bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Swinburne's Laus Veneris and the Tannhäuser Legend
Authors: Hyder Clyde K.
Published: February 2007

Although suggestions have been made in regard to the possible means by which the Tannhäuser legend may have reached Swinburne's receptive mind, no one has offered a satisfactory explanation. It is my purpose to offer such an explanation, for the sake of the light it throws upon Laus Veneris as well as upon the development of the legend in English.

A preliminary consideration of possibilities is essential. First, there is Ludwig Tieck's Der getreue Eckart und der Tannenhäuser, which Carlyle translated as “The Trusty Eckart” in German Romance, published in 1827. Since Swinburne in his youth was an admirer of Carlyle, he may have known this translation. With some of its melodramatic absurdities omitted, the relevant portion of Tieck's story, part II, is briefly as follows: After a mysterious disappearance the noble Tannenhäuser returns to tell his friend Friedrich of his experiences. He believes that he has fallen in love with Emma and murdered a rival, causing both Emma and his own parents to die of grief. In darkest night he goes to a lofty hill, where he calls upon the Enemy of God; the latter teaches him a song, which in some strange way leads him to the Mountain of Venus. Passing the trusty Eckart, a superhuman figure who guards the entrance, he resigns himself to sensual pleasures in the company of Lady Venus and her train. From this “pomp of sin” he has now returned. Friedrich, who has been listening patiently to this recital of an apparent madman, assures him that Emma, recently married to Friedrich, is still alive. The Tannenhäuser does not believe this statement, supposing it a deception of Satan, and sets out to Rome to perform penance. Some months later he comes back, tattered and barefoot. Entering Friedrich's chamber, he kisses him, announces thatthe Holy Father cannot forgive, and departs. Friedrich discovers that Emma is murdered, apparently by the Tannenhäuser, and that the kiss draws him towards the mysterious mountain. The absence of any reference to the pope's staff and to the sending of messengers may be noted.
Thomas Mann's Appraisal of the Poet
Authors: Burkhard Arthur
Published: February 2007

In a previous article I tried to make clear the essentially autobiographical character of Thomas Mann's works. His writings, as I interpreted them, are primarily concerned with the problem of his own inheritance and career, more particularly manifest in the conflict raging in his breast between his bourgeois origins and his artistic profession (see pp. 564, 565). This same dominant dualism, which has been later elaborated in more recent critical works, is nowhere more clearly apparent than in the artist-heroes of his stories, to which important class of characters the present investigation prefers to restrict itself.
Ist Clara Viebig Konsequente Naturalistin?
Authors: Fleissner O. S.
Published: February 2007

Hans naumann gibt in seiner Deutschen Dichtung der Gegenwart (1923) folgende Darstellung von Clara Viebigs Kunst:

Naturalismus wie Heimatkunst, peinlichst genaue Gegenstandsmalerei, sozialen wie psychologischen Realismus, all dies beherrscht diese verspätete, aber konsequent gebliebene und bedeutendste Naturalistin in ganz ausserordentlichem Mass.
Costume in The Middle English Metrical Romances
Authors: Eagleson Harvey
Published: February 2007

The question of how far the Middle English metrical romances and their continental prototypes went in portraying realistically the life and times in which they were written and how much of the detail in them is merely literary convention has long been a moot one. W. P. Ker wrote: “The longer romances are really modern novels—studies of contemporary life, characters and emotions, mixed up with adventures more or less surprising,” but added in another place, “the romance writers of the twelfth century did much to make romance into a mechanic art, … reduced the game to a system and left the different romantic combinations and conventions within the reach of almost any 'prentice hand. …” M. L. Clédat wrote: “Les peintures de mœurs chevaleresques, les descriptions de fêtes, de tournois et de combats, nous plaisent encore par elles mêmes lorsqu'elles sont vives et légères, mais elles valent surtout par les renseignements précieux qu'elles nous fournissent sur la vie réelle et sur l'idéal du monde chevaleresque.” There is obviously some vagueness here, and it becomes desirable to separate the realistic from the conventional material in the Middle English metrical romances in order to determine where the art of the romance writers was merely “mechanic” and where they were actually attempting to give “renseignements précieux … sur la vie réelle et sur l'idéal du monde chevaleresque.”
The Date of The A-Text of Piers Ploughman
Authors: Cargill Oscar
Published: February 2007

Tyrwhitt's dating of the A-text of Piers Ploughman in the year 1362 from the allusions in the Second Vision (Passus v, 10–20) to the “pestilences” and “this south-Westerne wynt on a Saterday at even,” which seem to refer to the plague of 1361 and to the terrific gale which swept southern England on January 15, 1362, has long gone unchallenged. Skeat accepted it without question when he edited the poem for the Early English Text Society in 1877. Tyrwhitt found records of the storm in the chronicles of Thorn, Walsingham, and Murimuth; Skeat added Fabyan, Hardyng, John of Bridlington, the Eulogium Historiarum, and others to the list. That these two scholars have established the reference in the early lines of Passus v is clear enough, but it does not follow from this that the poem was written in 1362. It must have been written some time after 1362. I shall endeavor to show in this paper that the Prologue and First Vision (Passus i-iv) were written as late as May, 1376.
Notes on Chaucer and The Rhetoricians
Authors: Hamilton Marie Padgett
Published: February 2007

