bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gismond of Salerne
Authors: Cunliffe John W.
Published: February 2007

This tragedy was presented before Queen Elizabeth by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple in 1567–8. In its original shape it remained in ms. until published a few years ago in Brandl's Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England; but a recast by Robert Wilmot was printed in 1591 under the title Tancred and Gismunda and included in Dodsley's Collection of Old English Plays. From the initials appended to each act in this later version it has been concluded that Henry Noel wrote Act II, Christopher Hatton Act IV, and Robert Wilmot Act V; the authors of Act I (Rod. Staf.) and Act III (G. Al.) are as yet unidentified. Before examining the play it will be well to glance at the literary and dramatic influences under which it was produced. A notable beginning in English classical tragedy had been made at the Grand Christmas of the Inner Temple in 1561–2 by the performance of Gorboduc, which was repeated before the Queen at Whitehall a few weeks later: an unauthorized edition of the play was printed in 1565. In 1564 the Queen saw at King's College, Cambridge, “a Tragedie named Dido, in hexametre verse, without anie chorus,” and “an English play called Ezechias, made by Mr. Udall.” At Christmas, 1564, a tragedy by Richard Edwards (probably Damon and Pythias) was acted at Whitehall, and in 1566 his Palamon and Arcyte was presented before the Queen in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, as well as a Latin play, called Marcus Geminus. At Gray's Inn the same year Gascoigne's Supposes (translated from Ariosto) and the Jocasta were performed: the last purported to be taken from Euripides, but was really a translation of Lodovico Dolce's adaptation, itself made probably not from the Greek but from the Latin. Dolce adhered in the main to the model of Seneca, whose tragedies he had translated: English translations of eight out of the ten had also been published during the ten years before 1566, so that Elizabethan tragedy came under Senecan influence at first, second, and third hand. The learned dramatists of the Inner Temple no doubt had recourse to the original text, but like their fellows of Gray's Inn of a year or two before, they turned to Dolce as their immediate model, and they made an important step in advance by taking their plot from Boccaccio. It is true that Arthur Brooke in the preface to The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562) said that he had seen the same argument “lately set foorth on stage,” but the play referred to is now to be found only at second-hand in a Dutch version, Romeo en Juliette, written about 1630. Gismond of Salerne is the earliest extant English tragedy founded upon an Italian novel.
Chaucer's Prioresses Tale and Its Analogues
Authors: Brown Carleton F.
Published: February 2007

It is now thirty years ago that three stories, more or less closely related to the Prioresses Tale, were printed in the Chaucer Society's Originals and Analogues. Since that time but little new light has been thrown on the source used by Chaucer for this Tale. The general opinion has been that Chaucer followed some version of the legend not now known, though Professor Skeat in his most recent discussion of the subject takes the view that the Prioresses Tale is the result of a combination, probably by Chaucer himself, of two miracles of Our Lady related by Gautier de Coincy: that of the boy killed by the Jew, and that of the wicked cleric in whose mouth after death a miraculous flower was found.
Friedrich Schlegel and Goethe, 1790–1802: A Study in Early German Romanticism
Authors: Scholl John William
Published: February 2007

Friedrich Schlegel, youngest son of Johann Adolf Schlegel, was born at Hannover on March 10, 1772, just three months after Goethe had finished the first version of his first great work, Götz von Berlichingen. His literary career begins in 1794 with the publication of Von den Schulen der Griechischen Poesie. At this time he is as old as Goethe was when writing the Götz.
Nash and the Earlier Hamlet
Authors: Cunliffe John W.
Published: February 2007

The sceptical reconsideration of accepted theories is often of advantage in revealing weak points and establishing strong ones; Professor Jack's paper on Thomas Kyd and the Ur-Hamlet in the last issue of the Publications will no doubt be of service in both these ways; but it does not seem likely that his interpretation of the well known passage from Nash's prefatory epistle to Greene's Menaphon will displace that “all but universally accepted by scholars.” It is, however, ingenious enough to merit careful examination from the conservative point of view. On the broader issue Mr. Jack has raised, it is to be remembered, in the first place, that this passage is by no means the only evidence of an earlier Hamlet. The entry in Henslowe's Diary under date June 9, 1594, and the reference in Lodge's Wit's Miserie (1596) to “the ghost, which cried so miserally at the theator, like an oisterwife, Hamlet revenge” prove conclusively the existence of a play on the subject of Hamlet at a date when Shakspere's tragedy was unknown, if we are to be guided by its omission from the Meres list and the unanimous opinion of Shaksperean critics. The general resemblance of the earlier Hamlet, so far as it can be divined, to the type of revenge-play of which The Spanish Tragedy is the most conspicuous example, must also be borne in mind; but these are considerations familiar to students of the Elizabethan drama, and need not be urged here. Let us turn to the new interpretation of Nash's reference to contemporary literature, and see how far it is borne out by the text.
Object–Pronouns in Dependent Clauses: A Study in Old Spanish Word-Order
Authors: Chenery Winthrop Holt
Published: February 2007

The title of this work, Object-Pronouns in Dependent Clauses: A Study in Old Spanish Word-Order, is perhaps too inclusive. The investigation concerns itself only with the phenomenon which I shall call interpolation. Throughout this study, interpolation will be used to mean the interpolation, between an unstressed object-pronoun and its following governing verb, of another word or other words, not unstressed object-pronouns in similar construction. In Old Spanish this phenomenon is almost without exception confined to dependent clauses, i. e., clauses that begin with a subordinating conjunction, a relative pronoun, or a relative adverb with conjunctional force.
Romance Etymologies
Authors: Rice Carl C.
Published: February 2007

French fléchir < Old French fleschir < fleschier, “to bend,” < *flexicare < flexus < flectere, “to bend.”

