bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Addison's “Enquiry After Truth”: The Moral Assumptions of his Proof for Divine Existence
Authors: Edward A. , Bloom Lillian D.
Published: February 2007

The period between the Restoration and the first half of the eighteenth century in England is marked by the development of a religious spirit typified by reaction to Puritanical dogmatism. Affecting all levels of society, the new spirit encouraged inquiry into the theological assumptions of divine existence. The resultant liberal speculation was in sharp contrast to the close-minded “enthusiasm and superstition” which the neo-classicists commonly associated with the Age of Crom-well.1 With the new and rigorous trend toward open-minded inquiry came a resurgence of rationality and a rejection, in whole or in part, of all tenets of divine existence not founded upon demonstrable evidence. Theological discussion became fundamental; its method of investigation, like that of modern science, was based upon factual premises.
The Poems of Humfrey Newton, Esquire, 1466–1536
Authors: Robbins Rossell Hope
Published: February 2007

The poems of Humfrey Newton, printed herewith for the first time from his commonplace book (the Capesthorne MS., now Bodleian MS. Lat. misc. c 66), have lain disregarded for over four hundred years, known only in manuscript to his immediate descendants and to an occasional antiquary. Humfrey Newton is no more than a minor poet, but he is important for three reasons. Any writer about whom there exist biographical data is a welcome addition to the limited roster of known authors of the late fifteenth century. Secondly, Newton uses many Cheshire words, and his texts provide a large secondary source of dialect and provincial words, and examples of usages earlier than those hitherto recorded. Finally, Newton's original poems and those well-known texts he copied are an indication of the literary interests of the provincial reading public of about 1500.
The Liber de Dictis Philosophorum Antiquorum and Common Proverbs in George Ashby's Poems
Authors: Bühler Curt F.
Published: February 2007

The three poems associated with the name of George Ashby have been readily available to students of Middle English verse for the past half century in the edition prepared for the Early English Text Society by Mary Bateson. It does not appear, however, that any particular inquiry has been undertaken as to the use Ashby made of possible sources. Indeed, in the case of his first poem (A Prisoner's Reflections) such a study holds little promise of being very rewarding, as the poem is, to a considerable extent, frankly autobiographical. The Active Policy of a Prince, in turn, is a collection of moral commonplaces of a more than commonplace nature—doubtless the number of parallels to other poems of this genre would be most impressive, and perhaps equally tedious. The Latin title of the third poem (Dicta opiniones diversorum philosophorum) suggests its own origin and Miss Bateson has correctly pointed out that this poem is based upon that Latin work which, in its English form, constitutes the first dated work to be printed in England—
L'introduction Des Vers Melés Sur La Scène Classique
Authors: Bray Rene
Published: February 2007

Les trois expressions de vers libres, de vers irréguliers et de vers mêlés s'emploient indistinctement au XVIIe siècle pour désigner les vers où se mélangent les différents mètres, sans qu'un ordre puisse être discerné dans le retour du même mètre: La Fontaine dans ses Fables, Molière dans Amphitryon, Corneille et Molière dans Psyché ont usé de cette forme poétique.
Lawrence's Collected Poems: The Demon Takes Over
Authors: Bartlett Phyllis
Published: February 2007

It is well known that D. H. Lawrence was an unsparing rewriter of his fiction, and the tradition persists that “he could never revise, he could only rewrite.” Yet, although he rewrote a number of poems, as he did his short stories and novels, he revised many more—nearly all of them, in fact, either before or after publication. His most concentrated period of activity as a poetic reviser was the winter of 1927–28, when he collected his poems for the publisher Martin Seeker, and he remarked at this time that he felt “like an autumn morning, a perfect maze of gossamer of rhythms and rhymes and loose lines floating in the air.” No wonder he felt this way, for he had been altering rhythms, rhymes, single words, and punctuation in addition to rewriting whole stanzas and sometimes whole poems. In a few weeks he altered the face of his early poems as drastically as the arch-revisers Wordsworth and Tennyson altered theirs in the course of many years.
Candide's Garden
Authors: Bottiglia William F.
Published: February 2007

“Voltaire'S tales,” asserts Norman L. Torrey, “have a way . . . of summing up certain periods of his existence and certain problems with which he was then faced” (Spirit of Voltaire, New York, 1938, p. 50). In the case of Candide, the period was the decade of the fifties; the central problem, that of human conduct in relation to the somber mystery of physical and social evil. And it is an eloquent testimony to the distinctiveness and realism of its content that, viewed as a whole, Candide pursues a course of intellectual argument which parallels the evolution of Voltaire's cultural attitude during that decade—a decade wherein the most illustrious personality of a highly optimistic age irrevocably abandoned the relative complacency of his earlier years, inclined toward pessimism, and finally won through to a melioristic affirmation.
“Or Else This Were a Savage Spectacle”
Authors: Stirling Brents
Published: February 2007

