bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Forster's Metaphysical Novel
Authors: Hoy Cyrtjs
Published: February 2007

Howards End can be termed a metaphysical novel for the good reason that it is concerned with metaphysical problems. These are implicit in the clash of motive and purpose that directs the novel's action; they present themselves in terms of conflicting principles whose reconciliation serves to define the action's meaning. The principles at variance here are in themselves metaphysical opposites—the real and the ideal, the tangible and the intangible, the body and the soul, the many and the one—and they all have reference to a single overwhelming question: wherein lies the reality of experience? Does it consist in the inner life of personal relations, as Helen Schlegel declares? Or is it to be sought in the outer world of practical affairs, as her sister Margaret comes to maintain? How, in any case, is it to be known: through the agency of the flesh or of the spirit? And once known, how is knowledge of it to be preserved in a world where permanence and stability are conditioned by time and change? The answer, a single one, is implied in the words “only connect” that stand on the novel's title page. What must be connected, to state the matter in so many words, is the inner life of intellect and spirit, and the outer life of the physical and the sensory. These, the conflicting halves of experience, must be reconciled, for—and this is the burden of all Forster's work—because they are halves they are mutually dependent, and one without the other cannot adequately endure. The intellect and the spirit are dependent for their very embodiment on the physical and the sensory, faculties which they in turn altogether transfigure when the halves are fused. The contradictory elements that are inherent in the duality of body and soul are reconciled when the duality itself is resolved. The result is the comprehensive and harmonious vision of experience wherein the earthly partakes of the eternal, the particular testifies to the universal, and multiplicity becomes but another attribute of the one. The partial view gives way before a vision of the whole, and the paradoxical quality of experience takes on another dimension as one comes to discern the reality behind the appearance, the substance beneath the accidents.
Art and the Existential in En Attendant Godot
Authors: Harvey Lawrence E.
Published: February 2007

In a recent article, Claude Mauriac remarks pertinently, “On a voulu expliquer En Attendant Godot par un improbable jeu de mots: God ne signifie-t-il pas Dieu en anglais? Façon de rendre moins inquiétante cette pièce aussi peu rassurante que les autres oeuvres de Beckett.” Although M. Mauriac may be brushing aside rather too quickly a play on words that is perhaps not so improbable after all, he points perceptively in these lines to an inadequacy that mars a number of otherwise illuminating discussions of Beckett's controversial play. Critics, professional and amateur, have, in fact, often been overly concerned with the “message” of the drama, treating it, unconsciously perhaps, as a kind of thesis play and thereby, one might argue, casting implicit aspersions on its excellence as art. The reviewer for the London Times writes, for example, “… the message of Mr. Beckett as a novelist is perhaps a message of blank despair. The message of Waiting for Godot is perhaps something nearer a message of religious consolation … Waiting for Godot—one might sum up these remarks—is thus a modern morality play on permanent Christian themes.”
Political Allusion in Fielding's Author's Farce, Mock Doctor, and Tumble-Down Dick
Authors: Baker Sheridan
Published: February 2007

Fielding's veiled aspersions of Walpole as the “Great Man” of his Tom Thumb (24 April 1730) is accepted as his first political satire on the stage, and his allusion in The Author's Farce (30 March 1730) to Cibber as “Mr. Keyber,” a nickname connected with anti-Walpole satire, has been taken only as evidence that Fielding wrote Shamela, with its “Keyber” on the title page. I myself have stated that political satire in The Author's Farce went no further than the single reference to “Keyber.” But innocence and the authorities have apparently conspired to hide a number of other political allusions in The Author's Farce, in the 1730 original (there were two 1730 “editions” of this, neither reprinted, not readily accessible) as well as in the 1734 revision—threads of the anti-Walpole satire that Fielding worked into his stage burlesques with increasing frequency. Some of this satire may also appear, rather unexpectedly, in The Mock Doctor (23 June 1732) and it is certainly evident in Tumble-Down Dick (29 April 1736), a play from Fielding's high “political” period that has strangely been left out of political account.
The Rise of the International Novel
Authors: Wegelin Christof
Published: February 2007

The american “international novel” derives its importance as a genre from a few outstanding practitioners—from the early Howells, above all from James and Edith Wharton. To say this is of course to suggest a definition which fits novels like A Foregone Conclusion, or The Ambassadors, or Madame de Treymes, the kind of definition Professor Cargill proposed recently in an article claiming the title of “The First International Novel” for James's The American. In such novels the conflict between different sets of manners and mores, “the mixture of manners,” as James called it in the preface to “Lady Barbarina,” is essential. Usually it leads to illumination, an illumination sometimes but not always shared by the hero. That depends on his intelligence and character.
Edith Wharton and Henry James: The Literary Relation
Authors: Bell Millicent
Published: February 2007