French fléchir, O. F. fleschir, fleskir has been derived by Förster, Zeitschrift f. rom. Phil., III, p. 262, from a Latin *fleskire < *fiescus < flexus. The assumption of the shift of ks to sk is defended by an appeal to alaskir from laxus, seemingly showing the same metathesis. This phonetic step, which must be assigned to a Latin period, is in both instances certainly unjustifiable, although it has been admitted by excellent authorities. In the Dictionnaire général we find French lâcher derived from a type *lascare < laxare. Here the assumption of metathesis seems to go back to Diez, Etymologisehes Wb., pp. 188 f., who cites as analoga Campanian fisquer for fixer and lusque for luxe; but these forms clearly represent popular deformations of learned words and are accordingly irrelevant.
The Reeve's Tale
Authors: Hart Walter Morris
Published: February 2007

“Comme tout le monde avait lu le même conte dans Boccace, … les éloges des critiques anglais étaient inépuisables en l'honneur de Chaucer, qui, dans son imitation, avait su ajouter, disait-on, d'heureuses circonstances au récit de Boccace. Nous savons aujourd'hui que tout ce mérite d'inventeur qu'on lui attribuait consiste à avoir fort bien copié notre fabliau.”
The Relation of Shakspere's Pericles to George Wilkins's Novel, The Painfull Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Authors: Baker Harry T.
Published: February 2007

The play commonly known as Shakspere's Pericles first appeared in 1609, in a version so corrupt that it was clearly a piracy. Whether this was identical with the drama of the same title which was entered on the Stationers' Register in company with Antony and Cleopatra, on May 20, 1608, cannot be determined. This, however, is certain: the entry was made by Edward Blount, but the play was published by Henry Gosson, to whom no record of transfer is to be found. As to the composition of Pericles, it is now generally admitted that, with the possible exception of a few phrases, the first two acts are not by Shakspere but in all probability by George Wilkins.
A Survey of the Literature on Wordsworth
Authors: Cooper Lane
Published: February 2007

At the present time, when the world is too much with us, many reasons might be urged for a wider and deeper attention to the study of Wordsworth. We must content ourselves here with a single, obvious reason, easily grasped. The two accredited leaders of English criticism in the nineteenth century, Coleridge and Matthew Arnold, ranked Wordsworth among the five greatest English poets, his compeers being, in their opinion, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. A third critic, no mean one, namely Wordsworth himself, held substantially the same belief, viewing the grounds of his belief as objectively as he could. It is well for everybody, now and then, to regard some matters in a broad perspective.
Additional Light on the Temple of Glas
Authors: MacCracken Henrt Noble
Published: February 2007

Some loose vellum leaves of a manuscript written between 1431 and 1450 (according to Dr. Kenyon of the British Museum) are bound in with a paper ms. of Hoccleve's Regement of Princes, in ms. British Museum Sloane 1212. These leaves, written in what may be a different hand from that of the Hoccleve scribe, contain some interesting material, most of which has up to now remained unidentified.
Segismundo's Soliloquy on Liberty in Calderon's La Vida es Sueño
Authors: Buchanan Milton A.
Published: February 2007

Spanish poets of the seventeenth century were very fond of the contrast between the physical limitations of men, especially when prisoners,—“ ces eternels envieux des mouches et des oiseaux” (Victor Hugo)—and the freedom of birds that fly at will, or of “ fishes that tipple in the deep.” But nowhere has the comparison been given such artistic form and signal appropriateness as in the mouth of Calderon's hero, Segismundo. This young Titan felt himself fettered by stone walls. They were a real prison to him and he rebelled against his lot. He was not in a mood to admit, had it even occurred to him to do so, the superior advantage of man's mental freedom over the physical freedom of fishes and birds and brutes, or running brooks. But the thought was not original with Calderon, nor, according to Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo, was it original with any of Calderon's immediate predecessors, but went back to the Greek philosopher, Philo. Lope de Vega was probably the first to transplant the conceit to Spanish soil,—and it bore abundant fruit. In one of his early plays, El Remedio en la desdicha, written before the close of the sixteenth century, occur the following verses:
Rendido estoy á tu nobleza, y veoQue mi ignorancia fué mi propio engaño;Aunque si amor á todos da disculpa,¿ Porqué no la tendrán mi amor y celos ?Si tú, si tus soldados, si los hombresSi las aves, los peces, si las fieras,Si todo sabe amor, si todo temePerder su bien, y con sus celos propiosDefiende casa, nido, mar y cueva,Llora, lamenta, gime, y brama; advierteQue celos y sospechas me obligaronAl desatino que á tus pies me rinde.
On the Date and Composition of Guillaume De Lorris' Roman de la Rose
Authors: Warren F. M.
Published: February 2007