Modern readers are prone to find the tragedy of Brutus in his incorruptible devotion to high principle and fair play. Many members of the Globe audience, however, could see in him not only magnanimity but rich complications of misplaced sincerity and self-deception. For in sixteenth-century views of Roman history the conspiracy against Caesar often exemplified a flouting of unitary sovereignty, that prime point of Tudor policy, and thus was bound to end in the anarchy thought to accompany “democratic” or constitutional checks upon authority. Certain judgments of Elizabethan political writers who refer to Brutus are quite clear upon this point. Although naturally aware of the honor and liberality shown by Brutus, Shakespeare's contemporaries could thus perceive in him a conflict between questionable goals and honorable action, a contradiction lying in his attempt to redeem morally confused ends by moral clarity of means. As with Othello, the Elizabethan tragedy of Brutus is one of confusion, of integrity and plain dealing which not only accompany the protagonist into evil but continue to reassure him in his error.
The Plan of the Canterbury Pilgrimage
Authors: Owen Charles A.
Published: February 2007

Those who have suggested theories of the number of days Chaucer intended the pilgrimage in the Canterbury Tales to last have either confined themselves to a consideration of the journey to Canterbury or have assumed that it would take the pilgrims the same length of time for their return. Thus Miss Rickert, finding that groups such as the one described by Chaucer ordinarily traveled thirty miles in a day, “insisted on two days each way.” And Manly, after discussing the time it took the pilgrims to reach Canterbury and arriving at no definite conclusion, decided that the question was of no importance, “since the whole conception of a series of tales told while riding by so large a group of pilgrims is, however entertaining, entirely unrealistic.” The conception, though perhaps unrealistic, has been accepted by generations of readers as thoroughly as any artistic postulate. The stage of the Canterbury Tales is the road from London to Canterbury, and the acts of the finished work would have been the days of the pilgrimage. The evidence for Chaucer's intentions is slight, yet, with the confirmation provided by contemporaries familiar with conditions of pilgrimage, it is sufficient to indicate a five-day journey.
Readings from the Thorkelin Transcripts of Beowulf
Authors: Malone Kemp
Published: February 2007

Thanks to subventions from the American Philosophical Society and the Johns Hopkins University, I was able to spend three months of the year 1948 in Copenhagen, where I checked against the originals (in the Great Royal Library) Julius Zupitza's readings from the A and B transcripts of Beowulf.1 In the following I report my findings, except for those cases where I have neither additions nor corrections to make. For convenience of reference I give my readings and comments by line of verse, not by MS. page and line.21 conform to Z's practice of giving the A and B readings in italics.
The Lily and the Rose: Symbolic Meaning in Tennyson's Maud
Authors: Johnson E. D. H.
Published: February 2007

“You have but fed on the roses and Iain in the lilies of life.” With this Swinburnian line Tennyson concludes the introductory section of Maud and turns to the lyrical development of the conflict for which preparation has been made. In its immediate context the statement is deliberately ambiguous, suggesting little more than that Maud has hitherto led a sheltered and luxurious life. Yet the announcement of the lily and rose motifs in this place is not without significance. Considered apart, the two flowers evoke a wealth of traditional symbolic meaning, traceable throughout English poetry from Chaucer on; placed in direct relation to each other as here, they create an added potential for dramatic interplay. That Tennyson understood and desired to exploit the dramatic uses to which symbols may be put becomes apparent on analysis of the conditions under which the lily and rose reoccur in subsequent passages of the narrative.
James Hogg's “Chaldee Manuscript”
Authors: Strout Alan Lang
Published: February 2007

Among the Blackwood Papers left by the late George William Black-wood to the National Library of Scotland are some eighty pages entitled “Original manuscript of the Chaldee MS. by James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd, with his Letters relating to it; also Mr. Blackwood's notes thereon, and other Letters....” The National Library of Scotland has most generously sent me microfilms of this material.

1 A book of engravings published by Blackwood. Patrick Fraser Tytler discusses the work in Blackwood's Magazine (Nov., 1817), ii, 205.
The Brevity of Friar Laurence
Authors: Evans Bertrand
Published: February 2007

Critical comment on Romeo and Juliet in the past hundred and seventy-five years has made two of Shakespeare's alleged errors in that play loom above all others. These I shall call the trespasses of Friars Laurence and John: Friar Laurence, it is said, talks too much and thus detains the final curtain; Friar John enters a house suspected of contagion and, much too conveniently, is detained. My general purpose here is to examine the two problems within a single frame, for I believe they must be so reviewed if the validity of long-standing charges is to be fully tested. Furthermore, although the incident of Friar John is the graver “fault”, my review of that problem is undertaken in part as a means of approach to the lesser “fault”, the speech of Friar Laurence. Refined, then, my primary purpose is to focus some more light on the latter problem. Although the ground is widely familiar, I shall first summarize and briefly document critical opinion on each problem in order to define the issues sharply and to make assurance doubly sure that no reader will suppose that I have invented them.
The York Plays of the Dying, Assumption, and Coronation of Our Lady
Authors: Mill Anna J.
Published: February 2007

