The elephants teach : creative writing since 1880 : with a new afterword / D.G. Myers ; foreword by Jacques Barzun

Originally published: Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice Hall, 1996, in series: Prentice Hall studies in writing and culture. With a new afterword

Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-230) and index

When philology was in flower -- The founding of English composition -- The problem of writing in a practical age -- An index of adagios -- The sudden adoption of creative work -- Criticism takes command -- The elephant machine

"D.G. Myers here 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 insight 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. While he shows how creative writing has become a machine for generating 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"--BOOK JACKET