In the landscape of Edith Wharton's life the figure of Henry James is of almost too-distracting importance. He was the greatest man she knew. James himself had many friends and acquaintances such as Howells and Stevenson who stood equal beside him—he moved accustomedly among his peers from youth to old age—tout Edith Wharton had few intimates who were her creative equals, and none who towered into that eminence where James stood. Consequently, no discussion of her work can avoid contemplating the effect of his example and association; the danger, really, is that we will assume more effect than is there.
Thomas Butts, White Collar Maecenas
Authors: Bentley G. E.
Published: February 2007

All his life William Blake was a poor man, earning his living as a professional engraver, transcribing the genius and feeding the avarice of other men. Those who recognized his own genius were rare and unfashionable; their scarcity made Blake at times a bitter man, but their existence kept him alive. The man who most faithfully and consistently nourished Blake with cash and commendation was Thomas Butts.
Quevedo and the Court of Philip III: Neglected Satirical Letters and New Biographical Data
Authors: Crosby James O.
Published: February 2007

In 1613 Quevedo left Spain to join his friend, Pedro Téllez Girón, Duke of Osuna and at that time Viceroy of Sicily. Two years later Quevedo was chosen by the Sicilian Parliament to present in person the triennial contribution of 300,000 ducats to the King of Spain. During the eight months he spent in Madrid, the satirist gained a wealth of experience in intrigue and practical politics. The purpose of this article is to edit with brief comment letters recently uncovered in Spain which bear on this sojourn in Madrid. These documents clarify the nature of Quevedo's relationship with the Duke of Osuna, facilitate the analysis of his experiences at the Court and reactions to current political practices, and make possible the rectification of various misconceptions. No attempt will be made below to restate what is already known about these years of Quevedo's life.
The Rape of Lucrece and Shakespearean Tragedy
Authors: Walley Harold R.
Published: February 2007

Since its initial vogue during the lifetime of Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece has received short shrift from the general public and little more attention from critics and scholars. This relative neglect has done much to obscure the actual importance of the poem; for, quite apart from its intrinsic merits as poetry, The Rape of Lucrece constitutes one of the most explicit and illuminating documents which bear upon Shakespeare's development, and especially upon his coming of age as an artist. Written almost certainly during the year immediately preceding its registration on 9 May 1594, and hence in the interval between Shakespeare's apprentice experiments in the theater and his mature dramatic achievements with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the poem provides unique information about Shakespeare at a crucial point in his career. Frankly advertised, moreover, as a serious poem on a serious theme, it bears every evidence of having been undertaken by its author as a premeditated and highly self-conscious bid for recognition as a serious literary artist. Indeed, in the deliberate thoughtfulness of its conception and the conscientious care of its execution The Rape of Lucrece is one of the most laborious and studied works of art that Shakespeare ever produced. And as such, it affords a revealing index to the kind of thinking imposed on its creator at the time, and by the process, of its creation.
The Imprint of Herder's Linguistic Theory on His Early Prose Style
Authors: Blackall Eric A.
Published: February 2007

Herder's whole attitude to language develops quite coherently out of one single remark. This is the description, early in the Fragmente, of primitive language as “sinnlich.” As a qualification this would hardly have ranked high amongst aesthetic criteria at the time. Indeed it is doubtful whether, when here first enunciated by Herder, it was meant to imply praise or even approval. Having just said: “Bei den Gegenständen fürs Auge muste die Geberdung noch sehr zu Hülfe kommen, um sich verständlich zu machen,” Herder goes on to say of this early stage of language “und ihr ganzes Wörterbuch war noch sinnlich.” The wording of this statement is significant. “Die Geberdung muste noch sehr zu Hülfe kommen … ihr ganzes Wörterbuch war noch sinnlich”—in these two noch's there is the suggestion of imperfection. This is not surprising. Adelung suggests that sinnlich, meaning “based on unclear perceptions” is opposed to vernünftig meaning “based on clear perception.” Sinnlich, for him, implied therefore a certain degree of imperfection. It has been suggested that Herder was merely echoing G. F. Meier's rendering of Baumgarten's term sensitivus meaning “pertaining to the faculties of sensation.” Poetry, according to Baumgarten, was “oratio perfecta sensitiva.” And this is how Herder's apparently neutral description turns almost imperceptibly into a value-judgment; for it soon becomes apparent that he considers poetry not only as the earliest, but as the highest form of literature. A historical statement has therefore turned into an aesthetic judgment. Perfection is rather an ambiguous quality. Of the progress of language towards perfection, Herder says: “desto vollkommener wird sie [language] zwar, aber desto mehr verliert die wahre Poesie” (i, 154). Sinnlichkeit connotes immediacy. Adelung admitted that it was “in dieser unmittelbaren Empfindung äusserer Gegenstände … gegründet.” It depends whether one considers this an advantage. Adelung did not. Herder did. “Die stärksten Machtwörter, die reichste Fruchtbarkeit, kühne Inversionen, einfache Partikeln, der klingendste Rhythmus, die stärkste Declamation—alles belebte sie [language], um ihr einen sinnlichen Nachdruck zu geben, um sie zur Poetischen zu erheben” (i, 157). Sinnlichkeit gives emphasis; it elevates language to poetry. Note the means which Herder enumerates. For this is the most specific description of his ideal in language which we are to get for some time.
Evolutionary Ethical Dualism In Frank Norris' Vandover and the Brute and McTeague
Authors: Pizer Donald
Published: February 2007

