This book collects a second set of lectures Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch gave at Cambridge University to defend the decision to create a chair there for the study of English Literature. Thus it is a companion to his first series of lectures, Notes on the Art of Writing, given soon after he became the second to hold the professorship. There is some repetition of points he raised in the earlier set, such as the need to read great literature “absolutely,” by which he means tackling the text itself rather than merely reading secondary works that describe or explain the greats. The reader also won’t be surprised at Quiller-Couch’s gallery of greats, with Shakespeare, Milton, and the Authorized Version (“King James”) of the Bible occupying pride of place.
It might surprise some that a translation of a body of writings from ancient Hebrew and Greek, produced by a committee, should appear alongside Shakespeare, but Quiller-Couch maintains its eminence as the first great achievement of English prose. It’s clear, though, that even in his time, the place of the Bible in the study of English literature was controversial. He devotes three of the ten lectures here to the topic. In the third of them, he uses the Book of Job as an example of greatness.
In the first lecture, Quiller-Couch introduces a distinction to which he will return throughout the book, one that Browning makes in his “A Death in the Desert” between what does, what knows, and what is, with the last being the highest. In one sense, it seems to mean knowing one’s soul, or the transcendent. Quiller-Couch also claims, though, that the reader’s identification with the protagonist of a work of literature—becoming, say, Hamlet, for the moment—is also a form of knowing “what is,” a surprising extension of what Browning might have meant by it. At any rate, Quiller-Couch maintains that literature is the pre-eminent means of this highest form of knowledge. He even maintains its superiority in this over philosophy. Here is the conclusion to his second lecture: “Literature understands man and of what he is capable. Philosophy, on the other hand, may not be ‘harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,’ but the trouble with most of its practitioners is that they try to comprehend the Universe. Now the man who could comprehend the Universe would ipso facto comprehend God, and be ipso facto a Super-God, able to dethrone him, and in the arrogance of his intellectual conceit full ready to make the attempt.”
A third controversial position staked out here is that no child is too young to be exposed to the greats. Homer and the Tempest are his illustrations for this.
I enjoyed this series of lectures a bit more than the first set. He still comes across at times as “Uncle Q” and one can hear the strains of “Rule Britannia” wafting in the background as he argues for the generally civilizing influence of great (English) writing. Nonetheless, I can easily imagine that those who had the privilege to read Paradise Lost or King Lear with him had their lives deepened by the experience. ( )

Not, as one might think from the title, a monograph on Berkshire biscuit-tin decoration, but Q's second series of lectures as Cambridge professor of English Literature. They were delivered during what must have been some of the bleakest and most depressing years in the history of the university, a time when many people would have been wondering whether we would ever again have room in our lives for educating young people in the humanities. Despite this, Q is unflaggingly positive in his conviction that it is possible to study "English literature" as an academic discipline (something that was by no means universally accepted in Cambridge in his day). In a fairly random-seeming progression, he sets out his thoughts on how literature should — and should not — be taught; how exams are a necessary evil; why the Latin and Greek heritage matters at least as much as (if not more than) Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse; how we as readers can cope with the sheer number of books that exist; how children's books should be directed at stretching the imagination, not at creating model citizens (two lectures); why the Authorised Version of the Bible should be treated as a key text of English literature (three magnificent lectures, concluding in a virtuoso exposition of Job); and tentatively explores the idea of a canon, first rubbishing the idea of "100 best books" and then accepting that there might be some sort of merit in it.

Whilst the battles he engages in were mostly won or lost the best part of a century ago, it's still a great pleasure to read his wonderful, clear prose and reflect on how and why we enjoy books. There's even a sort of guilty thrill for those of us brought up on feminist and post-colonial criticism to see that he unashamedly and routinely opens his lectures with "Gentlemen, ...". He does accept that women will be playing a big part in post-war society and will need full access to education, but he undermines this positive comment with a footnote quoting a Victorian young lady's summing up of her educational attainments.

I found myself wondering about what doors more recent ways of teaching literature have opened and closed for us. I'm sure Q would have welcomed the extension of the subject to cover very recent literature (in his day, and until at least the 1950s, Eng. Lit., as far as Oxford and Cambridge were concerned, was held to end in 1835), but I'm not sure that he would have been as happy about the way whole chunks of literary history fell off the syllabus in the process: the courses I took left rather an alarming gap between Shakespeare and Dickens, for instance. He does accept, though, that choices have to be made and no undergraduate can be expected to read through the entire canon from Chaucer to Byron in two years. ( )

I hope I can cultivate in my children an appreciation for prose such as this: slow, careful, with humour but very few exclamations, and punctuated with dependent clauses. Prose which is modern but certainly not contemporary, scholarly but never pedantic. If writing style varies with different ways of thinking, as I believe it does, comfort with different prose styles helps individuals gain perspective they might not otherwise have.

Quiller-Couch's lectures are addressed to Oxford students, practically aimed at answering the question of what use is a canon of British literature, and how to defend that a canon exists. It grew out of political arguments he mounted at Oxford to defend a new curriculum and, indeed, pedagogy -- arguments which, apparently, were successful. For all of that, Quiller-Couch makes for solid liberal arts reading, and I now understand why Helene Hanff wrote so highly of him in her books.

The three lectures on how to read the Bible, from the perspective of a literary accomplishment, are noble and arresting. His defense of Job as a literary triumph helped me see that story in a new light. I am struck by his contention that the Bible uniquely lends itself to translation for the key to Biblical prose lies not in the language but in how ideas are arranged, which translates well in terms of content as well as metre or cadence. ( )

After reading Helene Hanff's books, particularly _Q's Legacy_, I decided to try one of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's collection of lectures. The lectures brought together in this volume were first given from 1916-1918, all regarding reading English literature, particularly focused on either teaching it or studying it in college. I chose it because, as a former English major and avid reader, it seemed a rather general study that Helene herself may have read.

Quiller-Couch seems to me a very down-to-earth professor, and I like his approach to literature as something living, not academic, and at its best when put to use in life. I sometimes had difficulty following his thought, primarily because I was unfamiliar with much of the literature he quotes and because, ninety years later, his language can be rather hard to follow. Because of this, it was hard for me to say whether or not I agreed with him much of the time. I think I was mostly able to apprehend what he was saying, however, and I would like to read more of his lectures in the future. ( )