Professor Manly, in his British Academy lecture, Chaucer and the Rhetoricians, has shown with his usual brilliance that certain features of Chaucer's technique resulted from his study of manuals on the art of writing. As yet, however, little attention has been given to such handbooks as possible sources for the matter of passages in Chaucer. For instance, no one, I think, has suggested that rhetorical treatises may have supplied Chaucer with quotations from Latin writers; yet the rhetorics are as likely sources as the grammars and florilegia, which have long been mentioned in this connection. Indeed, two of the three arts of poetry with which Professor Manly's lecture is most concerned, the Ars Versificatoria of Matthieu de Vendôme and the Documentum de Arte Versificandi of Geoffrey de Vinsauf, contain numerous citations from Horace and Juvenal, as well as from those Latin poets to whom the Troilus is commanded to pay especial homage, “Virgile, Ovyde, … Lucan, and Stace.”
Shelley Works out the Rhythm Of ‘A Lament’
Authors: Weaver Bennett
Published: February 2007

To Shelley poetry came hard. Some of his lyrics, most quick and intense, did not rise through easy inspiration. The pages of his Note Books are full of pitchings forward, startings back, travail, and keen uncertainty. Poems like The Masque of Anarchy which one might think of as being plucked in full petal out of the inspired wrath of the poet's heart grew rather against the edge of a painful gardener's knife. The “Down down” lyric of Prometheus, although fastening itself within the poet's imagination, for a long time defied creativity. The inability of Shelley at once to apprehend the artistic relationship existing between those images and rhythms which visited his mind, haunted his thoughts and hung in his memory, is with him a vital characteristic.
Ein Anti-Reinmar
Authors: Nordmeyer H. W.
Published: February 2007

Friedrich Vogt fasste seine Ausführungen über Carl von Kraus' bahnbrechendes Reinmarwerk wie folgt zusammen (AfdA. 40 [1921], 126 f):

Das letzte Wort hat auch vKraus nicht über Reinmar gesprochen. Eine endgültige Feststellung der Zahl, der Reihenfolge, der Strophenordnung und des Wortlautes seiner Lieder, nach der man fortan zu zitieren hätte, eine ein für allemal abschliessende Darstellung ihres Gedankenganges, ihres äusseren und inneren Zusammenhanges hat er nicht gegeben. Aber … . er hat diese Lieder schärfer unter die Lupe genommen als irgend einer seiner Vorgänger… . . er hat durch seine Beobachtungen auch da wo man sie anders deuten und bewerten muss als er, Anregungen ausgestreut, die über den Kreis der Reinmarschen Dichtung hinausreichen.
The Allegorical Meaning of Spenser's Muiopotmos
Authors: Lemmi C. W.
Published: February 2007

It is my contention in this paper that Spenser's Muiopotmos is an allegory of the life and death of Sir Philip Sidney much like Astrophel. My reasons, in brief, are the following. The two poems tell fundamentally the same tale. The symbolical meaning of the butterfly is peculiarly suited to Sidney. The episode of Astery favors the supposition that it alludes to Stella. The departures from classical authority noticeable in the episode of Arachne combine to allegorize an important event in Sidney's life.
Unfamiliar Versions of Some Elizabethan Poems
Authors: Tannenbaum Samuel A.
Published: February 2007

On a shelf in the magnificent New York library of Dr. Rosenbach is a somewhat dilapidated little vellum-bound manuscript, measuring about 5¾ x 7½ inches, which appears to have been written at the beginning of the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The pages are not numbered and there is no list of contents. The front leaf is defective at the bottom, and the first few leaves have been stained by damp on the upper right corner so that some words can no longer be deciphered.
Gilbert Pilkington Once More
Authors: Frampton M. G.
Published: February 2007

In PMLA for December, 1926, Professor Oscar Cargill advanced ingeniously the theory first, that one, Gilbert Pilkington, was the author of the Northern Passion, the Turnament of Totenham, and the Tale of a Basyn in Cambridge University MS. Ff. 5. 48, and second, that, as the author of the Turnament he must also have been the author of the Secunda Pastorum, being thus none other than the “Wakefield Master” as Professor Gayley has taught us all to speak of the great playwright of the Towneley Cycle of mystery plays.
Representations of Lyndsay's Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis
Authors: Mill Anna J.
Published: February 2007

The Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis has come down to us in complete form only in the quarto edition printed by Robert Charteris at Edinburgh in 1602. There is no manuscript of the complete play. Several of the “interludes” were copied by George Bannatyne and are to be found in the Bannatyne Manuscript (1568), preceded by a proclamation of the play which does not appear in the early printed edition.
Catherine The Great and Shakespeare
Authors: Simmons Ernest J.
Published: February 2007

Although some two hundred years separate the reigns of Catherine II (1762–1796) of Russia and Elizabeth (1558–1603) of England, both periods have much in common. Russia had so lagged behind the rest of Europe that in the eighteenth century her social life and intellectual radius were not much farther advanced than those of sixteenth century England. Her prolonged lethargy had been dissipated by Peter the Great (1672–1725) who, like Henry VIII, had succeeded in injecting new life into his kingdom at the expense of offending nearly the whole country; but it was Catherine who realized Peter's great vision of advancing Russia to a leading place among the nations, a service which Elizabeth had performed for England.
Quinet an Early Discoverer of Emerson
Authors: Chazin Maurice
Published: February 2007