Although Frank Norris' first two novels have been valued both for their intrinsic worth and for their importance in the history of American naturalism, they have also been severely criticized for their inconsistencies. Summarized broadly, these charges are, first, that there is a lack of consistency between Norris' dramatization of a deterministic system in McTeague and his frequent avowals of individual moral responsibility in Vandover; and, secondly, that there are inconsistencies within the novels themselves—that Norris appears to free McTeague from responsibility for his behavior and yet adopts a moral tone when discussing McTeague's sexual desires, and that though Norris for the most part blames Vandover for his choice of an evil life, he also seems to indicate in several passages that Vandover is the victim of irresistible larger forces.
Visual Art Devices and Parallels in the Fiction of Henry James
Authors: Hopkins Viola
Published: February 2007

No better “optical symbol” can be found for one aspect of Henry James than the photograph taken in 1906 showing him in top hat, cane and gloves in hand, bending slightly forward in the classic Daumier pose, taking in impressions of a painting. This is a portrait, however, not merely of the occasional James— the art critic, friend and befriender of painters, biographer of a sculptor—but also of the essential James—the master of the art of fiction. That his love of pictures and familiarity with the studio world were grist to his mill is evident in stories and novels such as “The Madonna of the Future” and The Tragic Muse in which his depiction of the artist and exploration of aesthetic questions are thematically central. Reflecting his experience of art less obviously but more significantly are the pictorial effects and art allusions permeating his fiction, both early and late. For though James was first and foremost a literary artist preoccupied with the problems of his own craft, his responsiveness to the visual arts was so keen, was so much an integral part of his consciousness, that it inevitably made itself felt in his literary technique. Clearly, a study of the pictorial aspects of his fiction is justified for the light it may cast on his method as well as on individual works.
Edmund Burke's Irish History: A Hypothesis
Authors: Weston John C.
Published: February 2007

In 1763 when Edmund Burke had not yet given up his plan to make his way in the world by literary efforts, he wrote a letter to William Gerard (“Single Speech”) Hamilton who had just procured for him a pension on the Irish Establishment. His purpose was to make it clear that in accepting the pension he would not be giving up all his time, some of which he wanted to devote to writing:
Anatole France and the First World War: The Correspondence with Carlos Blacker
Authors: Walton Loring Baker
Published: February 2007

Anatole France was so exclusively French that one hardly expects to find a foreigner in his intimate circle. His address books list very few aliens. Carlos Blacker is the only one of these who is listed four times. We have some forty letters from France to Blacker and an equal number from Blacker to France between 1915 and 1921. There were undoubtedly more. Their acquaintance dated back a number of years before these letters begin. The correspondence shows that France was capable of unexpected warmth at a time of life when friendships are not easily formed. France was seventy and Blacker fifty-five when associations of the war period deepened their relationship. By 1917 France was ending his letters with such expressions as: “A vous tendrement,” “Je vous embrasse tendrement.”
Wallace Stevens' “Visibility of Thought”
Authors: Riddel Joseph N.
Published: February 2007

Human experience, according to Santayana, may be described as a conflict between the spirit and the imperfections which distract it from the pure and ideal toward which it aspires. And yet, to complete the paradox, there is no spirit without these imperfections, the matrix of flesh and world, space and time, which contains it. This is as much as anything a poet's dramatic vision: it is Yeats's with his passion to preserve the senses in an eternity of time, and it is Wallace Stevens' with his more realistic search for a balance between the antinomies of self and world. For Stevens, the imagination is the single power that can effect the vital unity, in life or in poetry: it alone can provide the aesthetic economy of experience so urgent for the modern romantic sensibility. Stevens is a romantic, or better, a neo-romantic poet who has gone to school to the French Symbolists and post-Symbolists only to conclude that the ends available to the artist are not metaphysical but aesthetic, and thus human. The romantic poet necessarily lives in two worlds: that of his sensual experience and that of his imaginative vision. In those moments when he manages to blend the two, he achieves not only a poem but that singular experience of “truth” from which he draws his spiritual sanctions. And if God is absent from his universe, as he is from Stevens', the moments of reconciliation become increasingly problematical but no less pressing.
A Novel of Objective Subjectivity: le Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Authors: Stoltzfus Ben F.
Published: February 2007

