COMPOSITION-RHETORIC Edition of 1911 BY FRED NEWTON SCOTT PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AND JOSEPH VILLIERS DENNEY PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY Boston ALLYN AND BACON PREFACE. THIS book, now entirely rewritten and greatly enlarged, embodies all those features of former editions of the Composition-Rhetoric and Composition-Literature which in class-room use have been found most successful and most attractive. Of these features the following are perhaps the most important: Composition is regarded as a social act, and the student is therefore constantly led to think of himself as writing or speaking for a specified audience. Thus not mere expression but communication as well is made the business of composition. The simple fundamental principles that underlie alike composition, rhetoric, and literature are discovered inductively by the study of numerous selections, and when discovered are at once applied in the student's practice. The aim is to keep the student's powers of construction and criticism in proper adjustment. While his chief purpose is to produce something readable, interesting, and perhaps valuable, he is led to consider questions of form at the same time. The effect of such criticism by the text, if it is properly supplemented by the teacher's suggestions, is to increase in each student the power and the will to criticise his own writings before giving them any form of publication. Experience having proved that concentration on a smaller unit than the essay and a larger unit than the sentence is conducive to the best results, attention is drawn first to the paragraph. The sentence, phrase, and word are studied |