Response to Literature: Papers Relating to the Anglo-American Seminar on the Teaching of English (Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, 1966). The Dartmouth Seminar Papers.

The encouragement and formulation of a student's imaginative response to and "engagement" with literature and the concerns of the papers and summaries of discussions in this Dartmouth Seminar report. James Britton discusses refining the student's natural response to literature by developing his increased sense of form ("principally a sense of the pattern of events") and by encouraging wide reading together with close reading. D. W. Harding, in "The Report of the Study Group," links the development of young people's behavior and personalities to their developing responses to literature, indicating three modes of presentation of literature, the kinds of materials to select, and ways to bring about students' affective responses. James E. Miller's paper, "Literature and the Moral Imagination," suggests that studying literature frees students from platitudinous ethical parochialism and encourages self-examination. In "Reading, Writing, Reality, Unreality," Benjamin Demott emphasizes the need to discuss literature primarily to awaken the students' sense of their own and others'"humanness." A sampling of statements from the conference on general topics concerning the study of literature in the schools is presented by James Squire. Suggested readings on response to literature are also included. (LB)