Our positive knowledge concerning the date and authorship of the first part of the Roman de la Rose is wholly derived from the lines in which Jean de Meun refers to his predecessor, Guillaume de Lorris:

Vés-ci Guillaume de Lorris,Cui Jalousie, sa contraire,Fait tant d'angoisse et de mal traire,Qu'il est en péril de morir. Michel's Edition, 11291-94.Ci se reposera Guillaume,Le cui tombel soit plains de baume. 11326, 11327.Car quant Guillaumes cesseraJehans le continueraApres sa mort, que ge ne mente,Ans trespassés plus de quarante. 11352-55.
A Neglected Passage on the Three Unities of the French Classic Drama
Authors: Lancaster H. Carrington
Published: February 2007

The need for critical research in at least one field of modern literature is exemplified by the lack of exact information regarding the establishment on the French stage of the three dramatic unities that characterized so markedly many pieces of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although our knowledge of the history of these unities has been increased by several works that have recently appeared, a number of facts concerning them remain to be determined, as Dannheisser, the chief authority on the subject, has clearly shown. Thus, while demonstrating that these unities of action, time, and place were not imposed at one time, but, developing separately, came only after a half century into general acceptance and a rigorously narrow form, he has left unfixed the date at which they were first singled out in seventeenth century France as the distinguishing marks of the classic drama.
The History of French Fable Manuscripts
Authors: Keidel George C.
Published: February 2007

Although French fable literature played a prominent part in the evolution of the Æsopic Fable in the Middle Ages, no general account of its history and development has as yet been written by any modern scholar. Single collections of French fables dating from this period have been published from time to time in more or less critical editions, and certain phases of the more general field have been investigated by various scholars, but it is believed that the present paper may justly claim to be the first general survey of Old French Fable Literature within certain well-defined limits.
Stella and The Broken Heart
Authors: Sherman Stuart P.
Published: February 2007

This interesting clue to the source of the play has not been carefully followed up. “The origin of the story on which it is founded,” says Ward, “is unknown; but unless the Prologue's assertion that the plot is based on fact is to be taken literally, its source is probably some nearly contemporary novel. Either Ford or the novelist from whom he borrowed made little account of historical probability in choosing Sparta as the scene of a love-tragedy which savours of mediæval Italy.” Ellis, also, remarks that the scene is “curiously placed in Sparta,” and adds that the story “may have been taken from an Italian novel.”
Chaucer's Medea and The Date of The Legend of Good Women
Authors: Kittredge G. L.
Published: February 2007

In the Man of Law's introduction, we are told that anybody who wishes to refer to Chaucer's “Seintes Legende of Cupyde” may see there, among other things,

“The crueltee of thee, queen Medea,Thy litel children hanging by the hals.“

Now the Legend of Good Women contains nothing that corresponds precisely with these lines. The discrepancy is not startling, but it is sufficient to stimulate conjecture. Professor Lounsbury, in 1892, suggested as a possibility that “when Chaucer wrote the prologue to the Man of Law's Tale he had not written the account of Medea which has come down to us [in the Legend]; and that when it was written it came to be something different from what he had purposed to make it originally.” In a recent article in these Publications Professor Root has attempted to bring evidence in support of Mr. Lounsbury's suggestion.
The Vows of Baldwin
Authors: Greenlaw Edwin A.
Published: February 2007

Although one of the most interesting of Middle English romances, the Avowing of Arthur has been singularly neglected. The story is told with the gratifying freshness which marks Gawain and the Green Knight and the other poems of the Northern school. The incidents of which the story is composed are fitted into the general framework with rare skill. Even more striking is the vividness of the characterization. The ordinary romance character is a dummy upon which are hung splendid clothes tagged with catalogues of all the virtues. Dealing with these personages is often like handling the bits of cardboard stamped “sugar,” “tea,” “potatoes,” with which students in commercial colleges play. But in this romance there is sharp distinction between Arthur, genial, brave, a practical joker, and Baldwin, a man of few words, cynical without being bitter, nonchalant, a man of deeds; between Kay, impulsive, always getting into scrapes, inclined to jeer at others, a great boy with a boy's love of adventure, and Gawain, the courteous knight, equally ready to aid beauty in distress and to assist a comrade in time of need. The story is crowded with incidents, and the verse is vigorous and effective.
The Cléomadès and Related Folk–Tales
Authors: Jones H. S. V.
Published: February 2007

