately greater, will govern the cla.s.sification of a selection.

In any story, narration and description meet at every turn, and not infrequently exposition is found freely intermingled; while novels have been written with the avowed sole purpose of changing the beliefs of a people. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ is a story of intense dramatic activity, and abounds in vivid descriptions of places and persons. It is generally dealing with incidents relating to the characters of the story, yet it really makes an exposition of the evils of slavery, and certainly was no small factor in stirring the American people into vigorous action against the slave dealers. Yet no one would cla.s.sify the book otherwise than among the narratives. Although into Burke's _Conciliation_ other elements enter, yet everyone will admit it to be argumentative in the highest degree. So while it is well to cla.s.sify the selections read, yet fine theoretical distinctions should be abandoned. It is not so necessary to cla.s.sify and name as it is to compare and distinguish.

Narratives have been cla.s.sified variously, but not more satisfactorily than have other forms of literature. A narrative is true or fict.i.tious, and there appears the first principle of cla.s.sification. Truthful narratives are personal when they are the simple account of the deeds of some person or thing, biographical when they show a clear and evident purpose to detail the events in the life of the person, historical when they deal with larger and more complicated questions and when the actors are as numerous as the actions are various. Fict.i.tious narratives comprise short stories and novels. One prominent writer notes the following types: (1) The realistic novel that is true to actual life and often enters into the discussion of important questions of record. (2) The novel of life and manners which is largely descriptive and in which the exigencies of the plot give way to the study of customs. (3) The novel of incident in which the plot is everything and description and character study are avoided or subordinated to action. (4) The romance which usually deals with things as they were in days long past and with actions that little concern the present. Marvelous and even supernatural incidents crowd its pages. (5) The idealistic novel which paints the world as it should be and makes its actors more nearly perfect than the world accepts as typical. (6) The novel with a purpose which seeks to convert its readers by the vividness of its portraits rather than by argument, though by means of many detailed conversations its theories are often freely discussed and fully substantiated. Many great reforms have been brought about by novels of this character.

Description deals with the individual and not with the cla.s.s. A fine description is a work of art in its highest sense and is closely allied to painting, than which it is even more delicate and refined; for while the painter lays his color on the canvas and our eyes see the entire picture in all its minutest detail, the writer can only suggest the idea and stimulate the imagination to create for itself the picture in the mind of the artist. Yet such is the marvelous power of words when handled by a master that one can see by them almost as vividly as by the sense of sight. The reader is transported to far-away lands, strange men and animals surround him, the skies glare above him, silver lakes sparkle in the sun, brooks murmur against their fern-covered sides, and birds move the soul with their sweet music. Evening draws on, and the landscape glimmering fades away; the stars come out one by one and by and by the moon steals slowly up the sky. Peace and quiet reign over the darkened world. Neither sculpture nor painting can depict these changes; it rests with the magic of words. But the reader must do his share. He must give time to his reading, must yield himself gently to its influence, must not force himself into the writer's mood but must receive and accept. Then descriptive literature will yield its keenest pleasures.

Exposition deals with the cla.s.s, and is abstract. So the demands made upon the reader are infinitely greater. It a.s.sumes that the concrete examples and specific instances necessary to interpret the abstract are already in mind and that the barest allusion to them will be sufficient.

So exposition naturally follows narrative and description.

Successful argumentation depends upon proof and persuasion. It is addressed to the reason or to the emotions. Burke and Webster endeavor to establish their respective positions by irrefutable arguments. When Beecher addressed the people on the slavery question he appealed strongly to their emotions and sought to make them act because of their intense feeling. One characteristic of all literary masterpieces is unity, but in none is this of more importance than in the expository and argumentative types.

As we study it, literary material may be grouped as fiction, essays, speeches (orations), and dialogue (drama). No cla.s.sification can be rigid or exact, for one may blend into the other. At the same time in any one may be found the four forms, description, narration, exposition and argument. For our purposes, however, the following definitions will answer: _Fiction_ is a term covering those narratives which are either wholly or in part events that never happened and acts of individuals that never lived. Fiction is the work of the imagination, based upon the facts of life and observation. It appears as stories, in narrative poems or epics, and in novels.

_Essays_ deal with all subjects and in such a variety of ways that any attempt to cla.s.sify them meets with difficulty. Originally an essay was an attempt, a mere outline or plan intended to be filled out at greater length or to be used in different form. It is in this sense that Bacon uses the word and his essays are condensed to the highest degree. In later years essays have come to be of the most highly finished type of literature and some of the most beautiful pa.s.sages, the n.o.blest thoughts, the most inspiring utterances, are to be found in them.

Almost every conceivable topic is treated: there are biographical essays which do little more than narrate the facts of a man's life; there are descriptive essays whose only function is to make their readers see something as the author saw it; there are argumentative and didactic essays and essays on science, art, religion, and literary criticism.

Some writers have given their whole time and attention to this form of composition, and the modern magazine has become their distributing agency. Much of the deepest, of the brightest, of the best of recent work has come to its readers through this medium.