COMPOSITION An Introduction to the Analytical Study of the PREPARED BY MEMBERS OF THE THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY で Q THE purpose that has directed the issue of a new book of prose selections is twofold. It has seemed that thereby we might make less difficult the task-never an easy one-of securing a measure of unity in method and material in a course conducted in forty classes by fifteen or more instructors, and at the same time make as little intrusion as possible upon the freedom of the individual teacher. It was hoped in the second place that with material fitted directly to the organization of the course as it has been evolved, we might in a larger measure conserve the best in method and technique as these have been developed in the past thirty years in the Department of Rhetoric at Michigan. Our problem is in no essential way a peculiar one; it is only in the placing of emphasis upon certain rhetorical principles that we are especially concerned. If in attempting to fit the material to our immediate needs we can serve others engaged in the same task we shall be doubly gratified. As our work is organized, the first half of the student's first year is given to the rhetoric of the sentence and the paragraph The student is expected to read rather widely, but the analysis is directed especially to the smaller rhetorical unit. This text is prepared for use in the second half of the first year and to furnish material for analytical study of three forms of discourse. Because of the limited time allotted to the course, formal argument is not treated. As in the first semester the unifying principle of the course lies in the recognition of the essential unity inherent in sentence and paragraph organization, so in the second semester the guiding principle is a clear conception of rhetoric as a study of literary form. It is the purpose to put the emphasis specifically and frankly upon the rhetoric of the selections read and analyzed. We have chosen material that seemed to us easily adapted to that manner of treatment. Just in so far as the student comes more and more to a sure sense of form will we have served the ends we have sought. Those who have prepared this book wish to acknowledge indebtedness to the instruction and example of Professor Fred Newton Scott, whose work we are here endeavoring only to emulate and extend. A. R. MORRIS. |