Among the many baffling problems of Chaucerian scholarship are those connected with the Squire's Tale. To undertake a satisfactory solution of these is to court disaster. The attempt confounds us. One may, however, with all modesty endeavor to fix one's bearings in the area of story-land to which this poem belongs. To know where we are is almost as gratifying as to discover a source, and it is sometimes more instructive. If, then, I can do anything to further a survey of the narrative neighborhood of the Squire's Tale and its nearest analogue, the Cléomadès, my work may be serviceable. Perhaps, too, this paper may put in a clearer light the probabilities in regard to Chaucer's method and inspiration while at work upon one of his best known Tales of Canterbury.
The Fabliau and Popular Literature
Authors: Hart Walter Morris
Published: February 2007

A recent study of the narrative art of Chaucer's Reeve's Tale attempted to set forth some of the technical excellences of the Old French fabliaux, to call attention to their striking resemblance in form to the modern short-story, and, with all due appreciation of the originality of all Chaucer's work, to show that he was technically at his best in tales like the Miller's and the Reeve's, because he was writing under the influence of the best narrative art of the Middle Ages, under the influence of the fabliaux. If these contentions are true, the fabliaux, in spite of their very manifest imperfections,—their lack of style, of moral sense, of any ideal or uplifting quality,—cannot be neglected in any study of Chaucer, of the short-story, or of the history of narration. It is the purpose of the present essay to push the inquiry a step farther back, and to ascertain what were, in turn, some of the possible sources of the technique of these early masterpieces of narration. The fabliaux themselves are, indeed, not all alike; they are to be found in all stages of elaboration, from the longer and more complex signed poems, which disclose an interest not only in plot, but also in character, emotions, scene, and even in moral significance, down to the mere anecdote, anonymous, brief, and simple. It is not difficult to see how the more complex fabliaux could be developed from the more simple. Seeking, however, forms still simpler and less developed than these latter, the critic is obliged to turn his back upon the literature of art and to examine the underlying stratum of the literature of the people. Such a procedure is suggested by the subtitle of Professor Bédier's Les Fabliaux,—“études de littérature populaire,”—by Professor Matthews's definition of the fabliau as “a realistic folk tale,” and by the general impression produced by the fabliau of kinship with ballad and folk tale. And it is justified by our knowledge of the general fact that popular literature precedes and paves the way for the literature of art. Fabliaux, ballads, folk tales are, then, to be analyzed and compared with a view to ascertaining what the more developed forms owe to the less developed. In making such analyses and comparisons it is always an advantage when the whole matter can be focussed upon such single stories as may appear in the various forms concerned. Such a narrowing down of the field makes for simplicity and clearness, and, provided the examples chosen be typical, does not invalidate the general truth of the conclusions.
Italy in English Poetry
Authors: Mead William Edward
Published: February 2007

In ways innumerable in the course of the past four or five centuries Italy has influenced the thoughts and feelings of Englishmen. The full history of this influence is yet to be written. And naturally enough, for Italy appeals variously to the student of archæology, to the historian, to the artist, to the poet, and to the mere tourist in search of amusement. No landscapes more exquisite can be found in the world than some portions of Italy; no city can fill the peculiar place of Rome or Florence or Venice; and nothing can surpass the subtle witchery of Capri and Sicily and some of the half-forgotten hill towns ruined ages ago.
A Literary Mosaic
Authors: Hodell Charles W.
Published: February 2007

Nearly forty years ago Robert Browning issued The Ring and the Book, his longest and most important poem. It has suffered varied fortunes at the hands of the critics. Brooke, Dowden, Chesterton, and Herford, however, devote long and important chapters to its discussion, and acknowledge the poet's mastery in his subject. Amid critics friendly and hostile alike, the lawyers' monologues have perhaps suffered more than any other portion of the poem. They have been skipped by the ordinary reader as unmeaning and dull. Few open and intelligent words of defense have been uttered in their behalf. Chesterton puts the matter well (p. 160), “One of the ablest and most sympathetic of all the critics of Browning, Mr. Augustine Birrell, has said in one place that the speeches of the two advocates in The Ring and the Booh will scarcely be very interesting to the ordinary reader. There can be little doubt that the great number of readers of Browning think them beside the mark and adventitious. But it is exceedingly dangerous to say that anything in Browning is irrelevant or unnecessary. … The introduction of them is one of the finest strokes in The Ring and the Book.”
A Classification of the Manuscripts of “Ogier le Danois.”
Authors: Cerf Barry
Published: February 2007

The sole edition of the chanson de geste “Ogier le Danois,” generally attributed to Raimbert de Paris, is that of J. Barrois, Paris, 1842, and bears the title: “La Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche.” This edition makes no pretence to critical accuracy.
An Eighteenth–Century Attempt at a Critical View of the Novel: The Bibliothèque Universelle Des Romans
Authors: Clapp John M.
Published: February 2007

The eighteenth century, which saw the development of the novel into definite form, saw also the beginnings of careful criticism of the novel. The amount and character of this criticism, however, and the extent of a critical attitude among eighteenth-century novel-readers, have received too little attention from students of fiction. Not to speak of the books of the time dealing with the novel and allied forms, which deserve perhaps more attention than they have received,—notably the bibliography, with comments, in Lenglet-Dufresnoy's L'Usage des Romans (1734), and the lectures of LaHarpe, which, though published much later, were delivered before 1800,—there is a mass of interesting material in eighteenth-century periodicals, French, English, and German. There is also a great amount of criticism in prefaces to novels, in memoirs, and in collections of letters, which if systematically examined would perhaps modify current notions regarding our ancestors' views of prose fiction.
Ut Pictura Poesis
Authors: Howard William Guild
Published: February 2007

