bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Definition of Romance
Authors: Griffin Nathaniel E.
Published: February 2007

Any attempt to define the romance must necessarily undertake to determine the differentia that separate this species of narrative art from that to which it is most closely related, viz. the epic.

So far as formal or material tests are concerned, it is impossible to discover any infallible criterion by means of which the two species may be distinguished. In form both are metrical narratives and in subject-matter fictions dealing with heroic adventure and achievement. Such are the Iliad, the Beowulf, the Nibelungenlied, and the Chanson de Roland as representing the epic and the Fierebras, the metrical Morte d'Arthur, the Roman de Troie, and the Roman de Thèbes as representing the romance. Again, while both may under certain conditions vary from this norm, both will be found, when they do so vary, to pass through much the same range of variation. Both the epic and the romance may, particularly when embodied in works of an alien character, be short. Short, for example, is the epic recital of the Battle of Brunanburh embedded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Short likewise are those passages of romance sometimes incorporated in the epic or drama, as the story of the lotus-eaters in the Odyssey and the stories of “the three caskets” and of “the pound of flesh” in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Similarly both the epic and the romance may, in the later stages of their development, be written in prose instead of verse. This is true of the Younger Edda as exemplifying the epic and the Huon de Bordeaux, the Merlin, and the Recueil des Histoires de Troie as exemplifying the romance. In prose is written likewise the large body of relatively late Greek romance from the Cyropedeia of Xenophon to the Heroicus of the Younger Philostratus.
Governmental Attempts to Regulate the Stage after the Jeremy Collier Controversy
Authors: Krutch Joseph Wood
Published: February 2007

Although Jeremy Collier's attack on the drama of his time and the subsequent “reform” of the stage in the direction of propriety and dullness have been regarded ever since as commonplaces of literary history, the relation between them has never been adequately investigated, and about this the greatest difference of opinion still exists. Ward declares: “In truth the position in which he [Collier] stood … had been proved impregnable. From this time forward a marked change became visible in the attitude of the Court, the Government, and a section at least of the ruling classes, towards the stage, and its own consciousness of the purposes and restrictions proper to the exercise of its art.” On the other hand, Mr. Whibley asserts: “The poets bowed their knee not an inch in obedience to Collier. They replied to him, they abused him, and they went their way… . The pages of Genest … make evidence the complete failure of Collier's attack.”
Paraphrasing in the Livre de Paix of Christine de Pisan of the Paradiso, III-V
Authors: Temple Maud Elizabeth
Published: February 2007

Many of us remember Matthew Arnold's recommendation in the Essay on the Study of Poetry of the line from Dante's Paradiso, (III. 85)

E la sua voluntate è nostra pace

as a touchstone of poetic value. The independent beauty of this line may be questioned by comparison with some lines that follow near it. The words of Beatrice in the fifth canto, from the first verse through the twelfth, for example, seem to have a tonal sweetness, with a richness of ethical content that might somewhat more justly be cited to illustrate Matthew Arnold's point. Few isolated lines, however, really shine out by themselves from any poet. We read or recall them with the mood induced by their setting. Climaxes they may be, but their sovereign value depends on the sequence, as the ear and the mind are addressed together, perhaps.
Strolling Players and Provincial Drama After Shakspere
Authors: Thaler Alwin
Published: February 2007

Elsewhere I have written of the actors who travelled “softly on the hoof” through the length and breadth of Shakspere's England, and I propose here to deal with their successors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They make part—perhaps a more important part than is generally understood—of the history of the drama and theatre in a period that is full of life and interest even though the greater glory had departed. To the student of Elizabethan times the ways and means of these “weather-beaten weary travellers” are significant because the strollers were, and are, the most conservative of all players. They continued the ancient and honorable traditions of the Elizabethans long after the patent theatres, the new scenes out of France, the new comedy of manners, and, finally, the new sentimentalism, had crowded the very memory of the days of the Globe and the Blackfriars and stamped the customs and devices of those great times as subjects for mockery. But the later strollers are worthy of study in and for themselves, or at least in the light of their practical contribution to the stage history of their time. To be sure, their predecessors at Stratford-on-Avon who gave Shakspere his first glimpse of the puppets dallying, came at a more opportune moment; but those who followed made the most of their opportunities. Bright-plumed “birds of passage” were they, and wheresoever they passed most men were glad of their coming. They left long trails of debt behind them, and played more than one rather scurvy trick upon their hosts, but they brought the old plays and the new away from the cramped quarters of London's theatrical monopoly into the furthest corner of the provinces. They kept England merry England still, besides crossing the ocean and establishing the theatre in the colonies—including America.
Mark Twain and Don Quixote
Authors: Moore Olin Harris
Published: February 2007

The purpose of this paper is to trace the influence of Cervantes upon Mark Twain, with particular attention to the supposedly autobiographical tales Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

