bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Runic Inscription on the Isle of Wight Sword
Authors: Hempl George
Published: January 2021

On page 459 of the third volume of his Old Northern Runic Monuments, and on page 245 of his Handbook, Stephens gave a cut of an Anglo-Saxon sword found on the Isle of Wight and now in the British Museum, Of this he wrote the following facts and fancies: “Found about the middle of this century in an Old English grave. But the runes were first seen in 1882 by Aug. W. Franks, Esq., the Director. . . . The runes are on the inner side of the silver scabbard-mount, and were only seen lately when the piece was cleaned. Hence their perfect preservation, tho so slightly cut-in. They have been hidden for some 1300 winters! . . . In this case the owner had cut this spell, singing therewith some chaunt of supernatural power, to overcome the easier his unsuspecting enemy. All such witchcraft and amulet-bearing etc. was strictly forbidden. Whatever the staves mean, this is the only such secret rune-risting yet found.” Stephens' rendering is, as usual, quite worthless: “? Awe (terror, death and destruction) to-the-seve (brynie, armor, weapons, of the foe)!”
Zum Speculum Humanae Salvationis
Authors: Schmidt-Wartenberg H.
Published: January 2021

Das speculum humanae salvationis gehört zu der grossen anzahl theologisch moralisirender gedichte des mittelalters, denen zwar vom aesthetisch literarischen Standpunkt aus nur geringer wert beigelegt werden kann, die aber kulturgeschichtlich eine nicht zu unterschätzende bedeutung gehabt haben. Wie sehr diese dichtung dazu beigetragen hat has geistige interesse des volks rege zu erhalten, erhellt, ganz abgesehen von dem künstlerischen beiwerk der illustrationen, schon aus dem umstande, dass sie mehrfach gegenstand der übersetzung und überarbeitung gewesen ist, nicht nur in Deutschland, wo das werk höchstwahrscheinlich entstanden ist, sondern auch in den nachbarländern.
Elizabethan Translations from the Italian: The Titles of Such Works Now First Collected and Arranged, With Annotations: IV. Miscellanea
Authors: Scott Mary Augusta
Published: January 2021

In 1894, while preparing my doctor's thesis at Yale University, on the subject, “The Elizabethan Drama, especially in its Relations to the Italians of the Renaissance,” I began to study the Italian sources of the English dramatic poetry of the age of Elizabeth. Many of the plays are dramatized versions of novelle, which, in translation, were so popular at that time. But I soon found that romantic fiction by no means exhausted the treasure-trove of Renaissance literature upon which the great dramatists drew so largely, both for their matter and their inspiration. Italian discovery, history, science, manners, music, all that Italy had so abundantly contributed to the general stock of intellectual wealth, was becoming more and more familiar to the eager, open, impressionable minds of Elizabethan Englishmen, and almost everything of importance that appeared in France and Spain was sooner or later pressed into the service of English genius. So I purposely set aside the main subject of my inquiry, the Italian sources of Elizabethan plays, until I had made a collection, as complete as possible, of all the translations from the Italian during the Elizabethan period, understanding by that, the entire cycle of the great drama, approximately from the accession of Edward VI. to the Restoration, from 1549 to 1660. With this paper, Part IV, I now complete the bibliography. Part I, comprising 70 numbers, on “Romances in Prose,” will be found in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. x, No. 2, June, 1895; Part II, 82 numbers on “Poetry, Plays, and Metrical Romances,” Ibid., Vol. xi, No. 4, December, 1896; and Part III, 111 titles on ‘Miscellaneous Translations,‘ Ibid., Vol. xiii, No. 1, January, 1898. The present paper, an account of 139 translations, is the second half of Part III, and as that dealt with religion and theology, science and the arts, grammars and dictionaries, and proverbs, so this instalment of Miscellanea treats of voyages and discovery, history and politics, manners and morals, and Italian and Latin publications in England. The whole bibliography, corrected to date, consists of 411 translations, representing a total of 219 English translators, and 223 Italian authors.
XVI.—Gender-Change from Middle High German to Luther, as Seen in the 1545 Edition of the Bible
Authors: Florer Warren Washburn
Published: January 2021