The comparative scarcity of evidence as to dramatic performances of saints' miracles in mediæval England has frequently been the subject of comment. The only surviving independent texts of separate plays are those of Mary Magdalen, St. Paul, and the Cornish Meriasek; and the list of recorded performances is far from impressive. Particularly noticeable is the almost complete lack of evidence of such independent Miracles of Our Lady as would correspond to the amazing French series of Miracles de Notre Dame.1 The Lincoln play of the Assumption (sometimes Ascension) and Coronation of Our Lady, undertaken by the cathedral clergy over a long period, and, perhaps, as time went on, linked with the municipal St. Anne's play, is unusual.2 But, if self-contained plays of the Virgin Mary are notable mainly by their absence, there is ample evidence of a well-established group of Death and Assumption of Mary plays within the framework of the regular Corpus Christi cycles. Texts of such groups have survived in the York Register3 and in the Ludus Coventriœ.* Records of such plays occur at Newcastle, where the Burial of the Virgin was played by the masons;6 at Beverley where the priests, and at Aberdeen where the tailors were responsible for the Coronation of Our Lady;6 and, as we shall see, at York. At York, too, as elsewhere, certain features, at least, of the Assumption Play seem to have been incorporated in royal entry civic celebrations.
Old Spanish Paladino, Palaciano, Palanciano, Palaciego
Authors: Malkiel Yakov
Published: February 2007

Structurally parallel derivatives from a given primitive (such as Lat. TENEBR-ICUS beside TENEBR-OSUS, Fr. verd-eur beside verdure, OSp. trist-eza beside trist-ura) in the historical perspective mostly turn out to have been successive rather than simultaneous offshoots.1 As long as such formations are studied merely in word lists illustrating the ranges of the individual suffixes that go into their making, the historical sequence of events is bound to pass unnoticed or, at least, not to remain fully discernible. To shed light on the relative chronology, it is advisable to select, as an appropriate unit of inquiry, the growth of separate word families showing sufficient proliferation of derivatives. The implicit severe limitation of scope allows the explorer to focus attention on the constantly changing interrelations between the nuclear formation of each family (the primitive) and its satellites in a number of carefully selected, clearly defined cases, in which adequate documentation can be furnished and the number of unknowns in historical reconstruction is reducible to the barest minimum. These shifts are in accord with the observable semantic expansions and contractions of the radical element and the ceaselessly changing availability of formatives, which, in turn, gradually experience extensions and reductions of their original scopes, proportionate to the number of currently used derivatives in which they are represented (to the extent to which they can be individuated and detached by untutored speakers). The linguistic historian can thus work out an intricate pattern of attractions and repulsions between radical and formatives. If his interest broadens out into culture history, he is further able, in the concrete case of the Hispano-Latin lexicon, to follow the (frequently tortuous) course of an important word-family, including all its ramifications, over a period of two thousand years, with the aim of distinguishing between the services that each member of the word-family, through incessant readjustment, has lent to consecutive generations of speakers, each in search of new expressions for newly-felt needs.
What is the Stream of Consciousness Technique?
Authors: Bowling Lawrence Edward
Published: February 2007

Despite the fact that the stream of consciousness technique occupies an important position in twentieth-century fiction, there is no general agreement as to where the method originated or what it really is. As Frederick J. Hoffman observes, “Writers and critics are both confused by the idea of ‘interior monologue,’ or the ‘stream of consciousness,’ as it is more familiarly known.”1 Elizabeth Drew says that the stream of consciousness technique was “invented by Dorothy Richardson.”2 Katharine F. Gerould remarks that Henry James “introduced the method into English fiction.”3 In an editorial note appended to the English edition of Edouard Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coupés, James Laughlin holds that Dujardin invented interior monologue.4 In making this statement, he is following the position taken by Dujardin in Le Monologue intérieur, in which he attempts to describe and define the method first used by him, he says, in Les Lauriers.
The Inherent Values of Eighteenth-Century Personification
Authors: Wasserman Earl R.
Published: February 2007

The current insistence upon a new poetic mythology to serve as a unifying reference frame for human experience and thought has recently provoked from Bertrand H. Bronson a brilliant defense of the eighteenth-century use of personified abstractions.1 Bronson properly recognizes in the eighteenth-century affection for personification a reflection of the emotional power lent to universals by the mathematicism that had created a sense of an ordered universe operating by simple and general laws. To the unity of this “view of the world so comprehensive and assured as to enable us to state common experience in general terms” he has opposed the fragmentary world of modern naturalism which requires expression by fragmentary concrete symbols. The neoclassicist conceived the norm to be the universal, which particulars struggle to fashion, and therefore he sought, in the highest forms of his art, to express himself in terms equally eternal and comprehensive as the laws of nature. Personification satisfied the desire for the grandeur of generality; “labored particularities” in themselves distract from the largeness of thought, for “great thoughts are always general.” Bronson's paper is salutary, for we have too long and too uncritically scorned what one modern critic has called “those allegorical capitals which the age affected.” We are indeed misguided in judging on the basis of our own responses, conditioned by our own civilization alone, that the personified abstraction was but a literary convention sterile of emotional force in the eighteenth century. And in relating personification to the emotional excitation the age received from the contemplation of a harmonious universe, Bronson has supplied us with the proper framework for a more nearly accurate reading of much eighteenth-century poetry.
Courtly Allusions in the Plays of Calderón
Authors: Hesse Everett W.
Published: February 2007