The Latin poem De arte graphica by Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy was edited with a translation into French prose and with notes by Roger de Piles in 1668; and in 1695 John Dryden, “to satisfy the desires of so many gentlemen who were willing to give the world this useful work,” not only translated de Piles's book into English prose but also supplied his translation with an “original preface containing a parallel between painting and poetry.” Dryden's Parallel is one of the least original, but it is not the least interesting of his literary essays: Saintsbury calls it “the first writing at any length by a very distinguished Englishman of letters on the subject of pictorial art.” Together with his translation of du Fresnoy and de Piles, it forms for us English-speaking people the handiest introduction to that long-lived esthetic theory founded upon the proposition Ut pictura poesis. Lessing seems to have seen in Dryden's preface some suggestion of a deviation of the parallel lines from the common direction; or perhaps the point at which they ought to have parted company; for he wrote, “ Falsche Übertragung des mahlerischen Ideals in die Poesie. Dort ist es ein Ideal der Körper, hier muss es ein Ideal der Handlungen seyn. Dryden in s. Vorrede zum Fresnoy.”
IX.—Doni and the Jacobeans
Authors: Berdan John M.
Published: February 2007

To the average reader, even in Italy, the name Anton-francesco Doni suggests nothing. There is no collected edition of his works, nor, aside from the 1863 edition of the Marmi and the sporadic and limited publication of occasional pieces, are there even reprints of single works. To the average student he is but one of many writers of novelle that, altho by comparison with some of the others are only mildly filthy, are not distinguished by either sweetness or light. Of his other works, the Libreria is the earliest Italian bibliographical work; the Marmi, a series of conversations between Cinquecento Florentines sitting on the steps of the Duomo, is photographic in its realism; the Mondi, a socialistic fantasy, shows the influence of More's Utopia; the Zucca is a collection of proverbs, etc., yet nothing very significant. Nor are the facts of his life (1513–1569) more interesting. Altho associated somewhat mysteriously with the Accademia Ortolana of Piacenza and with the still more mysterious I Pelegrini at Venice, his roving life is tarred with the same brush as that of the “infame” Aretino. And to the English reader his direct claim is even more slender, as it consists only of a translation, made by Sir Thomas North in 1570, of his translation of the fables of Bidpai. In life he was of “vivissimo ingegno;” to-day the “ghiribizzoso” Doni is remembered as an erotic author.
Ysopet III of Paris
Authors: Brush Murray P.
Published: February 2007

Amongst the many collections of fables which have come down to us from the middle ages none appears to have enjoyed greater popularity or to have been more widely translated than that in Latin elegiac verse nowadays entitled the Walter of England Collection. In addition to an unusually large number of extant manuscript versions of this collection in its original form, more than one hundred being actually listed, there is a host of printed editions, while translations and adaptations are to be found in French, Italian, Provençal, Portuguese, Spanish, German, and Hebrew. Among so many reworkings but a single one occurs in French prose, and it is this collection, not hitherto printed, which forms the subject of the present article.
XXIV.—Poetry, Philosophy, and Religion
Authors: Hutchison Percy Adams
Published: February 2007

Some thirty years ago, Matthew Arnold, in one of those magnificently cumulative passages with which he so loved to dazzle his readers, said of the future of poetry: “The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, when it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact, and now the fact is failing it. Poetry, on the other hand, attaches its emotion to the idea, the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry.”
XXIV.—Play-Publishing in Elizabethan Times
Authors: Shipherd H. Robinson
Published: February 2007

Two modern spectacles have become so familiar that we find it difficult to imagine even a prehistoric state without them: the author stalking a publisher, and the play treated as pure literature. There are, indeed, many plays—and even some successful ones—that do not reach print; but the closet-drama is established, and unquestioned as a literary form, in prose as well as verse. Hence it is difficult to visualize conditions that no more than three hundred years ago were the reverse of these: the play regarded as mere stage directions, not at all comparable with pure literature in prose or verse; and the publisher pursuing, satyr-like, the nymph-coy author for something to print. Yet the understanding of these surprising conditions is a pre-requisite to any establishing of Shaksperean or other Elizabethan texts, especially plays; for on it rests finally the main question of authenticity. A short survey of the following four aspects of Elizabethan publishing may help to show both their universality and their significance.
XVI.—The Nature of Tragedy
Authors: Whitmore Charles E.
Published: February 2007