The subject of the gender of substantives has in recent years occupied the attention of many scholars, and various theories dealing mostly with the origin of gender have been proposed. Benjamin Ide Wheeler in the Journal of Germanic Philology, Vol. II, 4, states plainly the fundamental points of the leading theories. The literature on the subject is also to be found there. A reference to this article will suffice. Victor Michels [Zum Wechsel des Nominalgeschlechts im Deutschen, Strassburg, 1889) discusses the main principles which are at work in bringing about gender-change in German. C. Bojunga in a Leipzig dissertation, in developing the principles which underly the shiftings in the substantive declension, reaches about the same results as Michel's, however in not so full or concise a manner. These treatises deal with the changes from the OHG. and MHG. to the NHG. period. Only occasional references are made to Luther's language.
The Book of the Courtyer: A Possible Source of Benedick and Beatrice
Authors: Scott Mary Augusta
Published: January 2021

“The best book that ever was written upon good breeding, Il Cortegiano, by Castiglione, grew up at the little Court of Urbino, and you should read it,” says Dr. Johnson to Boswell, of all places in the world, in the Isle of Skye, “roving among the Hebrides at sixty.” But when, in the Life of Addison, we find the Courtyer classed with Galateo, and compared with the social essays of the Spectator and the Tatler, it becomes clear that the Great Cham was so ignorant of the law he was laying down in this instance, that he took Il Cortegiano for a courtesy-book, a book of etiquette:—

To teach the minuter decencies and inferior duties, to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous than criminal, to remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first attempted by Casa in his book of manners, and Castiglione in the Courtier.” (Works, VII, 428, Addison.
From Franklin to Lowell
Authors: Grandgent C. H.
Published: January 2021

This passage from Addison, reproduced, in a slightly modified version of the American Dialect Society's alphabet, from a phonetic transcription by Benjamin Franklin himself, may be taken as a sample of Franklin's pronunciation. Angel was more commonly ændgel in the 18th century, and chamber, danger had the same vowel; êndƌel, tʃêmbǝr, dêudƌǝr, according to Noah Webster, were less elegant. The use of ði before consonants as well as vowels is noteworthy, and may be due to carelessness. For tû = to, Franklin also said tō. Bɐzǝm was perfectly good in his day.
Luis De León, The Spanish Poet, Humanist, and Mystic
Authors: Ford J. D. M.
Published: January 2021

In the domain of Spanish letters, where the earnest student of literary history still finds himself lacking many necessary tools, there is a crying need of a new and critical edition of the works, and particularly the poetical works, of the monk Luis de León. One of the greatest of the Castilian lyric poets,—and, as such, a fellow to Garcilaso de la Vega and Herrera,—one of the most eminent among the masters of flexible and harmonious Spanish prose, which flows from his pen with none of the customary turgidness, he is best represented to-day only by the meritorious but rare edition of his works published by Merino in the early years of this century, and by the unsatisfactory edition of the Biblioteca de autores españoles, Tome XXXVII, which has not made the proper use of Merino's collection.
The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays
Authors: Thorndike Ashley H.
Published: January 2021

The revenge tragedy, a distinct species of the tragedy of blood, may be defined as a tragedy whose leading motive is revenge and whose main action deals with the progress of this revenge, leading to the death of the murderers and often the death of the avenger himself.

This type, as thus defined, probably first appeared on the Elizabethan stage in the Spanish Tragedy and the original Hamlet.2 Of these two plays the old Hamlet is not extant and can only be reconstructed conjecturally; the Spanish Tragedy represents, therefore, the origin of the type. Just what the ultimate sources of the type may have been, is not a question which enters our discussion. In the Spanish Tragedy the influence of Seneca is marked as in much early English tragedy,1 and there may be some indebtedness to contemporary French and Italian drama of the Senecan sort.2 We are not, however, to examine the Spanish Tragedy in connection with the influence of Seneca but in connection with a long succession of Elizabethan revenge plays; and for such an investigation it serves well enough as a starting point. Thomas Kyd was the author of this play and probably, as Dr. Sarrazin 3 has shown, of the old Hamlet. He may safely be taken as the introducer of the revenge tragedy upon the English stage, and his work may be considered one of the many dramatic innovations of the Elizabethan period.
Germanic Elements in the Story of King Horn
Authors: McKnight George H.
Published: January 2021