During an interview with Jacques Brenner, published in Arts (March 1953), Robbe-Grillet asserted that Les Gommes is a descriptive and scientific novel. In January 1959, in an interview with Denise Bourdet, Robbe-Grillet stated that “l'observation scientifique consiste à décrire sans interpréter, à ne jamais donner une signification aux choses.” His novels are noteworthy indeed for their absence of analysis, and readers familiar with his descriptive method will have no difficulty concluding that if Les Gommes is a “scientific novel,” so also are Le Voyeur, La Jalousie, and Dans le labyrinthe. But in what way are these novels “scientific”? Is Robbe-Grillet initiating a “new realism” as has been suggested, or is it more accurately a new naturalism? If we may be permitted to define naturalism as a realism with scientific pretensions, and if we apply the rigorous pattern of Freudian determinism—provided we accept Freud's method as “scientific”—to the psychic and mental operations of Mathias in Le Voyeur, and of the jealous husband in La Jalousie, then these novels would seem to qualify as naturalistic.
Ibsen's Concept of Tragedy
Authors: Arestad Sverre
Published: February 2007

The extensive commentaries on Ibsen as a writer of tragedy are varied arid, as one might suspect, even contradictory. S. H. Butcher, for example, found Ibsen deficient as a tragic dramatist on nearly all counts. My primary purpose in this essay will be to present Ibsen's concept of tragedy through an analysis of Brand (1866), Ghosts (1881), Rosmersholm (1886), and The Master Builder (1892), with passing attention to Emperor and Galilean (1873), while my secondary purpose will be to determine how successful he was as a writer of tragedy.
The Ambassadors: A New View
Authors: Cargill Oscar
Published: February 2007

The retirement to Rye, which occurred in 1897, when James was fifty-four, distinguished between his life of experience and his life from ‘past accumulations’ (as he once called it). His peregrinations over, he set himself, masterwise, to producing a world compact of all he had been able, coherently, to think and feel.“ Despite the fact that The Ambassadors is one of the most original of all James's productions, no novel is so much the result of all his ”past accumulations“ as this one.
Objective Interpretation
Authors: Hirsch E. D.
Published: February 2007

The fact that the term “criticism” has now come to designate all commentary on textual meaning reflects a general acceptance of the doctrine that description and evaluation are inseparable in literary study. In any serious confrontation of literature it would be futile, of course, to attempt a rigorous banishment of all evaluative judgment, but this fact does not give us the license to misunderstand or misinterpret our texts. It does not entitle us to use the text as the basis for an exercise in “creativity” or to submit as serious textual commentary a disguised argument for a particular ethical, cultural, or aesthetic viewpoint. Nor is criticism's chief concern—the present relevance of a text—a strictly necessary aspect of textual commentary. That same kind of theory which argues the inseparability of description and evaluation also argues that a text's meaning is simply its meaning “to us, today.” Both kinds of argument support the idea that interpretation is criticism and vice versa. But there is clearly a sense in which we can neither evaluate a text nor determine what it means “to us, today” until we have correctly apprehended what it means. Understanding (and therefore interpretation, in the strict sense of the word) is both logically and psychologically prior to what is generally called criticism. It is true that this distinction between understanding and evaluation cannot always show itself in the finished work of criticism—nor, perhaps, should it—but a general grasp and acceptance of the distinction might help correct some of the most serious faults of current criticism (its subjectivism and relativism) and might even make it plausible to think of literary study as a corporate enterprise and a progressive discipline.
The Origin of the German Word Ehre ‘Honor‘
Authors: Must Gustav
Published: February 2007

Special interest in the German word Ehre was aroused forty years ago when Gustav Ehrismann dealt with Middle High German ere as one of the three cardinal virtues of the age of chivalry (“Die Grundlagen des ritterlichen Tugendsystems,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Alter-tum, LVI, 1919, 137–216). Since then this word has been repeatedly discussed by scholars, e.g., by E. R. Curtius (who opposed Ehrismann's views), Elisabeth Karg-Gasterstädt (in her detailed semantic study of the word in Old High German), Friedrich Maurer (in his investigations of the word in Middle High German), Eduard Neumann, and others. The same topic has also been dealt with in several dissertations, e.g., by Hildegard Emmel and by Frederik Mos-selmann.“ Recently monographs by Hans Reiner and by George Fenwick Jones have dealt with the concept of honor.
The World of Boccaccio's Filocolo
Authors: Perella Nicolas J.
Published: February 2007

Boccaccio's first work of importance is the Filocolo, a long rambling romance in prose, built around the well-known medieval legend of Florio and Biancofiore which it grieved the author to see relegated to the “fabulosi parlari degli ignoranti.” Boccaccio, that is, wished to ennoble the popular legend by giving it a literary and artistic dignity that it lacked in the oral tradition and in the French and Italian sources available to him. The very choice of the story is significant, for in its basic design it represents a theme that Boccaccio was to treat with predilection and consummate art in later works such as the Ninfale Fiesolano and several tales of the Decameron: the natural or instinctive love that attracts two young people of the opposite sex and the persistence of their love against the obstacles erected by an unsympathetic law or by class-conscious relatives concerned with preserving the distinctions created by social and economic position. In the Filocolo, however, this simple outline serves only as the nucleus or skeleton of a story of epic dimensions, for Boccaccio creates such Odyssean adventures for his separated lovers as to make for a seemingly endless and chaotic unfolding in which Virgil, Ovid, and Dante are only the most obvious and persistent influences.
Samuel Sandford: Villain from Necessity
Authors: Ross Robert H.
Published: February 2007