A short digression will be necessary at the outset in order to overcome, if possible, an almost universal prejudice. The popular notion is that Mark Twain's genius “just grew,” like Topsy; that he was peculiarly a “self-made” man, the term “self-made” being understood to mean “lacking in book learning.” We like to think that Mark Twain, above all other authors, dug into the virgin soil of his native country, and brought forth rich treasures which could be found nowhere else. We like to say: “What genuine American humor! What a true picture of American boyhood! Nothing of Europe in Mark Twain! Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are real Americans!”
New Facts About Henry Porter
Authors: Shear Rosetta E.
Published: February 2007

Henry porter and his one extant play, The Two Angrie Women of Abingdon, are included in nearly all the catalogues of dramatists since 1600, but none of them give us any information about the man, although Francis Meres in 1598 mentioned him along with Shakespeare as “the best for comedy amongst us,” and critics since that time have compared the Two Angrie Women not unfavorably with Shakespeare's early comedies. The popularity of Porter's plays may be inferred from the fact that he appears no less than twenty-four times between 1596 and 1599 in Henslowe's accounts with the Admiral's Men. The extent of his dramatic work is not accurately determined, but five plays are credited to him alone or to him in collaboration with Chettle or Ben Jonson.
Animal Actors on the English Stage Before 1642
Authors: Wright Louis B.
Published: February 2007

Animals as theatrical performers before the Restoration have received scanty attention from commentators on English drama. The entertaining quality of performing animals off the stage during the early periods of the drama is well known. Bearwards, ape-leaders, and owners of trick horses and dogs roamed early Tudor and Elizabethan England. Along with minstrels, jugglers, mountebanks, and acrobats they contended with stage-players for popular favor. The Elizabethan love for bear-baiting has been so frequently discussed that it needs no reiteration. The dual use of Henslowe's Hope Theatre for animal shows and regular plays is an indication of the importance of this type of spectacle. Professor Strunk and Dr. Graves have shown that highly trained apes were often employed as entertainers in Elizabethan England; and, as the latter points out, even the histrionic talents of the lowly ass were not neglected.
The Origin of the Lyric Monologue in French Classical Tragedy
Authors: Lancaster H. Carrington
Published: February 2007

I use the term lyric in the sense of form rather than of inspiration and should say stances except that the word was not applied to the lyric monologues until 1630. My subject is the origin of the monologues, written in other meters than the alexandrine couplet, that are found in the plays of Corneille and his contemporaries. The most familiar examples are those of the Cid and Polyeucte. They are usually of a contemplative nature, but do not necessarily contain a soul struggle.
Spenser's Cosmic Philosophy and his Religion
Authors: Albright Evelyn May
Published: February 2007

In spite of the fact that Spenser, less than three years befor his death, published An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie and An Hymne of Heavenly Love, which show a mixture of strongly Christian elements with Platonic idealism, there has been a tendency of late to classify Spenser as pre-eminently pagan, or even atheistic. A moderate view is that of Denis Saurat, who, in his “Les idées philosophiques de Spenser,” concludes that religion was necessary to Spenser's temperament but impossible to his intellect. He credits Spenser with no systematic cosmogony or reasoned agnosticism; and, though he quotes Professor Greenlaw on Spenser's interest in contemporary scientific thought, he does not seem inclined to rate it so highly. Spenser, as Saurat depicts him, is by temperament a pagan: though he has a sincere desire for religious faith, he has at the same time an intellectual inability to believe.
Elizabethan Drama and The Works of Smollett
Authors: Ellison Lee Monroe
Published: February 2007

“If fielding had superior taste,” declared Sir Walter Scott, “the palm of more brilliancy of genius, more inexhaustible riches of invention, must in justice be awarded to Smollett. In comparison with his sphere, that in which Fielding walked was limited; and compared with the wealthy profusion of varied character and incident which Smollett has scattered through his works, there is a poverty of composition about his rival. . . . It is chiefly in his profusion, which amounts almost to prodigality, that we recognize the superior richness of Smollett's fancy. He never shows the least desire to make the most either of a character, or a situation, or an adventure, but throws them together with a carelessness which argues unlimited confidence in his own powers.” Few critical verdicts have been received with more general dissent. Apart from what most readers feel to be the injustice done to Fielding, the affirmations respecting Smollett have not gone unchallenged. Thackeray, although perhaps without having Scott in mind, has expressed an opinion almost diametrically opposite:

His [Smollett's] novels are recollections of his own adventures, his characters drawn, as I should think, from personages with whom he became acquainted in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have had; queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow college, in the country apothecary's shop, in the gun-room of the man-of-war where he served as a surgeon, and in the hard life on shore where the sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest perceptive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish and delightful broad humor.
The Nuremberg Schembart Manuscripts
Authors: Sumberg Samuel L.
Published: February 2007

