[i]
ART PRINCIPLES
IN LITERATURE
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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[iii]
ART PRINCIPLES
IN LITERATURE
By FRANCIS P. DONNELLY, S.J.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MCMXXV
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
SET UP AND PRINTED. PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1923.
REPRINTED APRIL, 1925.
REPRINTED JULY, 1928.
WYNKOOP HALLENBECK CRAWFORD COMPANY, NEW YORK, U. S. A.
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INTRODUCTION
In the Art of Interesting (Kenedy, 1920) thewriter began a discussion of the principles of artand of their application to writing and speaking. Inthis work the discussion is carried further and is notrestricted to the one feature of arousing and fixingattention, especially in oratory, which was the chieftopic of the Art of Interesting. The following chaptersrepresent the reactions of the writer to literatureboth as composed today and as taught in ourschools. Any active mind, bewildered by the ceaselessexperimenting in literature and education, andnot satisfied with a passive acceptance of even excellentcritics, is necessarily forced back upon firstprinciples. Such a mind will not yield to the despairof skepticism, that there are no first principles, nor tothe despair of agnosticism, that there may be suchprinciples but we cannot know them, nor yet to thedespair of pragmatism, that we must wait and seewhether the human race ages from now will give usassurance that there really are principles of artbecause the last man has seen that these principleshave been found to work up to the moment prior towhich he joined Tutankhamen.
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Art, just as morals and pure science, differs entirelyfrom the natural sciences, which are generalizationsbased upon acquired information and mustchange as long as the information upon which theyare based can be modified and enlarged. But where,as in art or pure science, principles are based on finaltruths, the principles have also a finality and canonly be rejected if their basis can be changed ormodified. Aristotle’s principles have something ofthat finality. Aristotle had for his study a body ofliterature that has for centu