Modern scholars of the Restoration stage have been content largely to overlook the career of Samuel Sandford, the famous actor of villain parts. What little information is available on Sandford is widely scattered, but the few facts that can be assembled deserve careful attention. Because he was an actor of some eminence in his age his career is interesting per se. More important, from almost the beginning of his career in 1661 to the end around 1700, Sandford was typed in the public consciousness almost exclusively as an actor of villains. And so an analysis of his career not only affords some insight into the process by which a Restoration actor became typed but also permits several interesting speculations concerning the influence exerted by the audience over the Restoration stage. My purpose, therefore, is twofold. First, I shall examine why Sandford became typed; and I shall suggest that this occurred primarily because Sandford's personal appearance and histrionic techniques suited his audience's preconceptions of stage villainy. Secondly, I shall examine the results which ensued from Sandford's being typed. And I shall make two additional suggestions: that after the public image of Sandford as villain had become established, stage managers found it difficult, though not impossible, to cast him for parts which violated that image; and that playwrights, too, not only succumbed to the public stereotype but took advantage of it by writing into new plays villain parts tailored even to Sandford's personal appearance.
Wordsworth and the Copyright Act of 1842: Addendum
Authors: Noyes Russell
Published: February 2007

Recently there have come into my possession four hitherto unpublished autograph letters which throw further light on Wordsworth's exertions in behalf of the Copyright Act of 1842. Two are by W. E. Gladstone, one is by Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, and one is by Wordsworth. These letters were written during 1838, a critical year for the supporters of the bill.
The Curious Case of Professor Godbole: A Passage to India Re-Examined
Authors: Shusterman David , Fussell Paul
Published: February 2007

Although many critics of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India have mentioned that Professor Godbole, the Hindu educator, behaves somewhat queerly during the course of the novel, no one, so far as I can discover, since the book's publication in 1924 has seemed to have any serious doubt that Godbole is a man of genuine goodwill or that he is the source of much that is good. This conventional attitude has been expanded upon within recent years by several critics who have put Godbole forward as Forster's primary spokesman for cosmic and divine truth. Forster's point, they claim, is that Hinduism is closer to this truth than any other religion; the author is using Godbole to make this revelation known. To James McConkey, one of the proponents of the Godbolean viewpoint, “the full measure of the success” of Forster's Indian novel “suggests that Forster has finally come to terms with himself and his universe.” These terms are imparted through Godbole “the only person in all the novels who becomes the character-equivalent of the Forsterian voice.” Godbole's position is “one of detachment from human reality and from the physical world, a detachment obtained by as complete a denial of individual consciousness as is possible, that denial and remove bringing with them a sense of love and an awareness of unity.” Hindu metaphysics “bears a number of definite relationships to the stabilized Forsterian philosophical position.” It is Godbole who is “the one most responsible for whatever sense of hope is granted” in the last section of the novel. The “way of Godbole is the only possible way: love, even though to exist it must maintain a detachment from the physical world and human relationships, offers the single upward path from the land of sterility and echoing evil.” To Hugh Maclean, another Godbolean adherent, Mrs. Moore, the elderly Englishwoman, finds completeness only after death through the intercession of Godbole; the latter “excludes nothing” from his spiritual life, and because of this he “will be able [ultimately] to encompass everything.” It is only Godbole whose mind has seized on the order of the universe. Forster is advocating above everything else that people should become like Godbole, one who is able to accomplish the “absorption of the self within a transcendental frame of reference.”
Sartre and the Question of Character in Literature
Authors: Will Frederic
Published: February 2007

L'être et le Néant is a hymn in praise of the insubstantial. In that book the substantial emerges as the great enemy. It is the inert, the viscous, the spiritless. It is the realm of death, both in our conventional, literal sense of that word, and in the broader sense of whatever is not active, vital life at its most “authentic.” Among substantial forms of existence, in this broader sense, Sartre includes “character” or “selfhood.” He does not deny that character and selfhood exist: on the contrary he asserts their existence emphatically. They, and all other substantialities, alone have “being.” But the “being” of selfhood and character is inert, lifeless. We see this in introspection, Sartre says. Our character exists only in the past. As “being” it can never be “becoming.” Character is that essence which is lodged behind, even though in, us. That essence plays no part in the present of consciousness, the moving, insubstantial life which is what we distinctly are as living creatures.
The School for Scandal: The Restoration Unrestored
Authors: Schiller Andrew
Published: February 2007

Evocation of the spirit of a former age is one of the surest ways to demonstrate that the past can never be the present. Sheridan, in writing The School for Scandal, made an excursion into the Restoration, an act of literary nostalgia, and a recognition, perhaps, that he had been born a century too late. His purpose was clear: to write a neo-Restoration high comedy of manners. That he achieved it outwardly is certain. That he succeeded in resurrecting the spirit is a question—one which raises still another question: wherein lies the “spirit” of Restoration comedy?
NIS þæt Seldguma: Beowulf 249
Authors: Wood Cecil
Published: February 2007