To the mass of romances current during the Middle English period of our literature, the contribution of purely Germanic tradition was a relatively meagre one. The spirit which had produced the earlier epic was at this time extinct. A solitary offshoot of the earlier epic seems to have survived in the story of the dragon-killing Wade with his famous boat, Guingelot. But even this story is lost to us save in occasional references, and from these we must infer that all definite idea of its origin was lost, since it is associated, now with Weyland, now with Horn and Havelok, now with Launcelot. To these earlier tales, such as those of Beowulf and possibly of Wade, having a popular, epic origin, succeeded in the Middle English period a mass of tales and romances of the most diverse origin imaginable. Even in the popular romances of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton, which are supposed to contain a kernel of genuine English tradition, the original story is almost lost amid the mass of mythical, imaginary, or purely conventional matter later added. The historical events in the lives of Waldef and Hereward are embellished with much of the conventional romantic matter, and the late romance of Richard Coeur de Lion consists very largely of the purely conventional.
Chaucer And Trivet
Authors: Petersen Kate O.
Published: January 2021

In 1895 (Acad., Sept. 21, p. 227), Professor Liddell announced that he had in preparation conclusive evidence to show that Chaucer in his translation of Boethius had used (in addition to the Latin text) the French prose translation ascribed to Jean de Meung. In 1897, again (Nation, Feb. 18, pp. 124 f.), Professor Liddell declared his belief that Chaucer, as well as the French translator from whom he borrows, in making their Boethius translations, worked with the Latin commentary wrongly ascribed to Thomas Aquinas. And last year, having occasion to examine the Latin commentary on Boethius by Nicholas Trivet, I found there ample evidence, as I think, to give Trivet's commentary an important place among the sources of Chaucer's Boethius. Two commentaries in addition to the Latin text and a French translation make an equipment which seems extraordinarily elaborate for the circumstances. However, an examination of the two commentaries discovers the fact that Trivet's commentary includes the glosses of the other, in most of the cases in which Chaucer is concerned; and it is the object of this note to furnish evidence which points to Trivet's commentary as the single source of this material in Chaucer's Boethius.
The Fable Referred To In Aliscans
Authors: Sheldon E. S.
Published: January 2021

Some years ago (in the academic year 1898–99), while reading Aliscans with a few students, I reached an explanation of v. 3053 in Guessard and Montaiglon's edition which still seems to me plausible, even after the recent remarks of M. Gaston Paris on the same subject (Romania, xxxi, 100 ff.). I, therefore, make it public.
XIII.—Metipsimus in Spanish and French
Authors: Espinosa Aurelio M.
Published: January 2021

This article will deal only with the phonology of the problem. By a careful study of the Spanish and French forms I hope to establish the correct etymologies of the important forms and to show that we must suppose for Vulgar Latin a form metīpsimus by the side of As I have said in my Studies in New Mexican Spanish, the majority of the explanations previously given for the various forms in Spanish and French, are curious rather than scientific. Gaston Paris (Extraits de la Chanson de Roland, § 18), Cornu (Rom. xiii, 289) and Menéndez Pidal (Gram. Hist., § 66), however, seem to have come to believe in a long vowel for some of the forms and rightly so. As to the numerous attempts made by others, it is only necessary to say, that in so far as the Spanish and French forms are concerned, every explanation which the writer has seen is either a traditional error or a new one. Such explanations as those of Baist (Grundriss, i, 887, and Krit. Jahrsb., i, 534), Cejad or (La Leng. de Cervantes, i, 739), Cuervo (Apuntaciones, § 777), Ford (Don Quixote, 93), Pieri (ZRPh., xxvii, 584) and others for the Spanish forms, and of Mussafia (Rom., xxviii, 112), Etzrodt (Rom. Forseh., xxvii, 878), Harseim (Boehmer Stud., iv, 287) and others for the French forms have little or no basis in fact and I need not refute them here.
À Propos D'un Prisonnier à Pierrescize, Visité Par Mme. De Sévigné
Authors: Woodbridge Benj. M.
Published: January 2021

Le 21 juillet, 1672, Mme. de Sévigné écrivit de Lyon à Mme. de Grignan pour lui annoncer son arrivée et le bon accueil qu'elle avait reçu chez la famille de Coulange. Puis elle dit: “J'étais à Pierre-Encise, voir F * *, prisonnier.”
Observations on the Origin of the Mediæval Passion–Play
Authors: Young Karl
Published: January 2021

Some fifteen years ago the prevailing theory as to the origin of mediæval plays concerning the Passion was authoritatively expressed in these words:

Im früheren Mittelalter gab es keine anderen Dramatisierungen der Leidensgeschichte als die Marienklagen. Erst diese scheinen die Anregung zur Darstellung der Passion gegeben zu haben. Dass dem wirklich so ist, ersehen wir noch aus der Anlage der Passionsspiele. Die Kreuzigungsszene, die den Mittelpunkt bildet, enthält als Hauptteil stets eine Marienklage.
IV.—The Queenes Majesties Entertainment at Woodstocke
Authors: Cunliffe J. W.
Published: January 2021