In the midst of the stormiest days of his career at the Collège de France, we find Edgar Quinet plunged in the Essays of Emerson. The striking example of a great French teacher and reformer taking refuge in the writings of the Concord philosopher, then practically unknown, during so violent and eventful an academic year as was 1844–45, is clearly shown in Quinet's lectures and commonplace book of that same period. Doubtless he found in the pages of the American essayist at this trying period both inspiration and solace. Little wonder, then, that he proclaimed enthusiastically to his auditors at the Collège de France that America had given birth to an original philosophy; and furthermore, that Emerson “was the most idealistic writer of our time.”
The Date and Purpose of Spenser's Veue
Authors: Martin William Cliff
Published: February 2007

A rapid reading of Spenser's Veue will show that here is no allegory and little narrative; for the Veue is an exposition of the present condition of Ireland with proposals of what must be done to correct the manifold evils, to establish Ireland as a loyal colony of England, and to insure a flow of money from west to east, reversing the deep drain from the exchequer of England to the bogs of Ireland.
Swift's Tale of a Tub Compared With Earlier Satires of the Puritans
Authors: Webster C. M.
Published: February 2007

Swift wrote brilliantly of the Dissenter, or Puritan, as revealed in the person of Jack, one of the three brothers in the Tale of a Tub, but there was a century of attack on the Puritans behind him. It is not the purpose of this paper to try to show that Swift was influenced by earlier writers. All that will be attempted is the analysis of the various themes of the attack on the Puritans in the Tale of a Tub, and a comparison of the results with those obtained from a similar analysis of the more prominent earlier satires of the Puritans. There may well have been various influences of earlier men on Swift, but, as has been said, this question will not be raised. The real contribution of Swift—what he alone thought and said about the Dissenters—will be more easily seen if we first eliminate the themes which had already been used. Of equal importance is the listing of the points Swift definitely avoided using or emphasizing but which the earlier men had delighted in employing.
Echoes of The Italian Risorgimento in Contemporaneous American Writers
Authors: Peterson Roy M.
Published: February 2007

Among the historical events of the nineteenth century, the struggle of the Italian people for liberty and unity occupies an outstanding place. But, while this movement, known as the Risorgimento, was so important in the development of European politics and, consequently, could not fail to attract the attention of English writers, Americans were naturally much less exposed to its influence. The United States was not a world power in those days; with existing means of communication it seemed remote from Europe, and its policy was to remain aloof from the problems and complications of the Old World. In these circumstances it would not be surprising if the stirring events of the Risorgimento awoke few echoes across the Atlantic.
Literature and Life Again
Authors: Stoll Elmer Edgar
Published: February 2007

I am prompted to enter again upon this subject by two considerations, which hang together. One is that opinions I had previously expressed upon it have, in a respectable quarter, been treated with greater condescension than a man not wholly in error can well be expected to ignore; the other is that similar opinions, as I have lately noticed, have (independently) appeared in recent reputable criticism, particularly the foreign. I had said that it is not justifiable to treat literary or other art as a document, a record of the time, on the one hand, or of the author's life, on the other; that, rather, art reflects the taste of the time, and the taste of the author; and that while much of the life of the period may be reflected, and of the author, too, it is only with the greatest difficulty and uncertainty that this can be isolated and recognized. Imaginative literature is not only not history or unconscious autobiography but not even raw material for it; big allowances must be made both for the limitations and conventions of the art and also for the character of the artists. Some of these, to be sure, are realists, intent on the external object; some also are egoists, concerned, directly or indirectly, with their own nature and experience: but good art, and the greatest, is not limited or determined either by the artist's person or his day. And rather similar are the opinions of the critics Mm. Rémy de Gourmont, Paul Valéry, and Henri Bremond; and of recent notable novelists such as Proust and Gide. Like writers of their nation and of England whom I have cited in discussing the subject before, they are all of one accord against the biographical or historical attitude as unfruitful and irrelevant; and nearly all of them have much to say of Racine as one who did not recognizably reflect his time or his own life within it, and is, because of that, all the more significant as a poet.
The Principle of the Dominant Metaphor in Goethe's Werther
Authors: Diez Max
Published: February 2007

