In 1979, the poet, scholar, and critic John Hollander took over the long-standing Daily Themes course at Yale, which before him had been taught, among others, by the celebrated novelist and essayist John Hersey. But when Hollander took the course over, he transformed it by drawing on the models of Renaissance pedagogy on which he was expert – and which are in fact implicit in the title, since the ‘theme’ was a staple of Renaissance pedagogy. Towards the end of his life, he and his student Professor Kenneth Gross began conceptualising a book based on Hollander’s approach to Daily Themes. They were not able to see the project to completion before Hollander’s death, but in the rest of this overview we draw gratefully on their book proposal. We would like to thank for permission to use this material Kenneth Gross, and also Hollander’s executor, Professor Langdon Hammer.
On this tab you will find an introduction to the course and then links to each week of the course, containing an orderly progression of teaching materials which all are invited to use.
Contents
Daily Themes: An Approach to the Teaching of Writing by John Hollander
In 1979, the poet, scholar, and critic John Hollander took over the long-standing Daily Themes course at Yale, which before him had been taught, among others, by the celebrated novelist and essayist John Hersey. Daily Themes is a course in writing that dates...
Assignment 1 – Catalogues and Analogues
183' Exercises: Ground rules: This week we're going to generate paragraphs from lists or catalogues. The elements of a list will become parts of sentences, and the sentences parts of paragraphs. The structure, order and even the dramaturgy of the lists...
Assignment 2 – Of Pointing
Exercises 1. Re-punctuate (and re-paragraph if you think it useful) Francis Bacon's "Of Suspicion" (handout). Type up the essay, with your changes, and be prepared to discuss your revisions in conference. 2. Write "Of _____________” Your essay should be about...
Assignment 3 – Point of View
Exercises During the past weeks, we have considered scale (in relation to description) and scope (in relation to the referential breadth of a piece of writing). We have also touched on the build, or the story of its own unfolding and developing, of a...
Assignment 4 – Showing, Telling, and Explaining How: Analytic Narrative
Exercises 1. Two separate paragraphs. Consider some actual or imagined room. In your first paragraph, describe the room's interior from some vantage point outside it, e.g., through an open door, window, a skylight, etc. Then, in your second paragraph,...
Assignment 5 – Dialogue and Stichomythia
Exercises: A and B are two speakers, or the same or different sexes, ages, conditions of live, etc. You may name them, given them identities, as you please. At some point in the course of the dialogue between them--which itself occurs at some interesting or...
Assignment 6 – Persons, Personae, Characters
Exercises: This week you will write five character descriptions, each from a different, though not necessarily unrelated, point of view. 1. Develop a description of a character type beginning, "He (she) was the kind of person who..." Such a description (and...
Assignment 7 – Agreement and Disagreement
Exercises Take some debatable proposition, on any matter of pressing public or private concern that you with. It can be of the form, for example, of "One should (always/never) do X"or "One should always/never) do X, if Y is the case"or "All...
Assignment 8 – Joke and Earnest
Ground rules: Choose one of the funniest jokes you've heard and which you can bear to think about repeatedly during the coming week. 1. Tell the joke (a) in its full and complete form, and then (b) in a compressed, telegraphed form that still retains the...
Assignment 9 – Figurative Language
Exercises: 1. Write two paragraphs, developing in each of them a figurative presentation of some "moral or intellectual fact." In the first one, personify the abstraction. In the second, instead of personifying, embody the abstraction in a place, a process or...
Assignment 10 – Pace and Build in relation to Form
Exercises This assignment affords you an opportunity to think back on the assignments you have completed so far, to perceive perhaps more clearly some of the concepts that have linked them, and to grapple in new ways with problems which may be familiar, but...
Assignment 11 – Diction and Dictionaries
Exercises: 1. Look up one of the following words (or some other word that interests you) in The Oxford English Dictionary: Depressionfeminineliberalimmoralitysilly Using the historical evidence contained in the entries for that word, and, if you like, your...
Assignment 12 – Reading Signs and Emblems: Writing about Pictures
Exercises: You will be explaining, for the next five days, what certain represented objects or scenes mean. You will be asked to look at some conventional "meanings" or readings, but are encouraged to improvise your own, using the methods of building them, or...
Assignment 13 – Sense and Nonsense
Exercises Note: for "morkle" and "frannis" in the following exercises, substitute two "nonsense" words of your own devising. Use a different pair for each part of the assignment, if you like. 1. The following phrase in a letter to the New York Times...
Assignment 14 – Journal, Diary, and Commonplace-Book
Exercises: Your "vacation assignment" is to write five journal-entries of 200-250 words each. The entries need not be sequential. However, each one should be a detailed account in some form of thoughts you have and/or events you experience on a...