DIY History | Transcribe | Scholarship at Iowa | The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897 | The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897, Page 33

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The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897

The Ethical Tendency of the English Novel by Helen M. Harney, 1897, Page 33

as literature, is the scientific treatise, the philosophic essay, the ethical pamphlet and to guard against that misconception, I insert above the phrase "other things equal." Literature must needs above all things be literary - it must have grace of style, beauty and aptness and novelty of wording, it must appeal first of all to the aesthetic sense, not to pure reason or the moral nature. But granting the presence of these purely literary qualities that literature is highest which most combines with them a deeper philosophic and moral value. This is not only true of English literature, but of all literature. And we all instinctively feel that the greatest and truest poets and romancers are those who have taught the age somewhat; Wordsworth, not Scott; Shelley, not Byron. even outside the more definite purposive work, we feel that relative height many
30.

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as literature, is the scientific treatise, the philosophic essay, the ethical pamphlet and to guard against that misconception, I insert above the phrase "other things equal." Literature must needs above all things be literary - it must have grace of style, beauty and aptness and novelty of wording, it must appeal first of all to the aesthetic sense, not to pure reason or the moral nature. But granting the presence of these purely literary qualities that literature is highest which most combines with them a deeper philosophic and moral value. This is not only true of English literature, but of all literature. And we all instinctively feel that the greatest and truest poets and romancers are those who have taught the age somewhat; Wordsworth, not Scott; Shelley, not Byron. even outside the more definite purposive work, we feel that relative height many 30.