The unique quarto to which this title has been given was printed at London for Thomas Cadman in 1585. It crossed the Atlantic as part of the Rowfant Library, and was for some time offered for sale in New York, until Mr. A. W. Pollard, on his recent visit to this country, bought it for the British Museum. It has been privately printed in England, with an introduction by Mr. Pollard, to whom I am indebted for many courtesies, but otherwise it has not been published since the original issue of 1585. It is, unfortunately, imperfect, lacking sig. A (title page and three other leaves) and beginning on B1 with the latter part of a sentence. Apart altogether from its rarity, it has features of considerable interest, but before entering upon questions of authorship and interpretation, it will be well to put the reader in possession of the text. Only obvious errors have been corrected, and in these cases the original readings are given in footnotes. I have numbered the lines of the comedy for reference.
Is Shakespeare Aristocratic?
Authors: Tolman Albert H.
Published: January 2021

In the first scene of Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar the common people are depicted as if they were English mechanics. We are led to wonder whether the contempt expressed in this play for the vile-smelling and fickle-minded Roman mob represents Shakespeare's own attitude toward his humbler fellow-citizens. Indeed, a larger question suggests itself. John Hampden was already of age in 1616, when the dramatist died; in 1649 Charles I was beheaded, and England proclaimed itself a commonwealth. Did Shakespeare appreciate at all the strength of the movement which sought to put limitations upon the king and to increase the power of the people? Where were his sympathies?
Description in the Dramas of Grillparzer
Authors: Stevens Henry H.
Published: January 2021

Description as commonly understood is portrayal in language; specifically, poetical description is the esthetic representation of objects through the medium of speech. I shall assume for the purposes of the following discussion that such representation is possible, that poetry is, though not exclusively, a “representative” art. Such an assumption does not equate poetry and painting, since the media of an art determine the substance and form of that art. Now the media of poetic representation, mental images, have indeed many points of likeness to the actual sense perceptions through which the painter affects us, since mental images have their origin in percepts; otherwise they would be poor means of representing objects. But there exist also many obvious differences between images and percepts, such as different degrees of intensity, permanence, specificness. These differences condition differences between poetry and painting. There are other differences. The formative artist, for example, is confined to an appeal to the sense of sight, while the poet knows no such limitation. I shall take occasion in the course of the following discussion to call attention to such matters, when the examples are before us.
Studies in the Dialect of Basilicata
Authors: de Salvio Alfonso
Published: January 2021

Basilicata is the name of that territorial division of Southern Italy which is now known as the province of Potenza and which formed a part of the ancient Lucania. It is bounded on the north by the province of Foggia, on the northeast by the provinces of Bari and Lecce, on the east by the province of Cosenza, and on the west by the Mediterranean sea and the provinces of Salerno and Avellino. It has a population of about 512,000 inhabitants and comprises the circondari of Lagonegro, Matera, Melfi, and Potenza. The region is mountainous and the population is given largely to agriculture and sheep-raising. Although centrally located, the province possesses no mercantile towns of any great importance. Many objects of antiquity were discovered in this region: inscriptions, vases, fragments of statues, medallions, and two bronze tables, known as the Heraclean Tables, now in the Naples Museum.
The Middle English Evangelie: Additions and Corrections
Authors: Campbell Gertrude H.
Published: January 2021

P. 530. Description of the MS. The stain in the ms. at ff. 81–84 extends through a number of preceding folios, and therefore occurred since the fragment of the quire was bound up in the present volume. The Latin fragments on the first three pages of the quire are theological commonplaces, and the conclusion of a tract which I have not been able to identify; probably a summary of one of Augustine's sermons, copied in the same illiterate Latin as that of the rubrics.
Spenser and the Bishop of Rochester
Authors: Long Percy W.
Published: January 2021

The ensuing paper seeks to trace for the first time one of the most important formative influences on the poet Spenser's youth; to make clear that it was at work in his schooldays at the Merchant Taylors' School, during his years at Pembroke College, and thereafter; to show that it shaped no inconsiderable part of The Shepheardes Calendar and Mother Hubberds Tale; and that to this influence is due whatever disfavor he encountered before his so-called “exile” into Ireland. I allude to Spenser's relations with the Bishop of Rochester.
Fourteen Unpublished Letters by Henry Crabb Robinson; A Chapter in His Appreciation of Goethe
Authors: Benson Adolph B.
Published: January 2021

