Word: copey
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Professor Copeland, "Copey," was witty and knew it. Harvard anecdotes about him, like Lincoln stories, are legion and legendary. But the reason for the stories, both true and apocryphal, is that they perpetuate the personality of a truly unique teacher who left no other significant relics. As an English instructor, and later as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, he taught two famous courses; an advanced writing course and a course titled "Johnson and his Circle." He wrote only one book, compiled two anthologies, and allowed a short moving picture to be filmed of himself reading aloud...
...doubtful that even an individual who knew Copey well could present a fair picture of him, since the life of with and studied idiosyncrasy which he sustained had too many facets and roles to be adequately summarized. And he never "let down his guard" suficiently to any one person to permit revelations of an intimate variety. Thus the approach to Copey through his legend, however inadequate and dangerous, is the only one available until his Boswell comes along...
...legend itself breaks up into public and private anecdotes, into classroom jokes and conference revelations. The undergraduate who came to know him well usually did so by moving through the larger layer of public acquaintance into increasingly attractive familiarity with the man; discovering Copey first merely by being at Harvard, then by going to a Copeland reading, then enrolling in one of his courses, meeting him in conference, and finally-- if he had proven himself worthy--in friendship, which was itself conducted with enough style to make legends...
...Copey's Castle...
Wendell and "Copey" continued their trilogy alone until 1911, when the second great name in the teaching of American Literature at Harvard, Bliss Perry, began teaching a graduate course on Emerson. This was the first non-survey U.S. literature course to be offered and one of the few non-survey courses in the department. Survey courses, " in outline," were "the norm for college literature courses in that day," Murdock explains, adding, "I wouldn't be caught dead giving one like that...