The inadequacy of our current literary terms is nowhere clearer than in the case of tragedy, despite the amount of energy that has been spent on efforts to define it. Beyond or below the incontestable examples—the masterpieces of Æschylus, of Sophocles, of Shakespeare—stretches a wide and uncertainly bounded territory, sometimes thought of as including almost any play of a fairly serious sort, sometimes divided according as its occupants present, or fail to present, certain accepted features. The former point of view leads to regarding as vaguely tragic even plays that end in no positive catastrophe, the latter to compiling lengthy catalogs of pieces that have nothing of the tragic form but the label. At first sight it may seem that there is a radical difference between plays which end in downfall and death and those in which a threatened woe is at length and completely averted; but if we limit the name of tragedy to the former class, we are forced to deny it to pieces that have traditionally laid claim to it, and thus to show how hard is the task of drawing positive distinctions. If we feel that the Agamemnon of Æschylus is really more akin to Macbeth, than to the bloodless products of a mistakenly classicizing Renaissance, we may yet find it hard to justify that feeling on the basis of the current conceptions, or to account for numerous facts which the actual plays present. Why, for instance, are the best examples of tragedy confined almost entirely to certain well-marked periods—Greek to less than a century between Salamis and the death of Sophocles, Elizabethan either to the seven years between 1586 and the death of Marlowe or to the decade 1599–1609, French to the somewhat longer but far less well filled interval between the Cid in 1636 and Phèdre in 1677? Why, again, are tragic heroes usually of royal or noble rank? “Why is the action usually set in a more or less remote time? Are traits like these essential to the form, or merely adventitious? To answer such questions, we need to examine two matters: the nature of the material best able to yield the tragic effect, the nature of the faculty by which that material is to be contemplated. The present paper—in rather summary fashion, and with no pretence at an exhaustive review of authorities—will attempt this double task.
XVII.—The Ballad and the Dance
Authors: Pound Louise
Published: February 2007

It is the purpose of the following paper to examine the relationship of the mediæval ballad to the dance, in origin and in traditional usage. Particular reference is had to the English and Scottish ballad type. In various preceding papers I have considered the theory currently accepted in America of the inseparableness of primitive dance, music, and song and have shown that primitive song is not narrative in character. I have also questioned the assumption that the ballad is the archetypal poetic form—this position should be assigned to the song, not the ballad—and the assumption of “communal” as against individual authorship for the English and Scottish popular ballads. The present paper examines the relation to the dance of the English and Scottish ballads. The view is widely accepted both in the Old World and in America that this, and similar ballad types, originated in the dance. The following paper canvasses the evidence for this view and makes inquiry as to its validity.
XX.—The Poe-Griswold Controversy
Authors: Campbell Killis
Published: February 2007

In any serious consideration of Poe's life and character it will be necessary to take account of Griswold's estimate of the poet. This estimate was set forth in two articles published during the year following Poe's death—one, an obituary notice published in the New York Tribune of October 9, 1849; the other, the memoir of Poe included by Griswold in his edition of Poe's works and first published in September, 1850. Out of these two papers sprang the bitterest of all the controversies that have been waged about Poe. Most of Poe's editors and biographers of the present generation have ranged themselves on the side of Poe and have condemned Griswold; but there have been some—and among them some that may speak with the highest authority—who have held that Griswold's estimate of Poe is essentially just and fair. The present paper attempts a fresh examination of the case in the light of the evidence collected by Poe's biographers, and also brings to bear on the case a number of documents, mainly from the periodicals of Griswold's time, that have heretofore been either overlooked or ignored.
XXII.—Middle English Clannesse
Authors: Emerson Oliver Farrar
Published: February 2007

Mr. Bateson's numerous notes on the Middle English Clannesse (Mod. Lang. Rev., xiii, pp. 377–86) renew interest in that curious, though often tantalizing poem. Worthy of acceptance, it seems to me, are those on lines 3, 30, 54, 222, 341, 379, 411, 449, 553, 630, 1048, 1261, 1483, 1566, 1735, a considerable list. About as many others are equally good, but have been proposed before. For example, the New Eng. Dict. has anticipated Mr. Bateson in his suggestions for lines 148, 214, 887, 1038, 1469, while the Cent. Dict. had preceded the NED in the note on line 1514. Besides, the NED seems to be misquoted on (1153) and penitotes (1472). The former is certainly given under tight, v. 2, with this passage among others. Nor have I found where the NED reads ryther for ryth of 1543.
XVIII.—The Origin of the Ancren Riwle
Authors: Allen Hope Emily
Published: February 2007

The following paper will give a preliminary statement of a new conjecture as to the origin of the Ancren Biwle. It is proposed to identify the three maidens for whom the treatise was composed with the “tribus puellis, Emmae, videlicet, et Gunildae et Cristinae,” to whom, according to the charter printed by Dugdale, the hermitage of Kilburn, with its appurtenances, was granted by the Abbot and convent of Westminster sometime between the years 1127 and 1135. The hermitage was endowed permanently with money, land and beneficia, in return for which the inmates were to be the beadsmen of the abbey and of its confederate, the Abbey of Fécamp. The house at Kilburn was to be under the protection of St. Peter's, but it was to have complete independence in regard to its internal affairs. The establishment thus made had a continuous existence till the Reformation, under the title, which it seems to have acquired very early, of “Kilburn Priory.”
Vers Libre
Authors: Dondo Mathurin M.
Published: February 2007