Soon after the death of Lope de Vega in 1635 Calderón was recognized as the foremost playwright of Spain and of the pleasure-loving court of Philip IV. It was not long before Philip decided to bestow upon his protégé the coveted order of Santiago. Pope Urban VIII signed the pontifical dispensation on April 28, 1637, and from that day on Calderón wore the insignia of his newly acquired honor.1 But the rise of Calderón as a court dramatist had begun several years earlier when some of his plays were being produced in the Salón de las Comedias of the old alcázar.
Edward Bysshe and the Poet's Handbook
Authors: Culler A. Dwight
Published: February 2007

Lucian, looking inside a gold and ivory statue by Phidias, was shocked ' to see “one tangle of bars, bolts, nails, planks, wedges, with pitch and mortar and everything that is unsightly; not to mention a possible colony of rats and mice.” And Lamb, on seeing the Cambridge manuscript of Milton's minor poems, swore never again to go into the workshop of a great artist. For behind the poem often lie the “unsightly” dictionary of rhymes, the thesaurus, the dictionary of synonyms—all the helps which collectively we call the poet's handbook. Perhaps because of its unsightliness it has never been studied, but it is obviously no less important for an understanding of the poet's craft than the planks and wedges are for the sculptor's.
Johnson's Shakespeare and the Laity: a Textual Study
Authors: Eastman Arthur M.
Published: February 2007

Theobald, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and faithless, thus petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having Pope for his enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation, from this undertaking“ of editing Shakespeare. In these words Johnson touched on one of the more troublesome ironies of literary history, the fact that such highly gifted men as Pope and Warburton had failed to achieve Shakespearean texts that their contemporaries and scholarly posterity could praise. Pope's Shakespeare, printed but twice, had been buried by Theobald; and Warburton's Shakespeare, printed but once, had been interred by Edwards. The question for Johnson was whether his own forthcoming edition would suffer a similar fate.
Joseph Hall and Neo-Stoicism
Authors: Chew Audrey
Published: February 2007

During his own lifetime Bishop Joseph Hall was nicknamed “our spiritual Seneca” by Henry Wotton and later called “our English Seneca” by Thomas Fuller; as a result it has recently become fashionable to associate him with seventeenth-century English Neo-Stoicism. A seventeenth-century Neo-Stoic is of interest presumably because he points in the direction of eighteenth-century Neo-Stoicism, away from a revealed religion toward a natural religion, away from faith toward reason. In a recent article Philip A. Smith calls Hall “the leading Neo-Stoic of the seventeenth century” and says that he enthusiastically preached the “Neo-Stoic brand of theology” to which Sir Thomas Browne objected. This theology maintained that “to follow ‘right reason’ was to follow nature, which was the same thing as following God.” Smith goes on to say that “what most attracted seventeenth-century Christian humanists like Bishop Hall was the fact that Stoicism attempted to frame a theory of the universe and of the individual man which would approximate a rule of life in conformity with an ‘immanent cosmic reason‘”—though in the same paragraph he also mentions the point “that Neo-Stoic divines of the seventeenth century were interested in Stoicism almost exclusively from the ethical point of view.” He cites Lipsius to show how a Christian might reach an approximation between the Stoic Fate and Christian Providence, leaving the reader to assume that Hall might also have made this approximation. He says that “the natural light of reason, as expounded by the Stoic philosophers, became, for seventeenth-century Neo-Stoics, the accepted guide to conduct” and that “religious and moral writers endeavored to trace a relationship between moral and natural law which in effect resulted in the practical code of ethical behavior commonly associated with Neo-Stoicism.”
A Neglected Source for Literary Biography
Authors: Altick Richard D.
Published: February 2007

In 1932 John H. Birss caused something of a sensation in Keats circles by his discovery of the MS of the letter Keats wrote to Charles Cowden Clarke on October 9, [1816]—one of the two earliest known Keats letters. Although fragments of it had been printed in Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke's Recollections of Writers (1878), and before that in Clarke's reminiscences of Keats published in the Atlantic Monthly (1861) and the Gentleman's Magazine (1874), its full text was not known to Keats scholars until its discoverer printed it in Louis A. Holman's Within the Compass of a Print Shop (Boston: October, 1932) and in Notes and Queries for November 5, 1932. In both periodicals, an editorial note appended to the text of the letter described the circumstances under which the MS had been discovered: Birss, looking through “a little-known catalogue of manuscript letters and documents” in search of letters by Melville, happened to open the volume to K instead of M, and there found “a notation of an early Keats letter.” Following this clue, he succeeded in locating the holograph itself in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia.
The Critical Reception of Tennyson's “Maud”
Authors: Shannon Edgar F.
Published: February 2007

