The Elephants Teach

Creative Writing Since 1880

By: David Gershom Myers

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Paperback | 16 June 2006 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
256 Pages

Edition Type
New edition

Dimensions(cm)
22.84 x 15.32 x 1.57

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When Vladimir Nabokov was up for a chair in literature at Harvard, the linguist Roman Jakobson protested: "What's next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?" That anecdote, with which D. G. Myers begins The Elephants Teach, perfectly frames the issues this book tackles.

Myers explores more than a century of debate over how writing should be taught and whether it can or should be taught in a classroom at all. Along the way, he incorporates insights from a host of poets and teachers, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, John Berryman, John Dewey, Lionel Trilling, Robert Lowell, Ezra Pound, and Saul Bellow. And from his exhaustive research, Myers extracts relevant background information on nineteenth-century educational theory; shifts in technology, publishing, and marketing; the growth of critical theory in this country; and the politics of higher education. While he shows how creative writing has become a machine for creating more creative writing programs, Myers also suggests that its history supplies a precedent for something different-a way for creativity and criticism, poetry and scholarship, to join together to produce not just writing programs but good writers.

Updated with fresh commentary on what's happened to creative writing in the academy since the first edition was published ten years ago, The Elephants Teach will be indispensable for students and teachers of writing, literature, and literary history.

Industry Reviews

"The best and only true history we have. Everyone interested in creative writing should know this book." - Tony Ardizzone, author of In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu"

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Education Language & Linguistics Reference, Dictionaries & Guides Creative Writing & Creative Writing Guides

About the Author	p. ii
Foreword	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
When Philology Was in Flower	p. 15
The Founding of English Composition	p. 35
The Problem of Writing in a Practical Age	p. 56
An Index of Adagios	p. 77
The Sudden Adoption of Creative Work	p. 101
Criticism Takes Command	p. 122
The Elephant Machine	p. 146
Afterword	p. 169
Notes	p. 183
Bibliography	p. 217
Index	p. 231
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

The Elephants Teach

Creative Writing Since 1880

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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