The chief difficulty in tracing the origin of the secular drama in Germany is the lack of texts to prove the performance of other than religious plays. Nevertheless a sufficient number of secular texts have been brought to light to contradict the old belief that expansion of the comic scenes in the religious dramas resulted in the early Carnival play. M. J. Rudwin, in his notable study, proved the Carnival play to have been “the natural outgrowth of the Carnival customs themselves.” Modern historians of literature agree with him on this point but discuss the development of the Fastnachtspiel in Nuremberg no further than to declare its origin to have been in the most important masque of the time, the Schembartlauf. Yet in the recent special work on the history of the German drama, Das deutsche Drama, F. Michael disclaims any immediate connection between the Schembartlauf and the plays. Up to the present no detailed examination of the manuscripts in which the Schembartlauf was recorded, the so-called Schembartbücher, has appeared. It will be of advantage to study the actual content of the manuscripts in order to estimate their importance for the history of German literature. Conclusions may then be drawn as to the possible relation of the Schembartlauf to the Fastnachtspiele.
George Ticknor and Ludwig Tieck
Authors: Zeydel Edwin H.
Published: February 2007

Concerning Ludwig Tieck's relations to Americans, Köpke, in his biography of Tieck, merely says: “Von Nordamerikanern lernte er [sc. Tieck] den Theologen Robinson und den Literarhistoriker Ticknor kennen.” Viewed in the light of other sources, however, the relations of Tieck to George Ticknor, the American historian and student of literature, deserve more than this passing comment and indeed form an interesting chapter in the history of German-American literary contacts.
XIII. Saint Ambrose and Chaucer's Life of St. Cecilia
Authors: Emerson Oliver Farrar
Published: February 2007

The reference to Saint Ambrose in Chaucer's Life of St. Cecilia (C. T. G. vv. 271 ff.) has never been explained. Although Chaucer in this reference was clearly following his Latin source, Tyrwhitt regarded these lines as an awkward interruption of the narrative and wished that he could find reason for omitting them. Skeat gave up the problem with the words: “I cannot find anything of the kind in the works of St. Ambrose.” Professor Lowes, in his admirable article upon the interpretation of the two crowns, does not mention this Ambrose passage, or attempt to explain the expression the “palm of martirdom.” His only reference to Ambrose is incidental to his relation of the story of the bee lighting on the infant's lips, from the sermon on St. Ambrose by Jacobus de Voragine.
XVII. The Trial of Chivalry, A Chettle Play
Authors: Jones Fred L.
Published: February 2007

Shortly after completing my study of Henry Chettle I chanced to read the anonymous Trial of Chivalry, printed in 1605 by Simon Stafford for Nathaniel Butter, as having “bin lately acted by the right Honourable the Earle of Darby his servants,” and before I had half finished the play I became convinced that of the two dramatists concerned in its composition the chief was Chettle. This conclusion I reached quite independently, for I used the Tudor Facsimile reproduction of the quarto of 1605 and was unaware that Bullen in the introduction to his reprint had remarked: “If I were obliged to make a guess at the authorship, I would name Chettle or Munday, or both.” Nor had I observed that Fleay also had suggested Chettle as one of the authors of this play.
XXI. Whig Panegyric Verse, 1700-1760
Authors: Moore C. A.
Published: February 2007

Though of slight intrinsic value, Whig poetry of the eighteenth century constitutes a distinct chapter in the history of English literature. The earlier interest of poetry relating to affairs of state had almost invariably taken the form of personal eulogy, satire, or violent invective—types produced in extraordinary abundance during the Restoration. While such verse continued to flourish indefinitely, the complete development of the party system of government enabled poetry to acquire a much broader and more influential sphere. The great body of Whig verse written in the eighteenth century is devoted to the expression of party ideals; it is concerned with principles rather than personalities. This change of function, deeply significant for the future relation of politics and belles lettres, arose largely from the fact that poets were irresistibly attracted by what Chevrillon calls the psychology of Whiggism. Fortunately for the Whig cause, the versifiers contrived to find in the Whig dogma the political embodiment of the most popular moral sentiments of the age. The advocacy of Whiggism thus became a phase of a sentimental movement which, beginning early in the century, eventually “spread like a mildew over the whole surface of literature.”
XXVII. Is Rene Boylesve a Disciple of Balzac?
Authors: Schaffer Aaron
Published: February 2007

That René Boylesve is descended in a direct line from Balzac has for years been a commonplace with critics. As long ago as 1906, Henri Gheon styled Boylesve a “fils direct de Balzac.” Jules Bertaut, after pointing out that Boylesve's characters, like himself, are very “sensibles,” and that the provincials among them, having been forced to suppress their individualities, experience violent emotional crises when, for one reason or another, they tear themselves loose, adds this comment: “Le grand Balzac le savait bien, lui qui a dressé ses plus belles figures de grand passionnés dans d'inertes chefs-lieux de canton!” Pierre Lasserre says of la Becquée that it has “de fortes ressemblances avec un chef-d'œuvre balzacien.” Similarly, Winifred Stephens, in her essay on Boylesve, sees in his work “the minuteness of a Balzac,” and Mme Mary Duclaux, compares Boylesve's Touraine novels to the Scènes de la vie de province of the Comédie humaine. Indeed, the work of Boylesve almost inevitably calls up the name of Balzac. It is the purpose of the present paper to determine whether this resemblance is anything more than a superficial one and, if it is not, to see wherein lies the originality of Boylesve.
The Metres of the Brome and Chester Abraham and Isaac Plays
Authors: Fort Margaret Dancy
Published: February 2007