According to whether we count, in verse, all syllables, regardless of accent, or only the accented syllables, we recognize in the modern languages two systems of versification, the foot system and the syllabic system. In each of the following verses of Boileau, for example, we may enumerate twelve syllables, or find four feet thus graphically illustrated:

En vain | contre le Cid | un mini | stre se ligue,Tout Paris | pour Chimè | ne a les yeux | de Rodrigue.
Wordsworth's Eye
Authors: Mead Marian
Published: February 2007

The poetry of Wordsworth seems, at first thought, to draw less from the visual sense than that of Milton, or Shelley, or Keats, or many another. For Wordsworth's manner is not a pictorial manner; his poetic methods are not those of the artist; he was no searcher out of the striking; and beauty, as commonly understood, was not to him the supreme inspiration.
Spenser's Imitations from Ariosto: Supplementary
Authors: Gilbert Allan H.
Published: February 2007

In these Publications, vol. XII (1897), Professor R. E. Neil Dodge, in an article entitled Spenser's Imitations from Ariosto, described and commented on a large number of parallels between the two poets. This work was so thoroughly done that no one can expect to add greatly to his lists. Yet one cannot ever be sure of having exhausted the similarities between The Faerie Queene and the Orlando Furioso, and later gleaners, as Professor Dodge understood, may expect to be regarded with scattered ears. Since our knowledge of the relation of these two poems cannot be too full, I present here a few additional observations.
Herbert Spencer and the Rhetoricians
Authors: Denton George B.
Published: February 2007

Whenever Herbert Spencer mentioned the origin of his works, he always insisted upon the freedom of his thought from the influence of others. This claim, though attacked in the case of several of his writings, has remained unquestioned as regards The Philosophy of Style. Indeed, so unusual has this essay appeared to all readers that, with the recognition that it possesses much originality, has gone, apparently, the conviction that it was made by Spencer from whole cloth. Thus much Spencer himself did not claim; yet perhaps even Spencer—always a little blind to the influences upon his work—would not have recognized the extent of his indebtedness.
The Narcissa Episode in Young's Night Thoughts
Authors: O'Connor Horace W.
Published: February 2007

In what purports to be a definitive life of the poet Young, H. C. Shelley remarks that the question of the identity of Philander, Lucia, and Narcissa, raised by the peculiar chronology of their deaths, as recorded in the Night Thoughts, forms “the most puzzling problem of Young's biography.” Part of the problem had already been solved by M. Walter Thomas, to whom Sir Leslie Stephen refers at the close of his article on Young in the D. N. B., an article referred to by Mr. Shelley himself. M. Thomas shows pretty conclusively that Philander was no other than Thomas Tickell, the lifelong intimate friend of Young, whose death occurred suddenly at Bath on April 23, 1740. Lucia was the poet's wife, the “poor Lady Betty Lee” of Mrs. Pendarves's letter, who was left “with three children to maintain and not a farthing to support her.” The identity of Narcissa, however (which Mr. Shelley makes no attempt to solve), offers greater difficulty. Professor Thomas suggests that she may have been an illegitimate daughter “reconnue par le père, acceptée par sa femme, mais désavouée par le moraliste. Peut-être,” he continues, “encore l'enfant est-elle née trop tôt, Young ayant anticipé en quelque sort sur les droits du mariage.”
“According to the Decorum of These Daies”
Authors: Klein David
Published: February 2007

In the winter of 1567–8 five gentlemen of the Inner Temple presented befor the queen a tragedy entitled Gismond of Salerne. In 1591–2 Robert Wilmot, author of the fifth act, publisht a revision of the entire work under the name Tancred and Gismund. This was reprinted by Dodsley. The erlier version has cum down to us in two ms. copies, both in the British Museum: Hargrave 205, knoen as H, and Landsdowne 786, knoen as L, the former dating from the third quarter of the sixteenth century, the latter from the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century. L has been reprinted by Brandl in volume LXXX of Quellen und Forschungen and by Cunliffe in his Early English Classical Tragedies. Renewed study of the work finds a stimulus in the recent publication of a fotografic reproduction of H in Farmer's facsimile edition of The Old English Drama.
Chaucer and the Ovide Moralisé
Authors: Lowes John Livingston
Published: February 2007

The Ovide moralisé is a portentous performance of about seventy-two thousand lines, extant in some seventeen manuscripts. Fragments of it were printed by Tarbé under the title of Œuvres de Philippe de Vitry, and the first volume of a critical text of the entire poem, edited by Professor de Boer of Amsterdam, is now in print. The work, with its mixture of fairly close translation and amazing allegorization of the Metamorphoses is discussed at length by Gaston Paris in its relation to other mediaeval translations or imitations of Ovid. And in de Boer's Introductions and articles will be found all necessary bibliographical apparatus.
XXIV. The Punctuation of Shakespeare's Printers
Authors: Alden Raymond Macdonald
Published: February 2007