Henry Crabb Robinson occupies a unique position in the history of literary relations between England and Germany. He exerted influence in both directions, tho his greatest service consisted in making Englishmen acquainted with German literature. While a student in Germany from 1800 to 1805, he interpreted English ideas diplomatically among the Germans, whenever the opportunity presented itself; and, after his return to England, he labored incessantly for the rest of his life, over sixty years, to create a more general taste for German works of art, especially for the works of Goethe, among his own countrymen. Indeed, he came to be considered by many literary men and women, both in England and on the Continent, as an oracle, well worth consulting on matters English or German, even on European affairs in general. It was Crabb Robinson who taught Madame de Staël her first lessons in German philosophy; and this same Robinson, during his third visit to Germany in 1829, astonished Goethe by his extraordinary knowledge of modern German literature and life. On the other hand, Goethe was glad to hear him read Byron, Milton, and Coleridge in the original. In England his position was much the same. Not only many minor writers sought and obtained his aid, but both Coleridge and Carlyle, in their studies of German literature, obtained many helpful suggestions from Crabb Robinson. He was always ready to lend a helping hand to all who wanted it, and sometimes to those who did not. Robinson's influence was chiefly personal, to be sure; but the personal influence of a man who loved his subject was needed under the circumstances, and was salutary, even tho the man was somewhat importunate.
The Miracle Play in England—Nomenclature
Authors: Coffman George R.
Published: January 2021

It is the purpose of this paper to make a critical inquiry into the actual use of the term Miracle Play in England from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The present state of opinion among most historians of the English drama is that the term there during that period came to include all religious plays. The trend of this view during the last sixty or seventy years, as it develops from conservative statement to absolute, sweeping generalization, forms an interesting chapter in the history of critical nomenclature.
Mrs.—Behn's Biography A Fiction
Authors: Bernbaum Ernest
Published: January 2021

The personal history of Mrs. Behn, commonly called the first Englishwoman to earn her livelihood by authorship, has long been regarded as unusually interesting. The daughter of a barber named John Johnson, she was baptized at Wye, Kent, 10 July, 1640. She was buried in London, 20 April, 1689. We find that her career, as generally related, falls into three principal episodes. (1) With a relative whom in Oroonoko she calls her father, and who was appointed lieutenant-governor of Surinam, she went to that colony, where she met the royal slave who is the hero of her story, and where she remained until about 1658. (2) She married a London merchant of Dutch extraction, named Behn, but was widowed by 1666. (3) In the latter part of 1666, while acting as a political agent at Antwerp, she gained, through a Dutch lover of hers named Vander Albert, early information of the famous raid by De Ruyter on the English ships in the Thames and Medway; but her timely warning was ridiculed by the British government officials, and she retired from the secret service to devote herself to literature. Momentary doubts whether these data are not in some particulars inaccurate have occasionally been expressed during the last sixty years; but the suspicions, never very strong, have always quickly died away. The story as outlined above has been substantially accepted and retold, not only by the compilers of popular works of reference, but by scholars like Walter Raleigh, Richard Garnett, W. H. Hudson, H. S. Canby, and Miss C. E. Morgan, as well as by those who have made a special study of Mrs. Behn,—namely Edmund Gosse, P. Siegel, and E. A. Baker.
A Peculiar Phase of the Theory of Realism in Pre–Richardsonian Fiction
Authors: Tieje Arthur Jerrold
Published: January 2021

No investigator of the expressed theory of pre-Richardsonian fiction need labor long before he discovers that all the declared aims of writers of prose fiction may probably be reduced to five: desire to entertain the reader, to edify him, to impart information to him, to depict life for him, to arouse his emotions. Gradually, however, if the student analyze these intentions, he will become aware of what might be called a sixth expressed aim—the conscious effort of an author to gain the implicit credence of the reader. Yet this effort is so much more than a mere expressed aim that it is perhaps best described as a striving toward a crude form of realism. As such, and in its effect upon both content and structure of nearly all types of early fiction, it merits close study. And nothing save quotation upon quotation can indicate the hold upon pre-Richardsonian fiction of this effort to force belief—so the movement may well be termed. For the phrase, “conscious effort,” does not here imply any consideration of such points as the grave, matter-of-fact tone of Robinson Crusoe or the carefully-maintained scale of measurement in Gulliver's Travels. Only direct remarks in prefaces—only deliberate interpolations of theory into the body of a narrative—will here be used as evidence.
Spenser and Two Old French Grail Romances
Authors: Hall Edgar A.
Published: January 2021