Of the six English miracle plays' dealing with the Sacrifice of Isaac, no two bear such marked resemblance as do the Chester and Brome plays. The close verbal agreements between these two have long been recognized and the problem which they present has been the subject of much discussion. To explain this special relationship two theories have heen advanced: first, that the plays are derived from a common source (either of French or early English origin), second, that one play is based directly on the other.
The Christus Redivivus of Nicholas Grimald and the Hegge Resurrection Plays
Authors: Taylor George Coffin
Published: February 2007

The three scholars, J. M. Hart, F. S. Boas, and L. R. Merrill, who have in recent years done most to call the Christus Redivivus to the attention of general readers and scholars have without exception emphasized especially the element of the Miles Gloriosus utilized in the early drama by Grimald with astonishing elaborateness and effectiveness. The four soldiers stationed by Pilate to guard the sepulchre of Christ are used by Grimald in apparently a more original manner than in any other single situation in the religious drama of the sixteenth century in England. Hart merely calls attention to the presence of the Miles Gloriosus elements in the play. Boas makes a great deal of it, emphasizing Grimald's ability to vary his style to suit the changing speakers and occasions. He gives an elaborate description of the most interesting scenes of the play in which the four bragging soldiers appear. “It would be interesting,” he says, “to know whether Grimald confided to Airy that he had later models than Plautus, and that in his tragi-comic treatment of a Biblical theme he had been influenced by at least one of the continental humanist playwrights, Barptholomaeus Lochiensis, whose Christus Xylonicus, first published at Paris in 1529, had been re-issued at Antwerp in 1537, and by Johan Gymnicus at Cologne in 1541. . . . . The action of Christus Xylonicus ends with the burial in the garden tomb, . . . .” Merrill in his very valuable contribution to the Grimald field of scholarship lays considerable emphasis upon the element of the bragging soldiers around the grave of Christ, and points out convincing evidence of the indebtedness of one of Sebastian Wilde's plays to this portion of the Christus Redivivus.
A Proposed Compromise in Metrics
Authors: Whitmore Charles E.
Published: February 2007

If I were optimistically inclined, I might call this paper “A Ready and Easy Way to Establish Harmony among Metricians.” Being aware, however, that the establishing of such harmony is about as probable as was the establishment of a republic in England on the eve of the Restoration, I shall be content with the more modest course of pointing out certain confusions which mark current controversy, and proposing certain simple remedies for them. Like most compromises suggested by onlookers, this one will doubtless fail to win the approval of extreme partisans on either side; but I hope that it is not wholly destitute of features which may commend it to those of more moderate leanings.
Anglo-Norman Books of Courtesy and Nurture
Authors: Parsons H. Rosamond
Published: February 2007

If the Normans were, as ten Brink has called them, the foremost representatives of chivalry, they certainly had good measure of instruction to fit them for the part. Among the flood of Anglo-Norman didactic literature which has come down to us, we find a number of treatises on manners for the benefit of budding chivalry; they differ from the many Continental Arts d'aimer in that they are mostly written for quite young boys, and the elaborate doctrines of courtly love are replaced by practical details of a page's service, mingled haphazard with moral precepts of a more general nature. Even when the pupil is considered as having emerged from pagehood and attained to the dignity of a lover, we never exchange an atmosphere of reality and common-sense for the complex artificiality of the first part of the Roman de la Rose, any more than we approach the literary grace and finish of that poem. The little Norman pages were instructed in no fantastic chivalry, such as bound the heroes of the romances, but in a doctrine calculated to assure their success in this world, without endangering their chances in the next.
Das Schwache Präteritum ALS Mischbildung
Authors: Collitz Hermann
Published: February 2007

Das schwache Priteritum ist hinsichtlich seines Ursprungs und seiner Entwicklung in vorhistorischer Zeit vielleicht die am heissesten umstrittene Formengruppe der gennanischen Grammatik. Dass es den Forschern schwer fällt sich vollig miteinander zu verstandigen, daran sind wir ja auch sonst gewohnt. Aber beim schwachen Prateritum scheint der Gegensatz der Ansichten grösser und die Einigung demgemass schwieriger als bei anderen Problemen. Was hilft es, hier von einem dentalen Präteritum zu sprechen, wenn der eine in dem Dental eine idg. Tenuis, der andere darin eine idg. Aspirate oder Spirans sieht? Und wie konnen wir auf Einigung hoffen, wenn wir die Wahl haben, dieses Präteritum mit dem griechischen Passiv-Aorist, dem idg. PassivPartizipium, dem idg. Aktiv-Aorist oder medialen Aorist, dem idg. medialen Perfekt oder gar dem Prasens lateinischer Factitiva zu verbinden? Es wird nicht notig sein, diese Vorschläge bier des Nilhcren vorzuführen und zu priifen. Man findet die Erklärungsversuche, welche bis dahin gemacbt waren, einigermassen vollständig in meiner Monographic Das schwache. Präteritum und seine Berkunft aufgezählt. Das Verzeichnis ist bis auf die Gegenwart weitergeführt von A. W. M. O&t in der Abhandlung “Das schwache Präteritum in den Genmanischen; Sprachen.” Ich kann mir Odé's Urteil über die neueren Theorien in vielen Fallen zu eigen machen. Auch trifft der neue Erklärungsversuch, den er vorlegt, meiner Meinung nach wenigstens bis zu elnem gewissen Grade das Richtige. Aber es bleibt doch ein beträchtlicher Rest von Meinungsverschiedenheit, der zu dem Versuche weiterer Verständigung cintädt.
The Spirit of the Nain Jaune. Its Attitude Towards Chateaubriand and Romanticism
Authors: Carnahan D. H.
Published: February 2007