Having thus completed the death cycle, we turn now to the metaphors of sickness, and again we must start with Werther's application to himself of what he had said of the unhappy suicide girl. He sees himself as “der Unglückliche, dessen Leben unter einer schleichenden Krankheit unaufhaltsam abstirbt. … Und das Übel, das ihm die Kräfte verzehrt, raubt ihm zugleich den Mut, sich davon zu befreien” (61.22). In Werther's case it is not just a sickness of love as with Rousseau's St. Preux. From the very outset, Werther sees himself as a sick man, his own emotionalism as a “verderbliche Leidenschaft … Auch halte ich mein Herzchen wie ein krankes Kind” (10.12–14). And so it continues after he has met Lotte: “Was Lotte einem Kranken sein muss, fühl' ich an meinem eignen Herzen, das übler dran ist als manches, das auf dem Siechbette verschmachtet” (42.4); “wenn meine Krankheit zu heilen wäre” (78.2). Hence his sympathy for the invalid in whom he sees his own case: “Müsse der trostlos umkommen, der eines Kranken spottet, der nach der entferntesten Quelle reist, die seine Krankheit vermehren, sein Ausleben schmerzhafter machen wird” (137.4–). This invalid serves as a double simile; he is like Werther himself on the one hand, he is like a religious pilgrim on the other: “das bedrängte Herz, das, um seine Gewissensbisse los zu werden und die Leiden seiner Seele abzutun, eine Pilgrimschaft nach dem heiligen Grabe tut” (137.9). Ill humor, the peevishness and jealousy of the lover, becomes the subject of discussion at the home of the vicar and is treated als eine Art Krankheit, and the question is, “ob dafür kein Mittel ist” (45.8). The moral is found by developing the simile—seek the remedy and take it: “Gewiss, wer krank ist, wird bei allen Ärzten herumfragen, und die grössten Resignationen, die bittersten Arzneien wird er nicht abweisen, um seine Gesundheit zu erhalten” (45.28). This Art Krankheit is “eine Art Trägheit” and so indolence and inertia also becomes a disease (45.16).
Milton and Mirabeau
Authors: Wolfe Don M.
Published: February 2007

Though Milton and Mirabeau were devoted to almost identical ideals of civil liberty, their personalities offer a peculiar contrast. Milton was an idealist, a theorist, a poet; he was abstemious in food and drink, inclined to seclusion, religious by nature. Mirabeau, on the other hand, was a soldier, an orator, a political leader. Whereas Milton was thoughtful and reserved, Mirabeau was animated, impulsive, ever seeking the center of action, forever restless and impatient. Sensual and gluttonous, he was as much a slave to his passions as any of the Englishmen Milton condemned for being so; and in his last moments he turned away, more in kindness than in derision, the priest who sought to shrive him. Notwithstanding these essential differences, Mirabeau found in Milton a kindred spirit; he found in him that flaming love of liberty, that passion for essential freedoms, that lofty and unselfish devotion to country to which he himself aspired. Milton's influence on Mirabeau, many times suggested but never evaluated, is one of significant interest to students of Milton's politics. A close study of two Mirabeau tracts, Théorie de la Royauté après la Doctrine de Milton and De la liberté de la Presse, reveals not only that Mirabeau's reading of Milton strikingly verified his own political conclusions: it presents evidence that Milton's voice at a critical period of the Revolution became the weapon of its most powerful leader. French cries for liberty found expression in the tracts of the Puritan poet.
An Introduction to The Æsthetics of Literary Portraiture
Authors: Wenger Christian N.
Published: February 2007

Despite the myriad studies of literature in print, a comprehensive æsthetics of literary portraiture remains still unavailable. In the following mere introduction to the subject I propose to state a principle whereby to explain the beauty of fictional personages; to devote attention chiefly to a discussion of the ontology of such personages, giving a thumbnail historical sketch of this ontology; and to conclude with a cursory glimpse into the functions of such portraiture.
The Unity of Beowulf
Authors: Du Bois Arthur E.
Published: February 2007

One is to infer from this characterization that Beowulf is exceedingly strong. Perhaps one can learn no more. For there may be no significance in the facts that the dragon is fifty feet long (l. 3042), that Beowulf rules the Geats fifty years (ll. 2209, 2733), that Hroþgar rules the Danes fifty years before the coming of Grendel (l. 1769), and that Grendel's dam holds the moors fifty years (l. 1498). And there may even be no connection between these facts except that Beowulf, Hroþgar, and Grendel's dam rule their domains for a very long time and that the dragon is a very long beast. Anything which approaches thirty or fifty in dimension, conventionally approaches the marvellous. Accordingly Deor says (ll. 18–19):

Đeodric ahte þritig wintraMæringa burg …
Rhyme in Paradise Lost
Authors: Diekhoff John S.
Published: February 2007

When we remember the subtle irregularity of Milton's rhymes in Lycidas, and the frequency with which he introduces rhyme into the blank verse of Comus and Samson Agonistes, it is less surprising that there should be rhymes in Paradise Lost than that they should not have been noticed. That they are deliberate rhymes needs little proof, for it is obvious that an ear as fine as Milton's must have heard any rhyme which can be heard by the ordinary reader, and this examination grew out of the vague impression of rhyme given by certain passages in Paradise Lost, and the presence of a few obvious rhymes, such as:

Rose like an Exhalation, with the soundOf Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet,Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round (i. 711–713)This horror will grow milde, this darkness light,Besides what hope the never-ending flight (ii. 220–221)Allegeance to th'acknowledg'd Power supream?And thou sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seam, (iv. 956–957)That slumberd, wakes the bitter memorieOf what he was, what is, and what must be Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.Some times towards Eden which now in his view (iv. 24–27)
Astrea and Celadon: An Untouched Portrait of Aphra Behn
Authors: Platt Harrison Gray
Published: February 2007