Until within a few years past, as all students of Shakespeare are aware, it was generally believed that the punctuation of his text in the early quartos and the First Folio was negligent, erratic, and wholly unauthoritative; the corollary being that modern editors must practically repunctuate the plays in accordance with modern usage, though avoiding scrupulously all other unnecessary alterations of the old texts. Even the late Dr. Furness, editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare, whose veneration for the text of the Folio showed some tendency to become an obsession in his later years, did not permit this veneration to extend to punctuation, but commonly spoke of that element of the text as the negligible work of Elizabethan printers. Recently, however, there has been observable a disposition to claim no little authority for the punctuation of the old texts, and, on the part of certain scholars indubitably worthy of respectful attention, to draw inferences as to their significance of a remarkable, not to say revolutionary, character. The time would seem to be ripe for a careful consideration of the evidence which has been adduced.
XXXI. The Mob in Zola's Germinal and in Hauptmann's Weavers
Authors: Blankenagel John C.
Published: February 2007

A comparison of the mob in Zola's novel Germinal, 1885, and in Hauptmann's drama, The Weavers, 1892, reveals many points of resemblance. Some of these grow essentially out of the general similarity of theme, others represent more incidental details; yet the outward resemblance is greatly offset by the fact that the miners and weavers as such are fundamentally different. Nevertheless, both authors portray the abject poverty of a class of laborers—poverty due essentially to merciless exploitation on the part of unscrupulous employers who have degraded and virtually enslaved their employes. In both cases these miserable starvelings revolt against a tyranny which would suck the very blood from their veins and the marrow from their bones; under the momentary leadership of virtual outsiders they resort to violence in their protest against starvation wages. In varying degree, as determined by the greater epic breadth of the novel on the one hand and by the narrower scope of the drama on the other hand, details are given of individual and general misery, decrepitude, degeneracy, despair, long-continued suffering and of a subsequent flaring up into violent rebellion against the unendurable.
XIV.—The Contending Lovers
Authors: Farnham Willard Edward
Published: February 2007

The Contending Lovers is a folk-tale of love rivalry— but of love rivalry with a difference. Because it has certain uncommon distinctions, among them a provocative love problem which is usually left wholly unsolved, I have previously attempted to show in brief fashion its affinity with Chaucer's Parlement of Foules and to prove by especial reference to Il Paradiso degli Alberti, a work cut of Chaucer's own period, that the Parlement should be regarded as a poetical and highly sophisticated version of the folk-tale. But the curious and interesting features of The Contending Lovers will support a self-sufficient study in folk-lore, and such a study is primarily the aim of the following pages. The Parlement will occasionally be admitted to the discussion, especially in conclusion, since relationship to Chaucer necessarily gives the folk-tale itself an enhanced interest, but only casual arguments will be made for this relationship. The material, now studied in detail, is meant to form its own argument.
The Doctrine of Leadership in the Greater Romantic Poets
Authors: Lehman B. H.
Published: February 2007

In his interesting discussion of the politics of the greater romantic poets, Mr. Walter Graham throws light not so much upon the work of the poets as upon the men themselves. The illumination is biographical rather than critical. Is it not possible to carry the analysis of the material further, to view the problem involved in the political doctrines of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley in such a way as to give a literary as well as a biographical significance to the data? The importance of such analysis for Scott, Southey, and Keats is less, and in any case cannot be undertaken in the present paper. With respect to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron, however, such a consideration has not only its own value but would confirm and also perhaps offer a correction of the biographical view.
The Beginnings of Book-Reviewing in English Periodicals
Authors: McCutcheon Roger Philip
Published: February 2007

The English newsbooks of the Civil War and the Restoration have long been known to be historically interesting and valuable. That they have also some slight literary interest has not been so generally recognized. Yet a quarter of a century before the first regular “journal of books” appeared in England, the noticing of books was an established practice in the English newspaper; and the notices themselves, indeed, make a certain contribution to literary history.
An Analysis of the Priest Genre in the Modern French Novel
Authors: Bowen Ray P.
Published: February 2007

As the best method of reading Balzac is to follow, through the course of several novels, the history of some one character, so possibly there is no better way of approaching the modern French novel as a whole than by a study of the Catholic priest as there portrayed. He has appealed to practically every writer of first rank, and, moreover, purely as a character of fiction, quite aside from any significance that he may possess as indicating the faith of the author, or as exhibiting the Church and the work of her clergy. It is, accordingly, exclusively from the point of view of his rôle in literature that he is here treated. I shall take up the main themes in the ecclesiastical novel in an endeavor to indicate their relationship and to discover their general trend—an aspect of the subject that is neglected by Paul Franche in his Le Prêtre dans le roman français. I shall also continue the examination by including novels published since 1902, the date of Franche's study.
Goethe and the Ku-Klux Klan
Authors: Hatfield James Taft
Published: February 2007

In 1799, at the very threshold of his literary career, Walter Scott published a translation of Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen, containing the single short scene devoted to the judges of the Vehmgericht, who are discovered in “a narrow vault dimly illuminated, … all muffled in black cloaks.” This translation had no second edition, nor is there evidence that it was known in our southern states.