In midsummer 1855 the announcement that Alfred Tennyson would soon publish a new work stirred the reading public with eager expectancy. He was acknowledged to be the foremost living English poet and had worn the bays as Victoria's laureate for almost five years. His new volume was awaited, wrote one reviewer, with much of the avid anticipation that had attended the productions of Scott and Byron. Yet it is generally said that when Maud, and Other Poems appeared on 28 July 1855, there was serious dissatisfaction with the title poem. Indeed, it has become a commonplace of literary history that “Maud” was vociferously condemned by the British periodical press, and Sir Charles Tennyson, the poet's latest biographer, writes, “Poor Maud was received with almost universal reprobation.” But John O. Eidson main-tains, with some evidence to support his claim, that “the British criticism of ‘Maud’ was rather sharply divided,” and Amy Cruse unqualifiedly asserts that the poem “was received with tremendous enthusiasm.” In view of the conflicting testimony it seems valuable to determine as accurately as possible the critical reaction to “Maud” and also to examine its effect upon Tennyson's revision of the poem and upon his decision to proceed with the Idylls of the King.
Irving's Use of American Folklore in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Authors: Hoffman Daniel G.
Published: February 2007

In this essay I hope to restore to Washington Irving a small measure of his fame as the first significant author of American fiction. Irving has been acclaimed as our literary mediator with England, where he was the first American to win critical praise. He is valued, too, as a pioneer, introducing Continental romanticism and the Gothic mode into American writing. But I wish to praise him on other grounds: as the first important American author to put to literary use the comic mythology and popular traditions of American character which, by the early nineteenth century, bad proliferated widely in oral tradition. The case for Irving's achievement in this direction rests primarily upon the personalities of Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” There he gave our literature its first important statement of the clash of regional characters—the Yankee vs. the backwoodsman— who had already emerged as the dominant types in our regional folk traditions. The conflict between them was soon to become a major theme in our literature, as well as a continuing motif in a century and a half of folktales, and in our national history.
Abraham Mylius on Historical Linguistics
Authors: Metcalf George J.
Published: February 2007

The fame of Abraham Vander-Mylius (Abraham van der Myl, 1563-1637) as a linguist persisted through many generations. The Lingua Belgica of the Dutch theologian, which appeared at Leiden in 1612, had a clarity, freshness, and persuasiveness which were vital factors in establishing its reputation. Even today, the work has value as revealing, both explicitly and implicitly, views on language that were current in the author's time. This article is particularly concerned with the attitude which Mylius displayed toward the historical, diachronic aspects of language. The primary aim is to present as clearly as possible Mylius' own views on this phase of language; only incidentally are we concerned with his sources.
Milton's Annotations of Aratus
Authors: Kelley Maurice , Atkins Samuel D.
Published: February 2007

Since 1921, professors hanford, mohl, and others have told us much about the chronology and scope of Milton's reading in history and related subjects; but as yet we lack similarly detailed information regarding the time and nature of Milton's private studies in Greek and Roman literature. For at least a partial knowledge, however, of when and how Milton studied the Classics, source materials exist in annotations found in four of Milton's Greek texts: his Pindar, purchased in 1629, his Aratus, purchased in 1631, and his Lycophron and Euripides, both purchased in 1634. Here—and for the most part in his own hand—Milton has left us evidence of some of his Classical studies during his latter years at Cambridge and his later life; and an analysis of these annotations should supply us with information regarding Milton's intellectual history that we have hitherto lacked.
Racine and The Problem of Suicide
Authors: Monaco Marion
Published: February 2007

The Suicides of Racine, and of the seventeenth-century French theatre in general, have been studied in terms of the technical requirements pertaining to staging which developed from Greco-Roman theory and practice. This is a logical approach which cannot be dismissed, especially since in the seventeenth century the theory of bienséance was expanded to include the ethical proprieties. Nevertheless such a technical approach cannot provide full insight into Racine's intent. An adequate understanding of Racine's use of suicides is possible only when we analyze the particular suicides of the various plays in terms of the inner construction of Racine's tragedies and in terms of the interaction in Racine's thought of Greco-Roman and Christian factors.
Critical Approval of Epic Poetry in the Age of Wordsworth
Authors: Foerster Donald M.
Published: February 2007

