“By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous.”
Jacob Bronowski in a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1953)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Quintilian Latin Marcus Fabius Quintilianus: (AD35?-after 96) Latin teacher and writer. Born in Spain, Quintilian was probably educated and trained in oratory in Rome. From about 68 to 88 he taught rhetoric, becoming Rome’s leading teacher and was an eminent advocate in the law courts. His Institutio oratoria is a practical survey of rhetoric in 12 books and a major contribution to educational theory and literary criticism, His dual emphasis on intellectual and moral training appealed to humanists of the 15th-16th centuries and through them influenced the modern view of education as all around character training to equip a student for life.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“bell, book, and candle: A reference to features of the solemn ritual of major excommunication, as performed in the medieval Church of Rome. The decree of anathema, the official curse of excommunication, was read from the book of church ritual; the attendant priests held candles, which were dashed to the ground, symbolizing the extinction of grace and joy in the soul of the accused; and a bell was tolled, perhaps to simulate the tolling for the dead.
The phrase bell, book, and candle appears in Shakespeare’s King John (III, 3): ‘Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back/ When gold and silver becks me to come on.’ Here, as in general usage, it represents the power and authority of Christianity.
Bell, Book, and Candle (1950) is also the title of a play by John Van Druten (1901-57), about a beautiful present-day witch who falls in love with a man and loses her powers as a sorceress.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
I recently found myself in receipt of The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick, published by The New York Review of Books for its fine series of “Classics.” I couldn’t help but notice, and feel a need to transcribe for future use, this essay on reading, titled, simply, “Reading.” There is a great deal in these 2,158 words to provoke thought–especially for teachers.
But what do you think?
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Broadside (noun): A verbal attack or denunciation, especially in a publication; adverse critique; tirade.
‘Constantine Curran, who was now editing St. Stephen’s, the University College magazine, asked Joyce to send him something he could not market elsewhere, but was staggered when Joyce disingenuously submitted a new and scabrous broadside, “The Holy Office.”’ Richard Ellman, James Joyce”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Krater: A type of ancient Greek vessel with a broad body, wide mouth, and hemispherical base that was used to hold a mixture of wine and water. Often, a field for decoration.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“realism: In literature, the theory or practice of fidelity to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization. The 18th-century works of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett are among the earliest examples of realism in English literature. It was consciously adopted as an aesthetic program in the mid-19th century in France, when interest arose in recording previously ignored aspects of contemporary life and society; Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) established the movement in European literature. The realist emphasis on detachment and objectivity, along with lucid but restrained social criticism, became integral to the novel in the late 19th century. The word has also been used critically to denote excessive minuteness of detail or preoccupation with trivial, sordid, or squalid objects. See also naturalism.
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“realism: In the visual arts, an aesthetic that promotes accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favor of close observation of outward appearances. It was a dominant current in French art between 1850 and 1880. In the early 1830s, the painters of the Barbizon school espoused realism in their faithful reproduction of the landscape near their village. Gustave Courbet was the first artist to proclaim and practice the realist aesthetic; his Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers (1849) shocked the public and critics with their frank depiction of peasants and laborers. In his satirical caricatures, Honore Daumier used an energetic linear style to criticize the immorality he saw in French society. Realism emerged in the U.S. in the work of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. In the 20th century, German artists associated with the Neue Sachlichkeit worked in a realist style to express their disillusionment after World War I. The Depression-era movement known as Social Realism adopted a similar harsh realism to depict the injustices of U.S. society. See also naturalism.
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“realism: In philosophy, any viewpoint that accords to the objects of human’s knowledge an existence that is independent of whether they are perceiving or thinking about them. Against nominalism, which denies that universals have any reality at all (except as words), and conceptualism, which grants universals reality only as concepts within the mind, realism asserts that universals exist independently of their being expressed in language and conceived by human minds. Against idealism and phenomenalism, it asserts that the existence of material objects and their qualities is independent of their being perceived. Similarly, moral realism asserts that moral qualities of actions (such as being morally good, bad, or indifferent, or being ethically right, wrong, or obligatory) belong to the actions themselves and are not to be explained as mere products of a mind that perceives and feels attracted to or repelled by the actions. In opposition to conventionalism, realism holds that scientific theories are objectively true (or false) based on their correspondence (or lack or it) to an independently existing reality.
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Basic English: A simple form of English designed by C.K. Ogden (1889-1957). It has 850 words, with rules of their use and expansion of sense, and 150 more bridge words for specific fields, such as medicine, chemistry, and physics, which have themselves a body of internationally common words or signs. Working with Ogden on its development was I.A. Richards, who took the system to schools and universities in China as a help in the teaching of English at all levels. Its possible use as an international language was the reason Sir Winston Churchill, one of its strong supporters, gave part of his talk at a Harvard commencement in Basic English. Before his death in 1979, Richards was again in China, working on the use of basic English for international purposes. [Ed. Note: This entry is written in Basic English.]”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
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