In recent years, the value of the newspaper in the study A of literary movements in France is being recognized more than ever before. In such a study the Nain Jaune has its place, voicing as it does the literary and political views of an influential group of writers in the critical period of the early Restoration, an epoch when literary criticism and political expediency went hand in hand. A study of the literary history of such writers as Chateaubriand and Mme de Staël would not be complete without the political and social background furnished by such publications.
Ludwig Tieck and Friedrich von Raumer
Authors: Zeydel Edwin H.
Published: February 2007

Few German men of letters living in the first half of the nineteenth century had more friends than Ludwig Tieck, but of these none was more closely associated with him over a long period of years than Friedrich von Raumer, who was by adoption one of the distinguished Prussians of his day. Raumer was born at Wörlitz, Anhalt, in 1781; he studied law and political science at Halle and Gottingen and then entered the Prussian service as Referendar, Assessor and Rat, successively. In 1809 he became Regierunisrat in Potsdam and in the following year was transferred to the office of Chancellor Hardenberg. In 1811 he was appointed professor of history at Breslau, a post which he held until 1819, when he became professor of political science at Berlin. While a delegate to the German Parliament of 1848, he was sent to Paris as German minister, and on his return to Berlin, he became a member of the First Chamber there. In 1853 he was retired as professor but continued to deliver lectures until shortly before his death in 1873. He is regarded as a pioneer in German historiography, and as one of the leading German historians before Ranke. His two principal works are Geschichte der Hohenslaufen und ihrer Zeit in six volumes (1823-1825) and Geschichte Europas seit dem Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts in eight volumes (1832-1850), both splendid examples of the Romantic attitude toward history. Interest in literature is revealed in his fourvolume Bandbuch tur Geschichte der Literatur (1864-1866), as well as in several No veil en.
Mary Hamilton; the Group Authorship of Ballads
Authors: Tolman Albert H.
Published: February 2007

The interesting ballad “Mary Hamilton” appears in Child's collection in 22 full versions and six fragments. The heroine is usually represented to be one of the four Maries attending upon Mary Stuart. Hence it was natural to suppose that a certain known case of child-murder at the court of Queen Mary, ending in the execution of the unhappy mother, was the source of this ballad presenting a similar story. On December 21, 1563, Thomas Randolph, an agent of the English government in Scotland, wrote to Cecil as follows: The Queen's apothecary got one of her maidens, a French woman, with child. Thinking to have covered his fault with medicine, the child was slain. They are both in prison, and she [i. e., Queen Mary] is so much offended that it is thought they shall both die.
Tolstoy and Anna Karenina
Authors: Maninng Clarence Augustus
Published: February 2007

The problem offered by Count Leo Tolstoy to the world has not been advanced appreciably nor has a definite soluio been offered during the past years. Large numbers of hitherto unknown articles and stories have been brought to light. Nearly every person connected with the great writer during his last years has published memoirs and reminiscences. Nevertheless the serious question as to the nature of the real greatness of the man is still unanswered and no one has attempted a synthesis of the various views held about him.
The Nature Doctrine of Voltaire
Authors: Havens George R.
Published: February 2007

The importance of the appeal to Nature in the eighteenth century is well known, but the subject as a whole is so vast that it still awaits its historian. The present article aims to present in brief space the results of a study of this particular topic in the works of Voltaire. It is evident at once that in Voltaire the nature doctrine has less importance than it does in Diderot or in Rousseau or in a host of lesser writers, but this is not to say that it is negligible. On the contrary, it is much more influential in his thinking than one might at first be inclined to suspect, and it leads him to express ideas which one does not ordinarily associate with his name. Yet it is not at all surprising, on second thought, that Voltaire in this respect, as in others, should share the mental attitude of predecessors and contemporaries. Rabelais and Montaigne had appealed to nature. Fénelon had drawn for the readers of Télémaque an idyllic picture of Bétique and its inhabitants. Montesquieu's Troglodytes in the Lettres persanes make one think, not only of Rousseau, but of El Dorado in Voltaire's Candide. Then there was the Epicurean school of the Temple, with which Voltaire was in close contact when he was a youth of eighteen or twenty. In that group were men like Chaulieu and La Fare,1 who were imbued with a natural religion, which appears in Voltaire as early as 1716 and never disappears from his thought.
The Meter of the Popular Ballad
Authors: Steward George R.
Published: February 2007