Uring wordsworth's lifetime, the epic lost a good deal of its prestige in England. One reason was of course the growing tendency to regard literature not as static and unchanging but as essentially organic and evolutionary. Believing that a principle of progress is secretly operative in the mind of man and therefore in the things he writes, many critics were now disposed to brand the epic as an outmoded form of literature and to censure earlier neo-classicists for their high praise of this particular genre. They suggested that, for the modern world at least, there is considerably more of worth and of interest in the spontaneous self-expression of the lyric and in the skillful character-probing of the Elizabethan drama and of the modern novel.
The Beginnings Of The Study of Synonyms in England
Authors: Noyes Gertrude E.
Published: February 2007

A little studied aspect of the prolific linguistic controversies in eighteenth-century England is the development of synonymy. Not only were books of synonyms late to appear and uncertain as to their function and methods, but synonymy was one of the last departments to be introduced into the English dictionary. This slow development is not surprising, since just discrimination between words of almost identical meaning requires not only an authoritative dictionary and grammar as tools but a relatively settled state of the language and a body of recognized opinion on questions of usage. The evolution of English synonymy not only stems immediately from the French, but the steps leading toward this goal may be paralleled in France from fifty to one hundred years earlier.
The Dialogue in Heaven: A Reconsideration of Paradise Lost, III.1–417
Authors: Samuel Irene
Published: February 2007

When Douglas Bush and C. S. Lewis—not to name readers as disparate in time and temperament as Pope, Blake, and Shaw—find the God of Paradise Lost unattractive, it may be ill-advised to attempt the justification of Milton's ways with Heaven. Even the excellent refutation of the Satanist position in John S. Diekhoff's book on Paradise Lost ignores rather than answers, perhaps quite properly, those who have objected to Milton's God as not so much a tyrant as a wooden bore. My paper is addressed to such readers and to any others who are willing to start from the assumption that Milton may have known what he was about in the first half of Book III as surely as in Books I and II. I put it thus because objections have generally turned on the first episode in Heaven and have rather consistently echoed Pope's quip that “God the Father turns a school-divine.” I wish to argue that we have mistakenly read the scene as a mere presentation of doctrinal assertions conveniently divided between the Father and the Son, and that to take it thus is to forget both how highly Milton prized poetic economy and how central he made this episode to the action of his whole poem. For may not the trouble be that we have incautiously misconstrued as dogma what Milton intended as drama? In short, the failure may be not in the scene but in our reading of it.
Chaucer's Puns
Authors: Baum Paull F.
Published: February 2007

Forty years ago Tatlock published a short paper on “Puns in Chaucer,” but since then very little has been said on the subject, until just recently appeared Helge Kokeritz' article on “Rhetorical Word Play in Chaucer.” Tatlock pointed out a dozen puns, together with a few “coarse” ones not directly specified. In 1892 Lounsbury had said that Chaucer was “free from these verbal quibbles”; he saw only one, Calkas-calculynge. Before Tatlock, also, Skeat had noted a few, and apropos of style (F 105 f.) commented: “such puns are not common in Chaucer.” Similarly Robinson, apropos of philosophre (A 297) said: “Puns are unusual in Chaucer and it is not always easy to determine whether they are intentional”; but he added as “more or less clear” six of Tatlock's and one of his own, the Latin play on eructavit (D 1934). Preston mentioned six or seven in passing (Chaucer, 1952). Kokeritz conceded that real “double entendres” (significatio, or pun in the modern sense) appear in Chaucer, “though not very often.” He instanced a baker's dozen, along with a few more already noted by others, which he found unacceptable.
Nebrija on Versification
Authors: Clarke Dorothy Clotelle
Published: February 2007

The most pretentious treatise on Castilian versification before the Golden Age is the “Libro segundo en que trata de la prosodia i sîlaba” of Antonio de Nebrija's Gramdtica castellana, first published in 1492. It is written by a scholar—not a poet, though Nebrija, Spain's first great humanist, did write some verses—a scholar whose classic learning determined his approach to the study of the vernacular in matters of versification. Nebrija's learning, however, did not blind him to the fundamental facts of Castilian practice in verse, though it may have slightly obscured his vision at times and warped his interpretation of certain phases of Spanish metrics. And it did cause him to discover in Castilian verse certain fundamental principles hidden from many theorists and prosodists even to the present day, yet for centuries instinctively practiced by poets. Nebrija studied and analyzed the nature of Castilian verse “en el buen uso” (Cap. viii) as it existed shortly before the introduction of Italianate meters in Spanish. The time is significant, as En-cina explains in the introduction to his Arte de poesia castellana (p. ii):
Dickens' Archetypal Jew
Authors: Lane Lauriat
Published: February 2007

