Repository: UIHistories Project: Course Catalog - 1888-1889 [PAGE 89]

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86

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

lent to the ordinary studies of the classical language. This drill extends through three years of the course. The first two terms of the first year are given to a general survey of the whole field of British and American literature from the middle of the sixteenth century to the present time. All the representative writers come into notice, and representative specimens from the writings of each are carefully read in class. Moreover, each student is required each term to read an entire work of some classic author, making choice from a prescribed list. Frequent exercises in writing abstracts, or original compositions on themes assigned, are also required. The study of rhetoric occupies the first term. During the second year four or five of the great masters are studied, their work analyzed, and the shaping forces of their times, with their influences upon succeeding times, are investigated. Lectures are given from time to time on poetry, epic, lyric, dramatic, etc. Writing and reading required as in first year. In the Senior year attention is given to Old English; to the Anglo-Saxon, for which the way has been prepared by the study of both English and German, and to philology. Essays, forensics, and orations are required. French and German.—The modern languages taught in this School are confined to one year of French and two years of German. Abundant practical exercises are given both in composition and translation, and the diligent student gains the power to read with ease scientific and other works in these languages, and may, with a little practice, write and speak them with correctness. Constant attention is also given to the etymologies common to these languages and the English, and thereby a large advantage in linguistic culture is gained by the student. "He who knows no foreign tongue," said Goethe, "knows nothing of*his own." In the first year the student passes over a complete grammar and reader, acquiring a knowledge of the technicalities of the idiom, with a sufficient vocabulary for the use of books of reference within the course. The second year is devoted to a critical study of the languages and philological analysis, and to a course of select reading, composition and conversation.