“Now there is a man,” says Hrothgar's coast watch as Beowulf appears. No one doubts that nisþæt seldguma means this, once the litotes is resolved, but the precise meaning of the half line is another matter. Seldguma has been compared to Old Norse húskarl and the phrase then read as “this is no mere retainer.” It has been translated as “stay-at-home, cottager,” and compared to Old English cotsetla.
“As a Giftl …” Zhivago, The Poet
Authors: Lamont Rosette C.
Published: February 2007

An art critic in defining recently the special quality of an artist built up on Aristotle when he said, “The difference between an animal and a plant is that the animal throws off its young while the plant simply grows new buds upon the same stalk. The artist is an animal, not a plant.” One of the central themes of Pasternak's novel, Doctor Zhivago, is the peculiar need of the artist to eject the product of his creation. The act is life-giving, intimate, and personal, yet at the same time free and objective.
Design for Treachery: The Unferth Intrigue
Authors: Rosier James L.
Published: February 2007

Of the characters with whom Beowulf has an explicit association in speech and action, Unferth is without question the most difficult to assess, and his function in the Danish court would appear to be just as enigmatic. Other characters who play an active part in the events, such as Hrothgar, Wealhtheow, and Wiglaf, are depicted with clarity and consistency, but with Unferth the poet has proceeded deliberately by means of allusion and equivocation, or at least so it seems to the modern reader who is separated from the Anglo-Saxon audience for which some of our mysteries may not have existed at all. From one of the earliest comments on Unferth's role in the poem to the most recent, four primary assumptions about him have been reiterated, viz., 1) he has an important position in the Danish court, 2) he is trusted by the king and his followers, 3) he is later (after Beowulf's return to Geatland) involved in a conspiracy to overthrow Hrothgar's rule, and 4) he is at first estranged from and then reconciled with Beowulf. Relevant to the first two premises a query has persistently been raised: why is Unferth allowed to attack Beowulf with impunity and what motivates his abuse? The bases of these assumptions are not all of one kind: for one and two, students have relied on that vaguely understood epithet, ϸyle, and one comment by the poet (1166-67); for three, on specific allusions by the poet about Unferth's relation with Hrothulf (1164-68); for four, Unferth's gift of Hrunting and Beowulf's response to the gift. What I propose to do here is to reexamine these premises and the query in terms of the conception of ϸyle in Old English and Old Norse, the graphic representation of Unferth, and the problem of the sword-giving.
“Eager Thought”: Dialectic in Lycidas
Authors: Lawry Jon S.
Published: February 2007

Despite its sovereign status among English elegies and within English poetry in general, two strictures upon Lycidas continue in some degree to shadow the poem: the one would hold with Dr. Johnson that its pastoral apparatus is a flaw in terms both of art and of personal expression; the other would agree with G. Wilson Knight that the work lacks order or unity. Both strictures have become increasingly untenable in the light of one type of study which has helped to make reavailable the form and power of the pastoral elegy in itself, and of another type which has marked the structural and affective unity of Milton's poem. Yet some readers still may feel that Milton sets cool pastoral against impassioned personal outcry, and will consider the two modes of expression to be in direct conflict. Milton editors and critics therefore will continue to face the question of unity in Lycidas. Recently Douglas Bush and Merritt Y. Hughes, for example, delivered defenses of the poem in the course of registering adverse charges made against it.
Toward a Revaluation of Goethe's Götz: the Protagonist
Authors: Ryder Frank G.
Published: February 2007

Götz . . . has always seemed to me . . . rather a tedious play for non-Germans, says Ronald Peacock (Goethe's Major Plays) Manchester, 1959, p. 12). This verdict strikes uncomfortably close to the apparent value set on the play among English and American readers, and it implies at most a mixed compliment to the Germans, who presumably like it better. In Peacock's view, “a great act of historical sympathy is needed.” To respond to such a need is surely more an act of loyal charity than of critical judgment—and a dubious tribute to the work itself. In sum, Peacock finds the play historically “determined” not only by its sixteenth-century background but by its eighteenth-century genesis: Götz the uncorrupted “natural genius,” an idealized antithesis, in Herder's spirit for example, to the prevailing social order.
Psychology in the Early Works of Thomas Mann
Authors: Beharriell Frederick J.
Published: February 2007