Fagin, the first of Dickens' great villains, is a Jew. In making Fagin a Jew, Dickens drew on a tradition of villainy that had been in English literature from the beginning. Only in our own time has there been a widespread reaction against this literary injustice. One effect of this reaction has been to introduce into our response to characters such as Barabbas, Shylock, and Fagin problems that are not only insoluble but perhaps irrelevant. No responsible critic has, to my knowledge, ever called Dickens an anti-Semite. If the character of Fagin arouses racial hostility in the reader of Oliver Twist, as some overzealous guardians of the public weal would have us think, it is more because this character, by its archetypal nature, appeals to emotions and prejudices already firmly set by custom and tradition. The main fault is not in Dickens but in his readers. Dickens' only sin was that writing at a very early age his first real novel and writing rapidly under the pressure of serial publication, he drew on a tradition already widespread in English literature and, with Fagin at least, made it powerfully and uniquely his own.
The Sources of the Theatrum Poetarum
Authors: Golding Sanford
Published: February 2007

Ever since Thomas Warton, nearly two hundred years ago, decided that the Theatrum Poetarum of Edward Phillips contained “criticisms far above the taste of that period” and therefore revealed “many touches of Milton's hand,” scholars have sought evidence to substantiate this opinion. Sir Egerton Brydges, in 1800, delcared in the preface of his abridged edition of the Theatrum that “the very expressions of Milton break out in every page,” and only recently Harris Fletcher, who has made a minute study of Milton's reading, wrote that “perhaps as much as nine-tenths of the work was almost beyond doubt done by Milton.” A careful study of the sources and methods of composition of this book has convinced me that not only did Milton have no hand in the work but that even his influence, if any, was negligible. Actually, the Theatrum was a hasty, careless piece of hack work, derived for the most part from a few convenient reference works, with a minimum of effort on the part of the compiler.
Coleridge and the Luminous Gloom: An Analysis of the “Symbolical Language” in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Authors: Gose Elliott B.
Published: February 2007

Speaking of the “plan of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’” in Chapter 14 of his Biographia Literaria, Coleridge pointed out that while Wordsworth was to deal with “the wonders of the world before us,” he himself was to try to connect the human truth of “our inward nature” with the “shadows of imagination.” The fruitfulness of this connection is evidenced by “The Ancient Mariner”; its aesthetic basis was analyzed by Coleridge at a later date: “The romantic poetry,” he decided, appeals “to the imagination rather than to the senses and to the reason as contemplating our inward nature, the working of the passions in their most retired recesses.” By “exciting our internal emotions,” the poet “acquires the right and privilege of using time and space as they exist in the imagination, obedient only to the laws which the imagination acts by.” Philosophically, Coleridge's transcendentalism is obviously responsible for this assertion of the superiority of the mind over nature; he had remarked its psychological basis as early as 1805:

In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language, for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling as if that new phenomenon were the dim awakening of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature. (Anima Poetae, p. 136).
Hawthorne's Fair-Haired Maidens: The Fading Light
Authors: Birdsall Virginia Ogden
Published: February 2007

Probably no reader of Hawthorne's four major novels can have failed to notice the similarities which exist among certain of the participating heroines. It would seem that if a lady had handled her first assignment well, Hawthorne could nearly always manage to find a place for her in his next production. Hence, not only did Hester of The Scarlet Letter turn up again as Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance and as Miriam in The Marble Faun, but, even more obviously, Phoebe of The House of the Seven Gables later found parts as Priscilla in Blithedale and Hilda in The Marble Faun.
L'esthétique de Schopenhauer en Tant que ‘Conduite de Mauvaise Foi’
Authors: Augst Bertrand
Published: February 2007

Rarement idéal poétique a été porté plus haut que celui, “enfant d'une nuit d'Idumée,” distillé dans les poèmes de Mallarmé; du moins ceux de la derniere période par lesquels, ayant cédé “l'initiative aux mots,” le Poete d'un meme mouvement decouvre et se fond à, “la notion pure.” II y a quelques années M. Albérès remarquait, a propos des exigences morales d'une génération représentée par les héros de Bernanos, Anouilh, Malraux, Julien Green, Camus ou Sartre, que notre époque, “à la suite d'autres époquès qui ont institué une morale de l'honneur, comme le treizieme siecle, ou une morale de la pudeur comme le dix-septième siècle,” institue à, son tour “une morale de la sincérité.” C'est-à-dire une morale fondée sur “un désir éperdu” d'authenticité absolue vis-a vis de soi-même, dans le bien comme dans le mal. Puisque M. Albérès nous invite à faire d'audacieux rapprochements avec d'autres epoques, il serait interessant d'opposer à cette “obsession de la sincérité” une obsession de la génération qui précéda celle de Sartre: l'obsession de la pureté.
A Comparison of the Creative and Critical Achievements of the Catholic Revival in France and Germany
Authors: Hatzfeld Helmut
Published: February 2007

