Critical Essays

by Robert Maynard Hutchins (Editor), Mortimer J. Adler (Editor), Clifton Fadiman (Associate Editor)

Gateway to the Great Books is a 10-volume series of books originally published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. in 1963 and edited by Mortimer Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins. The set was designed as an introduction to the Great Books of the Western World, published by the same organization and editors in 1952. The set included selections - short stories, plays, essays, letters, and extracts from longer works - by more than one hundred authors. The selections were generally shorter and in some ways simpler than the full-length books included in the Great Books. (Source: Wikipedia)

Contents

Virginia Woolf: How Should One Read a Book?

Matthew Arnold: The Study of Poetry.
Sweetness and Light

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve: What is a Classic?
Montaigne

Sir Francis Bacon: Of Beauty
Of Discourse
Of Studies

David Hume: Of the Standard of Taste

Arthur Schopenhauer: On Style
On Some Forms of Literature
On the Comparative Place of Interest and Beauty in Works of Art

Friedrich Schiller: On Simple and Sentimental Poetry

Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Defence of Poetry

Walt Whitman: Preface to Leaves of Grass

William Hazlitt: My First Acquaintance with Poets
On Swift
Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen

Charles Lamb: My First Play
Dream Children, a Reverie
Sanity of True Genius

Samuel Johnson: Preface to Shakespeare

Thomas De Quincey: Literature of Knowledge and Literature of Power
On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth

Thomas Stearns Eliot: Dante
Tradition and the Individual Talent

Genres: Classics

411 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Robert Maynard Hutchins (LL.B., Yale Law School, 1925; B.A., Yale University, 1921) was an educational philosopher, dean of Yale Law School (1927-1929), and president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago.

While he was president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins implemented wide-ranging and controversial reforms of the University, including the elimination of varsity football. The most far-reaching reforms involved the undergraduate College of the University of Chicago, which was retooled into a novel pedagogical system built on Great Books, Socratic dialogue, comprehensive examinations and early entrance to college. Although the substance of this Hutchins Plan was abandoned by the University shortly after Hutchins resigned in 1951, an adapted version of the program survives at Shimer College in Chicago.

Editor-in-Chief of Great Books of the Western World and Gateway to the Great Books; co-editor of The Great Ideas Today; Chairman of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (1943-1974).
He was the husband of novelist Maude Hutchins.

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my opinion, the selection criteria for this volume have dated badly in the fifty years that have elapsed since it was first published. First of all, the most recent essays included are Virginia Woolf´s 1932 How Should One Read a Book and T. S. Elliot´s 1932 essays and criticism has come a long way in the eighty odd years that have elapsed since then -there is the whole of postmodernism to take into account, not to mention the fascinating strides mades in shakespearean literary criticism. Secondly as a "gateway" to the Great Books series, most of the inclusions fail, that is, they fail to introduce and encourage the reader to board the canon of Western thought identified in the Great Books series. It is hard to imagine a contemporary twelve or fourteen year old understanding Hazlitt´s dickensian Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen, a fourteen to sixteen year old enjoying Arnold´s tedious The Study of Poetry or making much sense out of Whitman´s Preface to Leaves of Grass, or a sixteen to eighteen year old being inspired by Shelley´s utterly romantic and over-idealistic claims in A Defense of Poetry, as suggested by volume one´s Plan of Graded Reading.

Some of the selection criterio baffle me. For example, why did the editors include so many writings on poetry, if the Gateway itself includes no poetry? It is true that the first volume of the Gateway includes an appendix on Recommended Anthologies of Poetry, but even so, why on earth take up a full third of the book with Mathew Arnold´s The Study of Poetry, Schiller´s On Simple and Sentimental Poetry, Shelley´s A Defence of Poetry, Walt Whitman´s Preface to Leaves of Grass? I admit that these essays provide a historical perspective on the the evolution of criticism --thus Saint-Beauve´s What is a Classic? proposes to open up the stifling and claustrophobic definition of classical masterpieces extant in early nineteenth century France, Schiller strives to distinguish authenticity in the midst of self-doubts about the true nature of Romanticism, Whitman boldly, albeit somewhat incoherently, provides a manifesto for poetry in modern America while Arnold and Shelley desperately try to defend the importance of the aesthetic sense from what they perceive to be the crass and perilous philistinistic underpinnings of science and industrial progress-- but this is a singularly unsuccesful way to drum up interest -and even understanding- of romanticism, Schiller´s magnificent plays and poetry or Whitman, Shelley or Arnold´s poetry; these essays constitute footnotes, not motivations to the Great Books.