Mrs. Behn, like Alexander Pope, has almost succeeded in leaving for posterity an embellished and retouched portrait of herself. In her works, especially in Oroonoko and The Fair Jilt, she inserted a number of passages purporting to be autobiographical. These autobiographical bits deal almost exclusively with a period twenty years previous to the publication of the novels in 1688, a period long before Mrs. Behn had attained any literary reputation, so that a little judicious alteration of the details of her life had every chance of passing unnoticed.
Shenstone and Richard Graves's Columella
Authors: Hill Charles J.
Published: February 2007

In 1779 James Dodsley published a slight piece of fiction entitled Columella; Or, The Distressed Anchoret. The author of that work was the Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, who kept his name from the title page, preferring to figure there as “the author of The Spiritual Quixote,” a clever satire on the Methodists by which he had won attention six years before. This latter work went through four editions before 1800 and was deservedly revived in a handsome reprint for the modern reader in 1926, but the only edition of Columella was the first. Special interest attaches to Columella today, however, because of its connection with the poet, William Shenstone. Graves and Shenstone had been intimate friends. Their friendship began in 1732 when both were undergraduates of Pembroke College, Oxford, and endured with great warmth of affection until Shenstone's death in 1763, when Graves found himself an executor of his friend's will. During Graves's lifetime (he lived on until 1804, one of the few nonagenarians in the history of English literature) it was apparently known that the character of Columella had been created in the image of Shenstone, for the fact was mentioned in the obituary notice of Graves in the Gentleman's Magazine? That interesting point has been duly remarked by recent writers, but as yet nobody has demonstrated how startlingly close the portrait is. In a like manner identifications of minor characters in Columella have been mentioned, but the suggestions, unsupported by proof, have remained only good intuitions. I propose in the following paragraphs to discuss the origins of certain characters in Columella, devoting special attention to showing that Columella himself is a highly intimate portrait of Shenstone.
LI. Middleton's Acquaintance With The Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele
Authors: Christian Mildred Gayler
Published: February 2007

Thomas Middleton, dramatist (1580–1627), was not by any means the literary discoverer of the rogue's fascination. Even the moral Harman had lost himself, at times, in the romantic appeal of the vagrants he pictured, and Greene, after a perfunctory moral preface to his series of Conny-catching Pamphlets (1591–92), had given himself more and more unreservedly to revealing the adventurous life of rogues.
Wordsworth's First Visit to Tintern Abbey
Authors: Gray Charles Harold
Published: February 2007

The complexity of Wordsworth's spiritual troubles during the critical summer of 1793 and the subtlety of his examination of his mind at the time should be excuse enough for another attempt to bring all the aspects of the truth together. The attempt affects the reading of so characteristic and popular a poem as the Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey. These Lines are as obviously autobiographical as the Prelude, and passages in each are admittedly parallel evidence of certain aspects of the poet's development. When, however, we compare the passages which refer to the period of the first visit to Tintern Abbey, we find certain discrepancies which not even the most recent students of Wordsworth's life have been able to reconcile. The contrast between his attitude towards Nature in 1793 and his attitude towards Nature in 1798, which is the substance of the Lines, does not correspond in all particulars with the contrast made in the Prelude between these two periods. Consequently the familiar passage in the Lines is differently interpreted by Wordsworth's readers. If it is to be read as authentic biography, it needs more careful harmonizing with the Prelude. If, on the other hand, such a harmony cannot be made, the shorter poem may have to be accepted as a poem symbolizing two states of mind without possessing autobiographical accuracy. While the poem would thereby lose nothing, biography would gain something in strict truth.
Crashaw's Reputation in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Warren Austin
Published: February 2007

The Romantic Period has generally been regarded as one of enthusiasm for the pre-Augustan poets as well as for the writers of Jacobean and Caroline prose. We recall the ardors of Charles Lamb for the Elizabethan dramatists, and of Lamb and Coleridge for Browne, Burton, and Taylor; we recall, too, the interest of Scott in the ballads, and of Keats in Spenser and Milton.
E.K. is Spenser
Authors: Kuersteiner Agnes D.
Published: February 2007

In the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1929) under the Spenser entry, J. C. Smith says: “The notion that E. K. is a mask for Spenser himself has been disproved by Dr. Herford.” Since 1895, when the late Dr. C. H. Herford published his edition of the Shepheardes Calender, a great many critics, as well as Professor Smith, have accepted as final Dr. Herford's conclusion that E.K., the so-called editor, is some one other than Spenser, and is probably Edward Kirke. In this paper I shall try to refute the arguments advanced by Dr. Herford and his followers, and to give supporting evidence for the affirmation in my title.
The Chronology of Bishop Brunton's Sermons
Authors: Devlin Sister Mary Aquinas
Published: February 2007

Miss Eleanor Kellogg in her interesting article, “Bishop Brunton and the Rat Parliament,” (PMLA, l, 57–68) has made some errors in her chronological arrangement of Bishop Brunton's sermons which should be corrected, though they do not affect her main contentions.
Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale and Flanders
Authors: Norris Dorothy Macbride
Published: February 2007