Thomas Mann's debt to Sigmund Freud is well-known. It is an important part of the larger question of Freud's influence on twentieth-century literature in general. Conversely, it was two major essays by Mann, “Die Stellung Freuds in der modernen Geistesgeschichte” (1929), and “Freud und die Zukunft” (1936), which did much to establish Freud's reputation as one of the great thinkers of the century. Mann referred to psychoanalysis in many of his works, as witness the caricature of an analyst in Der Zauberberg. He freely admitted its importance for him, as in his confirmation of the apparent Freudianism of the Joseph stories. It remains far from clear, however, just when he first encountered Freud's ideas, and how much he learned from them. It would be particularly desirable to know with certainty whether the new psychological theories came as exciting revelations to the youthful Mann, or whether they merely confirmed conclusions which he had already intuitively reached. The latter possibility is suggested, inter alia, by the interesting anticipations of Freudian ideas in the early works of Arthur Schnitzler. Mann himself remained strangely vague and noncommittal concerning his first acquaintance with the new psychology. His reticence on this point contrasts with the openness and relish with which he discussed the chronology and extent of his debts to Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Wagner.
Etherege at Constantinople
Authors: Fujimura Thomas H.
Published: February 2007

“Essays on the Court Wits as individuals, however well done,” John Harold Wilson observed a few years ago, “have always been somewhat unsatisfactory because of a natural tendency to treat the subject of the essay as a phenomenon taken bodily from his cultural environment.” Sir George Etherege has suffered as much as any other important Restoration writer from this critical failing of examining a literary figure outside the context of his own age. The result has been a totally attenuated picture of Etherege as a rather superficial rake; and this has been paralleled by an equally attenuated understanding of his plays. This critical failing is due in large part, I think, to the lack of information about his life.
Structure and Meaning in the Parlement of Foules
Authors: Frank Robert Worth
Published: February 2007

The Parlement of foules is a poem in three parts: the prelude before the dream, the scene in the garden of love, and the debate among the birds. Each part differs from the others in its sources, content, mode of treatment, and tone. Because of these differences many-critics have argued that the poem lacks unity. Such arguments would be more convincing if Chaucer seemed unaware of the differences and if the three parts of the poem did not, in some way, serve a common purpose. It is probable, however, that Chaucer created these differences deliberately, for he appears to have worked to heighten and exploit them. A conscious artistic purpose is behind the poem's variety. Moreover, this variety is the agent of the poem's unity; it both contains and creates the poem's ultimate meaning. To make this clear, we shall look first at some of the ways in which Chaucer sharpened the distinctions between the three parts. And then we shall consider the ways in which the parts are unified and the purpose which is served by the tripartite organization.
Villains and Non-Villains in Hawthorne's Fiction
Authors: Luecke Jane Marie
Published: February 2007

Any study of Hawthorne's villains seems to demand first of all an examination of the word “villain” lest the category become as unwieldy as that group in Hawthorne's “The Procession of Life” who ranked themselves in “the brotherhood of crime.” When a term becomes all-inclusive, it is no longer useful, and since almost all of Hawthorne's tales and romances show a concern for sin and evil, there is a temptation to call all of his sinners, as well as all of those whose lives or actions bring some harm to others, villains. But this is a distortion since the word is defined simply as a person of depraved and malevolent character devoted to base or evil acts, one who deliberately plots and does serious harm to others.
The Imagery of Dreiser's Novels
Authors: Phillips William L.
Published: February 2007

The fiction of Theodore Dreiser has often been praised for its fidelity to the facts of ordinary experience, its massive accumulation and arrangement of incidents, and its criticism of bourgeois America. It has seldom been praised as skillful writing, however; and with almost the sole exception of F. O. Matthiessen, critics have dismissed Dreiser as a poor manipulator of the language, whose effects are achieved in spite of his style. It is usually suggested, furthermore, that beyond a recurring use of clothing as symbols, Dreiser had no awareness of the resources of image and metaphor. It is said that his efforts at comparison were likely to be hackneyed and incredibly jumbled, as in a passage in The Financier about men who fade into poverty: “They were compelled by some devilish accident of birth or lack of force or resourcefulness to stew in their own juice of wretchedness, or to shuffle off this mortal coil—which under other circumstances had such glittering possibilities— via the rope, the knife, the bullet, or the cup of poison.”
The Challenge of Folklore
Authors: Thompson Stith
Published: February 2007

These Remarks are written on a hotel balcony overlooking the last of the plains of Lombardy and the beginning of the Alps. The first snowfall of the season covers the distant heights and outlines clearly the great barrier between Italy and the rest of Europe. Just here two thousand years ago was the edge of the ancient classical world. Beyond the Alps were the hordes that threatened that world, that were to conquer much of it, and that in turn were to absorb its culture and carry it to lands then undreamed of. Through all the changes of the millennia these mountains have looked down on this spot. The snows of early autumn with which they are powdered today are no doubt much the same as those surveyed by Hannibal with his elephants, by Caesar on his way to Helvetia and Gaul, by Napoleon, and in these latter days so tragically by Mussolini and Hitler.
Action as the Essence of Poetry: A Revaluation of Lessing's Argument
Authors: Rudowski Victor Anthony
Published: February 2007

In terms of its effect on subsequent literary-theory and practice, the proposition that actions constitute the true subject of poetry is the most important aesthetic principle advanced in Laokoon. At the opening of the sixteenth chapter, Lessing attempts to derive this proposition deductively by arguing:

Doch ich will versuchen, die Sache aus ihren ersten Gründen herzuleiten.
The Devil in Mufti: The Märchenwelt in Gogol's Short Stories
Authors: Holquist James M.
Published: February 2007

Everything that is profound loves the mask. … I could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped wine cask. … Such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustable in evasion of communication, desires and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends.