There are some selections which I believe might work as an introduction or a motivation: Virginia Woolf´s How Should One Read a Book, Saint-Beuve´s delightful Montaigne, Schopenhauer´s thought-provoking On Style, On Some Forms of Literature and even On the Comparative Place of Interest and Beauty in Works of Art, Hazlitt´s spell-bounding account of the non-stop conversationalist Coleridge in My First Acquaintance with Poets or his brief but acute On Swift, Samuel Johnson´s rotund, polished and sometimes condescending Preface to Shakespeare and Charles Lamb´s sensitive and nostalgic My First Play.

Two great essays are included, which should not be missed and which I highly recommend for those who have not come across them: Thomas De Quincey´s wonderfully intuitive and illuminating On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth and T. S. Eliot´s fascinating and outstanding Dante, the one essay which truly lives up to, and surpasses, the goal of being a gateway to the Great Books- a gateway both to Dante and to T. S. Eliot himself.

Nowadays, the selection would be considered hopelessly biased: The only woman writer included is Virginia Woolf, the only French critic Sainte-Beauve, the only American Walt Whitman (unless you count T. S. Eliot american as well) while the only two germans are Schopenhauer and Schiller whereas nine of the authors (ten, if you include T. S. Eliot who became a British citizen in 1927) are British writers. In this sense, the book is very much a product of its time.

The editors´ brief introductions to each of the authors are very well written and strike an excellent balance between personal biography, his or her impact as a writer and useful and pertinent guidelines to the essays included in the anthology.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the world worlds there is no precognition for how it will unfold, no manifest destiny, no teleological certainty for the future until it happens and then all gets understood from the now but only by the now. The last essay warns about looking at the past through the certainty of today’s eyes. Of course, T.S. Eliot does it way more elegantly than I can.

What’s not to like with these essays? They are how someone from 1963 thought about his own time as he chose previous time period essays on how they thought about their time period. Just take the meta story about the story and value that as the story in itself.

Shakespeare and Dante are two main characters throughout these essays and how values and meaning come from our feelings that we choose.

I’m reminded of Finnegans Wake. The main character HCE (Here Comes Everybody) gets peeved at the newspapers because they remind him of that ‘divine comic Denti Alligator’ since they both work on our feelings not our rational nature and warns against ‘Daunty, Gouty and Shopkeeper’ (in Wake speak: Dante, Goethe and Shakespeare) for circumventing our logic circuits by appealing to our feelings.

Of course, HCE’s belief is negated by this book of essays since that is what the essays are telling the readers to let happen to them. I think a well written essay on Dante or the nature of the meaning of reading really never loses its value no matter when written or what has transpired since 1963. The universal message remains.

[tarzan001 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am glad I read this collection of essays because most of them pertain to the topic of literature, although I do disagree in calling all of them as "critical" essays because some writers entirely wrote about their experiences regarding their exposures to literature such as a classic play, or an author. However, when a critical essay do come, they really are critical to the point that you could sense some hatred or passion towards the subject at hand. For example, Schopenhauer's writing could be regarded by readers and admittedly I also, as ramblings of a Hegelian-hater but once you ignore such parts, the clearness and his unique writing style do shine. Another impression that this collection made on me is that it exposed me to writers I had never read before such as the previously mentioned Schopenhauer, Francis Bacon, Woolf, Lamb, Hazlitt, Hume, Shelley, and Whitman. And I must say that reading the biographies of the writer before the essay, it is very easy to spot who is a poet and in my opinion, they could easily be detected by their "flowery" prose with strong imagery. Thus, I would say that 40% of the essays are actually thought-provoking and offered me some new insights on topics regarding to literature such as style, standards of taste, purpose of reading, what is a 'classic', and the purpose/definition of poetry.

[Ci · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perfect summary comes from page 97 of "On Study" by Francis Bacon -

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention."

My first brief glance of this collection is even beyond the lightest "read", hence this book will be revisited when the subject-matter of these great essays become more familiar in my reading.

*** Reading Notes and Progress ***

Virginia Woolf, "How Should One Read a Book?"
Matthew Arnold, "The Study of Poetry"; "Sweetness and Light"
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, "What Is a Classic?"; "Montaigne"
Francis Bacon, "Of Beauty"; "Of Discourse"; "Of Studies"
David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste"
Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Style"; "On Some Forms of Literature"; "On the Comparative Place of Interest and Beauty in Works of Art"
Friedrich Schiller, "On Simple and Sentimental Poetry"
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Defence of Poetry"
Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass
William Hazlitt, "My First Acquaintance with Poets", "On Swift", "Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen"
Charles Lamb, "My First Play", "Dream Children, a Reverie", "Sanity of True Genius"
Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare
Thomas de Quincey, Literature of Knowledge and Literature of Power", "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth"
T. S. Eliot, "Dante", "Tradition and the Individual Talent"