'The art of assisting discovery'

 

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” – Mark Van Doren

 

Born in Illinois on June 13, 1894 Van Doren was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, writer and critic, and one of the nation’s leading scholars during a 40-year career as Professor of English at Columbia University. There he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.  

 

He was the author of 12 books of poetry, 3 novels, and 17 nonfiction books – which included the definitive Mark Van Doren on the Great Poems of Western Literature.  Published in 1962, it is considered by most scholars to be one of the great resource books of the 20^th Century.   

 

Outside the classroom, Van Doren served as literary editor of The Nation magazine for many years and was an influential film critic there from 1935 to 1938.

 

“(Always) bring ideas in and entertain them royally,” Van Doren advised his students,  “for one of them may become the king.”