So far as the writer has been able to discover, attention has not been called to the probability that Spenser drew material directly from two French romances of the Grail-Perceval cycle for the episodes of the first two cantos of Book VI of the Faerie Queene.
Inedited Letters of Fulvio Orsini to Antonio Agustin
Authors: Crawford J. P. Wickersham
Published: January 2021

Among the classical scholars in Spain in the latter half of the sixteenth century, Antonio Agustín occupies an important place. Born on March 4, 1517 at Saragossa, he attended the Universities of Alcalá and Salamanca, and in 1536 went to Italy and studied at Bologna and Padua. During a second sojourn at Bologna, he profited by the instruction of Andrea Alciato and became acquainted with the methods of the nova jurisprudentia, which sought to replace the study of scholastic commentators by careful consultation of the original sources. He went to Florence in 1541 to study the celebrated manuscript of the Pandects and there prepared his great work, Emendationum et opinionum libri, in which he questioned the accuracy of Politian's collation of the famous manuscript. This work was published at Venice in 1543 and won him the esteem of the most noted scholars of the time, a remarkable achievement for the young man of twenty-six years.
The Original of The Non-Juror
Authors: Miles Dudley H.
Published: January 2021

Colley Cibber declared that for The Non-juror, the most important of his dramas, he employed Molière's Tartuffe as the basis. His declaration has been accepted by later writers. Genest says, “it is taken from Moliere's Tartuffe.” Ward repeats, “Crowne may have helped to suggest to Cibber the composition of The Non-Juror (1717), which however more closely follows Tartuffe.” Van Laun declares: “Cibber has been accused of having stolen the plot, characters, incidents, and most part of the language from Medbourne; but this is untrue. What he has taken from him is the servant Charles (Laurence), who also betrays his master.” The ever-present German dissertation solemnly copies the statement: a certain Wilhelm Schneider concludes: “Medbournes ‘Tartuffe’ kann, zumal er zunächst Übersetzung ist, nach van Launs Artikel nur für wenige Anregungen herangezogen werden.” Joseph Knight in his article on Cibber in the Dictionary of National Biography remarks: “A strong Hanoverian, as was natural from his origin, Cibber saw bis way to adapting the ‘Tartuffe’ of Molière to English politics. ‘Tartuffe’ became accordingly in the ‘Non-juror’ an English catholic priest.” Americans have joined the chorus. A Western man asserts: “The Non-Juror is based directly on Molière's Tartuffe. … Cibber was no doubt familiar with Medbourne's play, but he used Molière as a basis, and owed practically nothing to any play other than the Tartuffe of Molière.” More recently Professor Nettleton speaks of “The Non-Juror (1717), an adaptation of Molière's Tartuffe to English setting,” and quotes with approval the words of Cibber.
The Silent Foot in Pentameter Verse
Authors: Bracher Frederick
Published: January 2021

In a tantalizing footnote to The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933), A. E. Housman lists a number of prosodic matters which, in his opinion, constitute an important part of the Artifice of Versification—the “natural laws by which all versification is conditioned.” Unfortunately, Housman did not elaborate or publish his prosodic observations, but the range and penetration of the hints in his footnote suggest that at least one corner of the usually sterile field of metrics can be made to bring forth good fruit. Housman also noted the lack of serious efforts to discover the “latent base … by which all versification is conditioned.” The “natural laws” are unknown to most writers of verse, who succeed, when they do succeed, by virtue of “instinctive tact and a natural goodness of ear.” And in Housman's opinion, little of value has been written on such matters, and literary critics seldom explore the field.
Les Débuts Littéraires de Pierre Lasserre
Authors: Ezban Selim
Published: January 2021