In the history of English metrics the verse of the popular ballad occupies a strategic position. From it one may look backward toward Anglo-Saxon verse, and forward toward many developments of modern times. This investigation has been conceived in the belief that solution of some problems of ballad metrics not only will be of value in connection with the ballads, but also will open a new line of approach for the study of other verse, both more ancient and more modern. The principles here worked out will be found applicable, I believe, to popular verse in general; it is impossible, however, to cover the whole field, and the present investigation has accordingly been confined to the material in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, as the best-known, most readily available, and on the whole most authoritative collection. At the same time no effort has been made to scrutinize very carefully the canon. The battle of the ballads is not our battle. Trojan and Tyrian are alike to the metrist. Be a poem Christmas carol, song, border ballad, minstrel ballad, or ballad par excellence, there is no necessary peculiarity of its meter, and the evidence here presented will go to show that as a whole Child's material is indeed reducible to a single metrical norm. The few exceptional cases will be pointed out in their places, but in general examples can be drawn indiscriminately from any of the different types.
More Notes on Pearl
Authors: Emerson Oliver Farrar
Published: February 2007

Since the preparation of “Some Notes on the Pearl,” a new edition of the poem by Gollancz has appeared, issued in 1921 but too late for use in my former article. Besides, some new notes have been accumulating from further study of the poem, and another article seems warranted.
The Source of Chaucer's Rime of Sir Thopas
Authors: Magoun Francis P.
Published: February 2007

Numerous parallels, culled from Middle-English metrical romances to illustrate the style and the diction of Chaucer's Rime of Sir Thopas, have shown how successfully Chaucer burlesqued the verses of certain of his less gifted predecessors and contemporaries. More recently the parodistic character of Sir Thopas has been emphasized by Mr. J. M. Manly, who, in the same connection, adduced interesting evidence as to political satire latent in the poem. These studies of the style and the diction of Sir Thopas have contributed largely to our appreciation of the humorous character of the work itself and, more important still, to our knowledge of the poet; for a parody or a burlesque implies the special imitation of a model, and thus we conclude that Chaucer enjoyed an easy familiarity with at least one type of his native vernacular literature. Supplementing this rather imposing body of internal, stylistic evidence, comes a short but enlightening catalogue of metrical romances which the poet introduces towards the end of his own rollicking contribution to this genre:

Men speke of romances of prys,Of Horn child and of Ypotis,Of Bevis and sir Gy, Of sir Libeus and Pleyn-damour. (C.T., B 2087–90)
Rhetorical Balance in Chaucer's Poetry
Authors: Hill Mary A.
Published: February 2007

Modern criticism has renounced the notion that Chaucer is naïf, whether as man or poet. It has not, however, been so ready to acknowledge him, especially in respect to style, a fully conscious artist. “Splendour and artifice of style,” says Legouis, “whether the latter be personal or conventional, were unknown to Chaucer,—the wiles of rhetoric are absent.” Splendour of style, I agree, is rare in Chaucer, but not artifice. It is the object of this paper to point out that certain “wiles of rhetoric,” conventional and personal, were familiar to Chaucer. The particular artifice of balance, indeed, appears in Chaucer's poetry to such an extent and is used with such increasing effect that I am obliged to dissent from the statement of a second modern critic that Chaucer's sentences are “free from any studied balance or antithesis.”
A Middle English MS in the Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève, Paris
Authors: Cumming William P.
Published: February 2007

MS 3390 of the Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève of Paris contains a number of Middle English religious tracts, followed by Richard Rolle of Hampole's Form of Perfect Living and Ego Dormio. Certain of the religious tracts are found in other manuscripts in English libraries, and are usually ascribed to Wycliffe. The Ste. Geneviève MS is an octavo volume of 109 vellum leaves; it is written in Midland dialect in one hand of the early fifteenth century.
“Morgenstunde Hat Gold im Munde”
Authors: Jente Richard
Published: February 2007

This familiar German proverb first made its appearance during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, soon found its way into the popular collections and spread throughout Germany and also to Holland and Scandinavia. By the end of the seventeenth century it had become popular in all these countries, particularly in the schools where it served as a maxim to encourage diligence. Later it appears in literally identical form even outside Teutonic territory.
A New Biographical Source for William Cowper
Authors: Spiller Robert E.
Published: February 2007

The life of William Cowper has been written many times; first by his friend and fellow poet, William Hayley, and most recently by Thomas Wright, Principal of the Cowper School at Olney. The present manuscript, here reprinted in full, was probably prepared for the first of these biographers about two years after the poet's death. It is in the hand of the Rev. John Johnson, Cowper's cousin and constant companion during the last five years of his life. It was doubtless used by Hayley for his brief record of these years, but seems to have been unknown to all succeeding biographers. The dismal circumstances of this part of Cowper's life combined with the unscientific historical attitude of a century ago to make Hayley's account altogether unsatisfactory today. The diary comes to the modern student of Cowper, therefore, as virtually new source material for those years of his life which have always been the least documented.
Keats and Mary Tighe
Authors: Weller Earle Vonard
Published: February 2007