Chaucer scholars have long wondered why the scene of the Pardoner's Tale was laid in Flanders. Since the Pardoner treats two themes, the evils of drinking and of cupidity, why has the poet localized such a story in this vicinity? Was it for artistic reasons, was it because of a lost original, or did he have an ulterior motive? Certain facts connected with fourteenth-century Flanders tend strongly to justify Chaucer's choice; in fact, to make his selection seem a deliberate one. Not only was Flanders notorious for these two evils—Professor Manly has already pointed out the aptness of localizing the drinking theme there—but England in the 1380's and 90's might well have profited politically and economically by a glance at her unfortunate neighbor across the Channel.
The Meaning of Hamlet's Soliloquy
Authors: Richards Irving T.
Published: February 2007

Many scholars have found in Hamlet's soliloquy beginning “To be, or not to be” the crux of the drama. Those who, like the Romantic critics, have interpreted the play as a struggle between Hamlet's determination to avenge his father and his inhibiting propensity to over-subtle philosophizing have felt that here, more clearly than anywhere else, he is exposing his malady: over-delicate sensibility and a love of intellectual hair-splitting which absorb energy that should have gone into decisive action. Such critics point for further confirmation to the soliloquy at the end of Act ii, in which Hamlet contrasts his own lethargy (in language far from lethargic) with the deep histrionic passion of the player who has just recited for him, and to the later soliloquy (iv. iv), in which he certainly does quite roundly chide himself for procrastination, while he confesses to have had “cause, and will, and strength, and means, / To do't.”
Thoreau, Moralist of The Picturesque (PMLA, xlvii, 3 [Sept., 1932] 864–889)
Authors: Southworth James G.
Published: February 2007

The facts presented by Mr. William Templeman in his article Thoreau, Moralist of the Picturesque are undoubtedly correct: many of his deductions from these facts, however, appear to me to be inconclusive. The reason these deductions are inconclusive is, I think, due to a failure on his part to define the terms, or when once defined, to adhere to his definitions. In the development of his material he wavers between two definitions of “picturesque,” although he makes it clear at the outset which definition he has decided upon. The “picturesque,” states Mr. Templeman in the opening paragraph of his article, “may be defined as that particular kind of beauty, especially landscape beauty, which would look well in a picture.” No one would quarrel with this definition. But when he adds that the definition “would be clearer if the type of picture were specified,” Mr. Templeman lays himself open to the charge of not understanding Gilpin's term “picturesque beauty,” a term rightly thought by Gilpin to be a phrase “little understood.” It is quite clear that Gilpin meant any scene “forming, or fitted to form, a picture,” and not the more restricted meaning of the term: “possessing quaint, rugged, or homely charm, or unique or vivid suggestiveness, as distinguished from beauty or sublimity.”
IX. A New Date for Antonio's Revenge
Authors: McGinn Donald J.
Published: February 2007

About a decade after Kyd's Spanish Tragedy had introduced the revenge-play to the English stage, there appeared almost simultaneously two tragedies which presented a somewhat different treatment of revenge—Shakespeare's Hamlet and Marston's Antonio's Revenge. Although neither play departed entirely from the traditions established by Kyd, both contained a profounder philosophy than the earlier plays of their type. Immediately thereafter followed a succession of tragedies of revenge obviously influenced by the new philosophical treatment. A. H. Thorndike in his “Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays” attributes the revival of interest wholly to Marston; indeed, he maintains that Shakespeare did not “set the fashion from 1599 on, for Marston almost certainly preceded him.” The other scholars who more recently have interested themselves in this problem, Dr. Friedrich Radebrecht and Sir. E. K. Chambers, share Thorndike's opinion. Yet, as a result of evidence discovered in connection with a study of the influence of Hamlet on the dramatic literature of the period, I question giving Marston credit for the renewed interest in the revenge-play.
XV. Maurice as a Commentator on Coleridge
Authors: Sanders Charles Richard
Published: February 2007

Coleridge's disciples fall into two classes: those who, like J. H. Green, felt themselves to be the appointed custodians of Coleridge's teachings and who set about the scholarly business of collecting, completing, systematizing, editing, interpreting, and preserving Coleridge's writings and sayings; and those who, like J. C. Hare and Frederick Denison Maurice, were interested chiefly in extracting from Coleridge's teaching what would be food for their own minds, and truth confirmed by their own experience. The first group of disciples sought to make Coleridge accessible and understandable; the second group attempted to apply and test what he had taught. The comments of both groups upon their teacher may be of value. Of special importance, however, are the comments of Maurice, who, a devoted but discriminating student of Coleridge and a disciple whose whole life gave testimony as to both the worth and the shortcomings of Coleridge's message, was in his own day, a prolific writer and influential teacher.
XVIII. Matthew Arnold and Sainte-Beuve
Authors: Whitridge Arnold
Published: February 2007