L'histoire intellectuelle de la Troisième République naîtra gradu ellement de l‘étude patiente et minutieuse des divers problèmes d'ordre politique, philosophique, littéraire et social qui ont occupé une période qui comptera parmi les plus mouvementées et les plus complexes, les plus riches et fécondes aussi, qu'ait connues la vie française. Sans doute est-il prématuré de porter sur les hommes et les œuvres dont l'action se prolonge autour de nous le jugement équitable et nuancé qui sera celui de la postérité. Mais pour la génération dont la naissance précéda ou suivit de près l‘établissement de la République, et dont la jeunesse et la maturité coïncidèrent avec la période troublée de l'affaire Dreyfus et de la Grande Guerre, il n'est peut-être pas top tôt, maintenant que la première moitié du vingtième siècle touche à son terme, de faire les sondages préliminaires et de retracer à tout le moins les débuts littéraires d'une des figures les plus représentatives de la période qui vient de se clore.
On the Origin of the Grammarians' Rules for the Use of Shall and Will
Authors: Hulbert J. R.
Published: January 2021

The most important study of the future with shall and will in Modern English is the article by Professor Fries published twenty years ago. In Part One, “The origin and development of the conventional rules,” Professor Fries presents a remarkably concise and thorough survey of the treatment of shall and will by English grammarians from 1530 to the early nineteenth century. In Part Two he summarizes the results of an analysis of the use of shall and will in English plays from 1557 to 1915, compares American with English usage, considers the theory of ‘glimmering through’ of ‘primitive meanings,‘ and states his conclusions. Professor Fries reverts to the subject in his recent book, American English Grammar. Here he says:

The conventional rules for shall and will did not arise from any attempt to describe the practice of the language as it actually was either before the eighteenth century or at the time the grammar was written in which these rules first appeared. The authors of these grammars (Lowth and Ward) definitely repudiated usage…. That the general usage of shall and will did not at any time during the history of Modern English agree with the conventional rules is a conclusion that can be reasonably drawn from the facts revealed in the following charts.
Sur la genèse de Pantagruel
Authors: Françon Marcel
Published: January 2021

Le livre ii,—on l'a souvent remarqué,—manque d'unité. Des trois parties dont il se compose, la première se rapporte à l'enfance et à la jeunesse fabuleuses de Pantagruel, la seconde à son séjour à Paris, la troisième à son expédition en Utopie. Ce qui marque le début et la fin du roman, c'est le caractère extraordinaire des personnages et de leurs aventures, et le ton familier du récit. Ces deux parties, note M. Abel Lefranc, semblent avoir été rédigées avant la seconde. Dans celle-ci, il ne reste guère plus rien d'anormal, plus d'incidents surnaturels. On oublie presque que le héros est un géant. C'est dans cette seconde partie que Rabelais a exprimé des idées graves et nobles en des pages enthousiastes qui sont remarquables au point de vue littéraire. Ces contrastes ne se retrouvent pas dans les autres livres du roman rabelaisien. Gargantua, le Tiers et le Quart Livres sont mieux composés et mieux écrits. L‘élément mythique y tient moins de place. Pantagruel s'y présente sous d'autres traits: il se fait plus digne; sa bonhomie, de spontanée, devient réfléchie. Non seulement le livre II est moins harmonieux que les autres, mais ce qui le distingue, ce sont les scènes d'une vulgarité de fableau, dénuées souvent de portée, et simplement plaisantes. Par sa première et sa troisième parties, tout imprégnées d'esprit populaire, le livre n tient encore des récits traditionnistes dont les autres livres se dégagent plus nettement. C'est l‘étude des relations qui existent entre Pantagruel et les Chroniques gargantuines qui va nous occuper.
The Relation of Sherry's Treatise of Schemes and Tropes to Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique
Authors: Engelhardt George J.
Published: January 2021

Few Elizabethan scholars are unacquainted with The Arte of Rhetorique that Thomas Wilson published at London in 1553. A supposed connection with the plays of Shakespeare would alone have been sufficient to lend it importance even if intrinsically it did not merit attention; this work, however, is informed with a vigorous commonsense that has long since gained for itself the recognition it deserves.
The Veracity of Spence's Anecdotes
Authors: Wright Austin
Published: January 2021

William Lisle Bowles said of the anecdotist Joseph Spence, “He seems to have opened his mouth and his ears to every thing Pope told him.” This sneer implied that Pope was a liar and Spence a gull, but the splenetic Bowles inadvertently implied something else that, if true, is of significance to English literary history: that Spence was an omnivorous snapper-up of trifles who did not judge or discriminate but merely recorded. For if Spence, gull or no gull, was an accurate and veracious recorder, his notes on the conversation of Pope and other literary figures possess great value; if he was not, they are nearly worthless. Without Spence's records our knowledge of many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers would be considerably less than it is, and the biographers of Pope in particular would cut a sorry figure. Only if Spence's manuscripts had lain unknown for a century and a half, if neither Warburton nor Johnson nor anyone else had been granted a look at them, if not one of the anecdotes had ever found its way to the light, and then if a modern discoverer had published his find—then only would the ensuing sensation have brought a realization of the importance of Spence's labors and the magnitude of the debt which the world has been none too ready to pay him.
Helena: vom Mythos zur Person
Authors: Seidlin Oskar
Published: January 2021