The first poet to cast a spell upon the impressionable mind of the youthful Keats was Mary Tighe. When Mrs. Tighe's Psyche and Other Poems was published in London, Keats, then in his sixteenth year, was fresh from school, where he had revelled in Lemprière and Spence's Polymetis. In the work of the Irish poetess the young reader found chivalric romance and Greek myth against a background of Celtic landscape and mood. The romantic melancholy and the luxuriant imagery of the Psyche touched the springs of his imagination; rhythm and phrase impressed themselves upon his memory and became a part of the fabric of his verse. The biographers and critics of Keats have done scant justice to Mrs. Tighe. Her influence upon the pseudo-Spenserian pieces of his earlier years has been recognized, but the fact that the Irish poetess was one of the most important sources of his poetic inspiration and vocabulary has been overlooked.
Gerstäcker in America, 1837–1843
Authors: O'Donnell George H. R.
Published: February 2007

Seldom do readers of Gerstäcker's Germelshausen, Irrfahrten, Wild-Dieb, etc., know how this author first appealed to, and won, his worldwide clientèle of the last eighty-odd years. I hope soon to present a truly adequate account of his life, letters and works; here I will but most briefly sketch his early life, depict his picturesque attempts to become a real American citizen, and indicate finally the truly dominant influence of this, his first American sojourn, over all his later career.
Actors' Names In Basic Shakespearean Texts, With Special Reference To Romeo And Juliet And Much Ado
Authors: Gaw Allison
Published: February 2007

One of the minor critical problems with regard to the early quartos and folios of Shakespeare relates to those textual irregularities in which the name of an actor appears in place of that of a character, suddenly transporting the reader from the land of make-believe to the Elizabethan tiring-room, and establishing a direct line of connection between the plays and the companies for which they were written.
D'Avenant's Macbeth and Shakespeare's
Authors: Spencer Hazelton
Published: February 2007

Our first reference to the acting of Macbeth on the Restoration stage is to be found in a list of plays drawn up by Sir Henry Herbert, the master of the revels, and dated November 3, 1663. The list includes the following item: “Revived Play. Mackbethe …. [£]1.” This reference agrees with Downes's assertion that before its presentation at Dorset Garden with “new Cloath's, new Scenes, Machines, as flyings for the Witches; with all the Singing and Dancing in it,” the play had been acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields. There, in the first house directed by D'Avenant, Samuel Pepys saw it on November 5, 1664, December 28, 1666, January 7, 1667, April 19, 1667, October 16, 1667, November 6, 1667, August 12, 1668, December 21, 1668, and January 15, 1669.
The Passionate Shepherd; And English Poetry
Authors: Forsythe R. S.
Published: February 2007

The aim of the following paper is two-fold. First, its endeavor is to point out the probable source of Christopher Marlowe's posthumously published pastoral poem, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” and to trace the direct influence of this set of verses through English literature down to the present time. Second, the article strives to demonstrate the fact that, initiated by Marlowe's poem and its frequent imitation, a literary device, “the invitation to love,” became established in English literature and has persisted in it down to our own time. My design, therefore, may be briefly given as a discussion of “The Passionate Shepherd” and its influence, with an incidental history of the invitation to love so far as it is related to Marlowe's poem.
The Meter of Piers Plowman
Authors: Stewart George R.
Published: February 2007

Metrical interpretation of the important group of Middle English alliterative poems, of which Piers Plowman may be considered the type, has long been a subject of controversy. The present study aims, too hopefully perhaps, not at an entirely new hypothesis, but at harmonizing the two old theories in the light of recent general study of English metrics. As with so many efforts at peace-making, this may result merely in a three-cornered fight in place of a duel, so that the end may be only confusion worse confounded. We can, however, but try.
Churchill's Influence on Minor Eighteenth Century Satirists
Authors: Beatty Joseph M.
Published: February 2007

Between the years 1761 and 1764, Charles Churchill was the leading figure in English controversial literature; his poems occasioned multitudes of replies, many of them anonymous, most of them of third-rate literary merit. Had these replies come from distinguished writers, it is probable that Churchill would not today be an almost unknown figure in the history of English literature.
French Dramatic Sources of Bulwer-Lytton's Richelieu
Authors: Qualia Charles B.
Published: February 2007

Although Bulwer-Lytton, in the preface to Richelieu and in various footnotes, acknowledges certain sources for his drama, notably two French novels, he nowhere records any obligation to French dramas. At the same time he remarks that in handling historical data he has availed himself of that “license with dates and details which poetry permits and which the highest authorities in the Drama of France herself have sanctioned.” This statement in his preface raises a two-fold question: Who were the “highest authorities” whom Bulwer had in mind, and to what extent was he indebted to them? In such an inquiry no less than three French dramatists offer material for consideration.
On Newness in the Novel
Authors: Jenkins T. Atkinson
Published: February 2007