In a letter to Cardinal Newman, written when he was fifty years old, Matthew Arnold mentions four people from whom he is conscious of having learnt—Goethe, Wordsworth, Sainte-Beuve, and Newman himself. Arnold goes on to explain that he does not mean merely receiving a strong impression but actually acquiring “habits, methods, ruling ideas, which are constantly with me.” Much as he admired Newman, Goethe, and Wordsworth, Arnold's literary fame owes more to Sainte-Beuve than to any other one man. The two volumes of Essays in Criticism, which contain Arnold's most interesting and enduring prose, are a lasting monument to the force of Sainte-Beuve's ideas. Posterity would gladly exchange Arnold's attempts to rationalize religion for a few more volumes of literary essays, but unfortunately, much as he admired Sainte-Beuve, he was too much of an Englishman to follow in Sainte-Beuve's footsteps. Sir Walter Raleigh used to maintain that Arnold was thoroughly unEnglish in his tastes and that he invariably condemned everything that was characteristically British. If that were true he would not have yearned for England as he did whenever he went abroad. Arnold had an unerring eye for national defects, but no man could care more deeply for the welfare of his country. Beneath the gay exterior of the man of the world Arnold was serious to the extent of didacticism. In the letters to his mother he is continually saying that he thinks such and such an article “will do good.” Sainte-Beuve never spared himself in the Causeries du Lundi, but he probably worried more about giving a faithful portrait than about “doing good.”
XIX. Chronology in Hardy's Novels
Authors: Weber Carl J.
Published: February 2007

During a recent re-examination of The Return of the Native I stumbled upon a feature in the construction of that story to which I had been for years totally blind. Turning for similar investigation to others of the Wessex novels, I was startled at the hitherto unsuspected evidence of a special kind of careful workmanship.
John Wilson and the “Orphan-Maid”: Some Unpublished Letters
Authors: Strout Alan Lang
Published: February 2007

In 1862, eight years after the death of John Wilson, appeared his biography written by his daughter, Mrs. Mary Gordon. George Gleig in a critique of this volume in the Quarterly Review of January, 1863, unsympathetically declares that Mrs. Gordon's “story of his first love, and of its influence upon his character and prospects, is mere silliness.” Later he declares also that the disproportionate space devoted to this romantic story “is a mistake into which only a woman could fall.” There is certainly a difference, sentimentally, between reading the faded manuscript letters now in the National Library of Scotland and reading these same letters in the cold print of a book; but Mrs. Gordon's inclusion of them is not “mere silliness.” Perhaps she would have omitted them had she realized how vividly they illustrate not only her father's emotional nature, but also his inherent weakness.
More Swinburne-D'Annunzio Parallels
Authors: Brown Calvin S.
Published: February 2007

In 1896 Enrico Thovez, in an essay on L'arte del comporre di Gabriele d'Annunzio, made an open accusation of plagiarism, and supported it by pointing out numerous parallels between d'Annunzio's work and passages from Flaubert, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck, Verlaine, Shelley, and Whitman. Croce undertook d'Annunzio's defense, and Thovez, in a reply to Croce, became so satirical as to remark: “Mi vien da pensare al propositio di un amico mio, il quale afferma burlescamente di voler dare un' edizione delle opere del d'Annunzio ‘col testo a fronte’.” In the same essay he adds Tommasseo and Maupassant to the list of creditors.
Shakespeare's Musical Collaboration with Morley
Authors: Moore John Robert
Published: February 2007

Shakespeare's intimate acquaintance with the music of his time and his enthusiasm for the art are well known, and there can be little question that he consorted to some extent with the London musicians of 1600. Certain of them may have been actively associated with the production, and possibly with the composition, of his plays. Precisely what form such association took, however, is a matter upon which investigation has hitherto yielded only meagre and confusing results. Speculation links Shakespeare's name with many composers and performers of the period, some of whom must indeed have supplied both the incidental music so abundantly required for his stage productions and the earliest settings of his lyrics.
Ten Debatable Dante Metaphors
Authors: Austin H. D.
Published: February 2007

The Lashing Gale.—The description of the gale that torments the carnal sinners, Inf., v, 33, as “whirling and smiting” them suggests that in using gastiga in vs. 51 Dante may have had in mind the figure of a whipping-top. As the wailing and wretched shades approach he asks: “Master, who are those folk that the black air so chastises?” Whipping-tops were a common toy in mediaeval Italy; and in Par., xviii, 42, Dante refers to them specifically, saying of the swift rotation with which the light of Judas Maccabæus responded to his name, in the Cross of Mars: “joy was the whip of the top.”
Censure of Fiction in American Romances and Magazines 1789–1810
Authors: Orians G. Harrison
Published: February 2007

Most critics of early American literature have testified to the widespread censure of fiction in the last years of the eighteenth century. The attacks, occasionally dignified by book or magazine publication, were, as Carl Van Doren has pointed out, fanlike in their spread: The dullest critics contended that novels were lies; the pious that they served no virtuous purpose; the strenuous, that they softened sturdy minds; the utilitarian, that they crowded out more useful books; the realistic, that they painted adventure too romantic and love too vehement; the patriotic, that dealing with European manners, they tended to confuse and dissatisfy republican youth.