Beyond Good and Evil

These words of Nietzsche say much about Gogol. They suggest his keg-like belly, the contradictions and evasions of his letters, his cunning and depth, and above all, those “ gaps and black holes in the texture of his style” which Nobokov describes in his study, in a chapter called, “Apotheosis of a Mask.” But he had other ways to hide his fragile gift—there is a certain dissimulation in the very generes he chose: his greatest comedy ends in “living statues” and he calls his novel a poema.
Prodigality and Time in The Merchant of Venice
Authors: Barnet Sylvan
Published: February 2007

A study of two motifs—prodigality and time—may help to reveal some of the meanings of The Merchant of Venice. Scornful of generosity, Shylock sees Bassanio and Antonio as prodigals, and thus he resembles somewhat the self-satisfied elder brother of the parable of the Prodigal Son. Bassanio's prodigality is in harmony with time; he does not calculate, as Shylock does, but acts intuitively, and because his wants are “ripe” he reaps a reward. Two examples: though he plans to attend a masque, to the audience's surprise he suddenly seizes the moment and departs for Belmont when the wind changes; at Belmont, in contrast to Morocco and Aragon, who offer reasons for their choices, Bassanio offers no reason for choosing as he does, except that the lead casket “moves” him. Such uncalculated responses to the present moment are fruitful, in contrast to the usurer's calculations about the future, and especially in contrast to the usurer's practice of risking nothing while (in Elizabethan terminology) “selling time.”
Certain Difficulties in Reading Marianne Moore: Exemplified in Her “Apparition of Splendor”
Authors: Parkin Rebecca Price
Published: February 2007

A marianne moore poem must be walked round slowly—parts picked up, handled, mused on, laid back—then the whole thing walked round again—and again. The reader may give up on a particular poem, deciding that for the present he cannot decipher it. But the disjecta membra will not give him up so readily. Jigsaw puzzles exasperate some. Half-submerged in consciousness, however, these pieces from Miss Moore's poems breed connecting links.
Las Cien Doncellas: Trayectoria de una Leyenda
Authors: de Cirre Por M. Manzanares
Published: February 2007

Durante la Edad Media y sobre todo en los primeros siglos, en las palabras de Pablo Luis Landsberg: “La fe en el orden preestablecido de la historia y en su forma eterna y limitada, originó, pues, para la conciencia medieval, la inclusión de la historia, por modo profundo, dentro de la gran realidad eterna. La historia fué considerada no en los accidentes del acontecer exterior sino en la necesidad de la esencia interior. No se buscaba la comprobación de los hechos ‘tal y como habían sido realmente’ (Ranke) sino que, en lo acontecido, buscábase lo eterno. El historiador de la Edad Media es el escritor de leyendas, que manifiesta en historias, acaso ‘falsas,‘ la esencia de las personas y los acontecimientos.”
Gnostic Mythos in Moby-Dick
Authors: Vargish Thomas
Published: February 2007

In moby-dick, Melville alluded to various eastern religions in addition to Christianity. Scholars noticing these allusions have tended to group without much discrimination Zoroastrianism (the fire worship of the Persians), Manicheism (belief in a universal duality of good and evil as coeternal principles), Hindu myths (such as that of Vishnu in Chapter lxxxii of Moby-Dick), and, less frequently, Gnosticism (without indicating how the particular doctrines apply to the novel). In proposing to treat chiefly of Gnostic influences on Moby-Dick, I shall contend that Melville applied Gnostic myths and doctrines more specifically and consistently than has been recognized, that he carefully distinguished between Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism, and that certain passages in Moby-Dick require familiarity with the Gnostic mythos to be understood. But only when discussing the most obscure of these passages would I claim that the Gnostics alone were in Melville's mind. No influence on his great book was exclusive. In proving the influence of Gnostic thought upon it, I have no wish to minimize the importance of, let us say, Zoroaster, Milton, or the Hindus. Thus in demonstrating one eastern religion's influence upon Melville, it is not my intention to unseat another's.
The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry
Authors: Benson Larry D.
Published: February 2007

Perhaps the most fruitful and exciting development in Old English studies in recent years has followed from F. P. Magoun's discovery that the Parry-Lord theory of oral verse-making can be applied to Old English poetry. This theory has caught the imagination of critics and has produced a “kind of revolution in scholarly opinion” not simply because it shows us that the style of this poetry is traditional—that has been known for many years—but because it offers a new and useful way of approaching the problems raised by this style, because it provides a new way of considering some of the relations between these poems, and because it casts light on an area that we thought was forever darkened, the pre-literary history of Germanic and Old English verse.