No doubt you have noticed that the forms of literary production which show the most life today are lyric poetry, drama, and the novel;—and of these three, the greatest by far is the novel. Truly, the production in this field is now prodigious. A recent estimate was that the present winter season would see the publication in English of some three thousand works of fiction. The French critic, Georges Duhamel, acting recently as reviewer for the Mercure de France, says that for several years he was compelled to read between six and seven hundred novels annually; and this, he adds, required not only a stout heart and a good deal of patience, but even a good constitution, a certain physical resistance. A French publisher, announcing a new collection of novels, states that in France the novel is now the most “acute” (aigu) and the most “taking” (prenant) form of literary activity; that it dominates, at the present hour, the whole of modern literature.
A New Manuscript of the “Récits D'un Ménestrel de Reims”
Authors: Shepard William P.
Published: February 2007

The charming collection of legends, anecdotes and fables known as the Récits d'un ménestrel de Reims is one of the gems of Old French literature,comparable,in its naïveté and grace, to the prose parts of Aucassin et Nicolette. It has been published three times under different names. The latest, and the only critical edition is that by N. de Wailly, entitled Récits d'un m. mestrel de Reims au treizième siècle.
Tasso's Holograph Annotations to Horace's ARS Poetica
Authors: Altrocchi Rudolph
Published: February 2007

Among the incunabula in the John Hay Library of Brown University are two quarto editions of Horace's Opera, with comment by Cristoforo Landino, one published in Florence in 1482 “per Antonium Miscominum,” the other in 1483 in Venice “per Joannem de Forlivio et socios,” the latter edition probably pirated from the former. Both volumes contain holograph annotations by Pomponio Leto, by Bernardo Tasso and by Torquato Tasso; and both volumes, so far as I can ascertain, have been overlooked by scholars both in Italy and in this country. I have, therefore, undertaken to study part, at least, of this material.
Three AUTOS of Jorge de Montemayor
Authors: Whyte Florence
Published: February 2007

Montemayor, the illustrious author of Diana, has not until recently been accorded a place among Spanish dramatists. His name does not appear in the catalogue of La Barrera nor in the Orígenes del Teatro Espanol of Moratín. The only mention of his dramatic activity, so far as I know, is the brief description of the autos here printed in the history of the early Spanish drama by Professor J. P. W. Crawford. These quin-tillas, it is true, afford little promise of the matchless beauty of diction which distinguishes the Diana but, quite apart from the later fame of the author, the autos possess the interest inherent in all early drama.
The Paradox of Rousseau
Authors: Tresnon Jeannette
Published: February 2007

A few years ago, in a series of articles on the theory of the natural goodness of man in the writings of Rousseau, Professor George R. Havens defended the startling thesis that, after all, Jean-Jacques was not the rebel against tradition that the world has long considered him. Professor Havens claims that Rousseau's theory of natural goodness, when properly understood, is not necessarily related to that doctrine of an “effortless morality” which is so often associated with Rousseau. Each of the three different conceptions of la bonté naturelle which he distinguishes in the works of the great Jean-Jacques, (1) primitive goodness, (2) instinctive goodness, and (3) virtue (or, “goodness as harmony with man's higher nature,”) he finds not fundamentally incompatible with the humanistic or traditional attitude toward life and toward morals.
Canceled Passages in the Letters of Robert Burns to George Thomson
Authors: Ferguson J. Delancey
Published: February 2007

If any part of Robert Burns' extensive correspondence would seem to have been thoroughly edited, it is the series of letters he wrote to George Thomson in the course of his contributions to that worthy's Select Collection of Original Scotish Airs. Unlike the rest of the correspondence, this series was never dispersed. Though one letter somehow found its way into the Pickering Collection, and so into the British Museum, the remaining fifty-five continued in Thomson's possession until his death in 1851. In the following year they were bought by Lord Dalhousie, in whose collection they remained until they were acquired by Mr. J. P. Morgan. Thomson had placed the letters in the hands of Dr. Currie, the poet's first biographer, who selected mangled fragments for publication, and during their half-century at Brechin Castle they were freely accessible to Burns scholars, among them Scott Douglas and William Wallace. The former of these declared in his 1877 edition of the Complete Works that the letters to Thomson “are here for the first time printed exactly as they appear in the original manuscripts” —a claim which with true editorial amenity is balanced by Wallace's statement that “an examination of the letters written by Burns to George Thomson . has enabled me to reproduce this correspondence accurately for the first time.”
Heresy Concerning Keats
Authors: Snow Royall
Published: February 2007

Of what song the sirens sang Sir Thomas Browne, being a quaint and theoretical old gentleman, probably had some private opinion, and of just what John Keats meant when he declared (or the urn rather obviously declared for him) that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” more than one critic has advanced a not so private opinion. The statement is so lucid and so guilelessly simple, taken alone, that it cannot be misunderstood, but put into its context it is like a man of too severe ideals in a naughty world—promptly at outs with the neighbors. It disagrees so sharply both with the ode it concludes, and the odes which follow it, that it is become what scholars in their odd language would call a “crux.” The answer is simpler than might be expected. One may very reasonably ask whether Keats ever even said “Beauty is truth,” and the answer is: No, he probably did not say it, nor anything like it.