The preconditions for a truly parallel treatment of the French and German Catholic Revival of the twentieth century do not exist. The main reason is that spiritually minded great authors like Paul Claudel or François Mauriac became fervent Catholics while German religiously minded poets like Rilke and Hofmannsthal used their cultural Catholicism for secular purposes. Of course, we still can single out certain literary productions which are comparable on the basis of their subject matter and general tendency, although they may be found rather in second-class authors. As such common topics and tendencies I am inclined to consider the following: the quasi-mystical experience of the religious conversion as a challenge to a merely para-psychological explanation of spiritual events; or the defense of the Church as the only factor of salvation against any humanistic, humanitarian, or political messages; or the praise of womanhood as inspired by the virginal motherhood of Mary, opposed to modern female emancipation and stressing of sex; or the serious explanation of evil by sin and Satan, open to spiritual cures, versus any theory of the absurdity of the world or the interpretation of evil as maladjustment open only to psychiatric therapy; or along the critical line, the fullness of specific Catholic insights, culminating in charity as a basis of an empathetic understanding of literature versus any formalism or philosophically destructive criticism.
Akenside's Revision of the Pleasures of Imagination
Authors: Hart Jeffrey
Published: February 2007

Mark Akenside produced two versions of his best-known poem, The Pleasures of Imagination, which appeared in 1744 and consists of three books. The second version, with its slightly altered title, The Pleasures of the Imagination, was unfinished at his death in 1770. We have, however, two complete books of it and portions of two others. The revised version of Book I was printed in 1757 for circulation among Akenside's friends; Book II of the later version appeared in a similar fashion in 1765. Not much attention has been given by critics and commentators to the differences between the two versions of the poem. They have contented themselves with observing merely that such differences exist. But it is clear that Akenside took pains with his revision, and the changes he made reflect both an increase in his poetic powers and his intense involvement with the political and cultural history of his time. He is not only a capable poet, he is that valuable thing, a “representative figure.”
Dramatic Technique in the Lyrical Ballads
Authors: Parrish Stephen Maxfield
Published: February 2007

The publication in 1954 of Robert Mayo's admirable paper, “The Contemporaneity of the Lyrical Ballads,” has made it seem incautious if not foolhardy to claim novelty of theme or technique for the volume of 1798. As Mayo appears to have shown, the Lyrical Ballads conformed in nearly all respects to the patterns prevailing in magazine poetry of the 1790's; the volume's “originality” lay less in any innovations it attempted than in the freshness and intensity with which it developed already familiar conventions. As for the “experiments” alluded to in the 1798 Advertisement and the 1800 Preface, they were, as the comments of Coleridge and others seem to confirm, largely experiments in language alone, and wholly within the boundaries of popular taste.
Shaw, Bunyan, And Puritanism
Authors: O'Donnell Norbert F.
Published: February 2007

Although the importance which Bernard Shaw attached to the work of John Bunyan has often been remarked, no one has systematically explored the many passages concerning Bunyan scattered through Shaw's prose in order to determine what Bunyan meant to him and what influence Bunyan may be assumed to have had on his art. Aside from its intrinsic interest, such a study is of considerable importance because of the widespread acceptance, especially by hostile biographers and critics, of G. K. Chesterton's idea that Shaw was in a quite unmetaphorical sense a puritan. A study of Shaw's responses to the puritan Bunyan suggests that the famous Shavian “puritanism” was merely one of the many masks which G.B.S. held between himself and a world which he meant to irritate, entertain and instruct.
The Politics of Dickens' Novels
Authors: Engel Monroe
Published: February 2007

In Dickens' novels, characters are cast in detailed and purposeful social situations, and an evaluated social world is created. Yet even those critics who agree roughly that this is so, and agree further on the stature of these novels, disagree markedly as to Dickens' own politics or view of society—disagree in fundamental respects, that is, on what disposition of mind lies behind and shapes these novels. Sometimes the disagreement has in part to do with personal conviction. G. K. Chesterton, a Catholic with mixed politics of his own, bolsters as he can Dickens' orthodoxy. T. A. Jackson, a naive Marxist with insufficient respect for brute fact, attempts to show that Dickens was a Communist in all but name, and “that the really fundamental incompatibility between Dickens and his wife lay in the complete antithesis of their convictions about contemporary society as a whole.”
Universality and Unity in the Lazarillo de Tormes
Authors: Hutman Norma Louise
Published: February 2007

The Qualities of universality and unity in the Lazarillo de Tormes are interrelated factors through which the reader perceives and reacts to the reality presented although he does not identify himself in any way with the characters and scenes. This perception and reaction depend primarily upon three aspects of the novel: (1) the visualizing element, (2) multiple levels of humor, and (3) the unified concept of the total experience of a human being. Obviously the unknown author of the Lazarillo did not invent these characteristics, but rather fused qualities present in various literary types of his age. We shall be concerned here not with the relation of each aspect to a larger literary tradition, but with the manner in which each is utilized in the novel itself.
Discerning the Ghost in Hamlet
Authors: Joseph Sister Miriam
Published: February 2007

The Ghost in Hamlet is essential to the plot of the play and to an understanding of both the problem of Hamlet and his character. Therefore it is not surprising that it has engaged the close study of critics who offer various and conflicting interpretations.