The dullest critics contended that novels were lies; the pious that they served no virtuous purpose; the strenuous, that they softened sturdy minds; the utilitarian, that they crowded out more useful books; the realistic, that they painted adventure too romantic and love too vehement; the patriotic, that dealing with European manners, they tended to confuse and dissatisfy republican youth.
The Deserted Village and Goldsmith's Social Doctrines
Authors: Bell Howard J.
Published: February 2007

The Deserted Village is avowedly a didactic poem. Goldsmith wrote it as a solemn warning to England that the fate of Auburn was merely an example of what might happen to every other village of the land. But modern critics have touched upon this theme only very lightly, and where they have gone into it at all, their interpretations have in some cases led to a misunderstanding of the poet's analysis. On the premise that Goldsmith wrote and his contemporaries read the poem as a treatment of current social issues rather than just as a description of a simple rural community, I propose here to re-examine it as a social document. In so doing, I shall raise and attempt to answer three questions on which there seems to be no general agreement among scholars but which must be answered satisfactorily if we are to comprehend fully The Deserted Village. These questions are (1) just what message was the poet really trying to transmit to his readers? (2) how completely does the poem express his actual convictions? and (3) what inspired him to consider the condition he was describing as not merely unfortunate but fatal to the health of the nation?
J. C. Lavater and Goethe: Problems of Psychology and Theology in Die Leiden Des Jungen Werthers
Authors: Atkins Stuart Pratt
Published: February 2007

Johann Caspar Lavater is one of the three writers personally known to Goethe whose names are mentioned most often in Dichtung und Wahrheit. The other two are Herder and Merck: Herder, whose stimulating influence on Goethe may be easily discerned in countless passages of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and whose Vont Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele has been suggested “as a more probable (and more systematic) source of psychological information for Goethe than the vague ‘Sturm-und-Drang-Psychologie’ sometimes indicated as the framework of the novel”; Merck—“dieser eigne Mann, der auf mein Leben den größten Einfluß gehabt”, Goethe declares in Dichtung und Wahrheit—who in 1772 played a rôle in Goethe's life very like that of the far blinder and less effectual Wilhelm in the story of Werther, and who in 1774 insisted that Goethe submit Die Leiden des jungen Werthers for publication without making any revisions in the manuscript.
Victor Hugo as a Humorist before 1840
Authors: Moore Olin H.
Published: February 2007

There has long been rather general agreement, especially among American critics, that Victor Hugo was devoid of a sense of humor. For example, in 1869, J. Burroughs commented in a review of The Man Who Laughs: “Most American readers … will feel the want of humor more than anything else.”1 If a book by Hugo dealing with laughter fell ignominiously below the proud American standard of humor, it is not surprising to find T. S. Perry criticizing such “wild novels” as BugJargal and Han d'Islande for being “without a trace of humor.”2 More modern American critics usually continue in the same vein. Rather typical is the comment of C. H. C. Wright, who declares that “Hugo was quite without a sense of humor.”3 Even Elliott M. Grant, one of the leading contemporary defenders of Hugo, can argue in extenuation of the poet-novelist-dramatist's alleged lack of written humor only that his conversation was sometimes witty.4 In general, critics seem to reason a priori that the supremely egotistic disciple of the melancholy Chateaubriand could not possibly have become a humorist.
Tintern Abbey revisited
Authors: Benziger James
Published: February 2007

A number of years ago Norman Foerster wrote these words: “Tinlern Abbey is great aesthetically, as we have come increasingly to see; it is aesthetically vital but unsound; in sum, this poem is a superb expression of unwisdom.”1 The sentence reveals the sturdy dualism which might be expected from one who had studied under Irving Babbitt. Perhaps Tinlern Abbey is pronounced “unsound” because it expresses an almost monistic view of human nature: the poet's sensation, feeling, thought, moral awareness, and mystical insight seem to have developed one into the other without a struggle; the lower faculties are not sternly kept in their place by the higher; all commingle almost as equals in the powerful solvent of Wordsworth's memory. If on the one hand acts of kindness are traditionally praised as the best portion of a good man's life, and if mystical vision is acknowledged to possess an aspect more sublime, yet the balance is redressed when “nature and the language of the sense” are praised as the anchor of our purest thoughts, the guardian of our heart, and the soul of all our moral being. The poem is in many ways a romantic's “song of innocence” rather than a humanist's “song of experience.”
Sheridan's Introduction to the American stage
Authors: Nettleton George H.
Published: February 2007

The story of the introduction of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's dramatic masterpieces to the American theatre is itself an American Revolutionary drama. When once the materials widespread over many years and places are duly assembled and ordered, the resultant outline of events unfolds like the scenario of an arresting chronicle play. The dramatic factors of time, place, and action become clear and colorful. The action develops against dramatic backgrounds—the American Revolution, the birth of the American Republic. The scene shifts from the American mainland to the British West Indies, and back to focal points of the American scene. The plot thickens as theatrical enterprise encounters various forces of moral and political hostility to the theatre. The time of the action prolongs over years, until the progressive campaigns of American theatrical managers, despite sundry temporary local reverses, attain conclusive victory. Within this larger framework of American theatrical venture and warfare, Sheridan's dramatic work may well illustrate “the play within the play.”
David Garrick's Significance in the History of Shakespearean Criticism
Authors: Stone George Winchester
Published: February 2007

Visitors to Westminster Abbey may remember the memorial statue to David Garrick with its inscription:

To paint fair nature by divine command,Her magic pencil in his glowing hand,A Shakespeare rose: then to expand his fameWide o'er this breathing world, a Garrick came.Tho' sunk in death the forms the poet drew,The actor's genius bade them breathe anew;Though like the bard himself, in night they layImmortal Garrick call'd them back to day;And till Eternity with power sublimeShall mark the mortal hour of hoary TimeShakespeare and Garrick like twin stars shall shineAnd earth irradiate with a beam divine.