Bedürfte es eines Vorwandes, immer wieder sinnend und grübelnd zum Helena-Akt des II. Faust zurückzukehren, er ließe sich leicht in Goethes Aufforderung an seine Freunde finden, dem “Verdeckten” in dem lang und weit Bekannten forschend nachzuspüren. Ein Fühlender, so schreibt Goethe, “wird dasjenige durchdringen, was gemütlich hie und da verdeckt liegt: Eleusis servat quod ostendat revisentibus, und es soll mich freuen, wenn diesmal auch das Geheimnisvolle zu öfterer Rückkehr den Freunden Veranlassung gibt.” Wie oft er auch sich darauf berufen haben mag, daß an dem zweiten Teil der großen Dichtung “der Verstand mehr Recht habe” als am ersten, so hat er doch gern mit verschmitzten Anspielungen auf das Dunkle und Unergründliche hingedeutet, “was da hineingeheimnißet ist.” So mag es denn auch nicht ganz abwegig scheinen, aus der Masse des Helena-Zwischenspiels eine “Reflexion” herauszuheben, die von der Faust-Deutung bisher nie aufgegriffen wurde: der Erdenwandel Helenas als das Abbild der Ueberwindung des mythischgebundenen Menschen.
The Shadow of the Glen and The Widow of Ephesus
Authors: Greene David H.
Published: January 2021

John Millington Synge's first play is in many respects one of his most important works. It embodies that “dialectical synthesis of the naturalistic tradition and the symbolistic reaction” which, as Mr. Harry Levin has recently pointed out, Synge stated as being the great problem to be solved by the artist of his time. Criticism of The Shadow of the Glen has been mostly concerned with proving that its Irishness is spurious. Very few critics have seen that the most interesting thing about the play is Synge's happy facility in combining the realistic with the symbolistic.
Über das Verhältnis von Sage und Literatur
Authors: Philippson Ernst Alfred
Published: January 2021

In meinem Beitrag zur Evans-Festschrift (“Um Grundsätzliches in der Märchenforschung”) handelte es sich vornehmlich um das Problem der Beziehungen von Märchen und Literatur zueinander, um die Frage nämlich, ob das Eingreifen eines ‘Märchenpflegers,’ dh. eines Schriftstellers, das Volksmärchen dauernd zu beeinflussen und zu ändern vermag oder ob die echte Volkstradition sich im Grunde doch nicht von literarischen Vorgängen in der intellektuellen Oberschicht stören läßt. Ich versuchte an Beispielen zu zeigen, daß durch eine im Wesen der vielfachen, parallelen mündlichen Überlieferung liegende Selbstkorrektur das Volksmärchen selbst nach ausgedehnten Wanderungen durch mehrere Sprachgebiete und durch lange Jahrhunderte seine ursprüngliche Struktur zu erhalten weiß und daß literarische Umformungen nur von beschränkter Wirkung sind. Immer vorausgesetzt bleibt bei diesem Ergebnis natürlich die grundsätzliche Annahme aller wissenschaftlichen Märchenforschung von heute, daß die meisten Märchen ‘Kunstmärchen im Volksmunde’ sind, daß am Anfange der Überlieferung eines bestimmten Märchens eine Urform anzunehmen ist, die eine kunstvolle, in sich geschlossene logische Motivfolge aufwies und deren Struktur ‘so und nicht anders’ aus der schöpferischen Phantasie eines anonymen Erzählers entsprang.
The Structure of The “Concrete Universal” in Literature
Authors: Wimsatt W. K.
Published: January 2021

The central argument of this essay, concerning what for want of a better name I shall, adapting the terminology of Hegel, call the “concrete universal,” proceeds from the observation that literary theorists have from early times to the present persisted in making statements which in their contexts seem to mean that a work of literary art is in some peculiar sense a very individual thing or a very universal thing or both. What that paradox can mean, or what important fact behind the paradox has been discerned by such various critics as Aristotle, Plotinus, Hegel, Whitehead and Ransom, it will be the purpose of the essay to inquire, and by the inquiry to discuss not only a significant feature of metaphysical poetics from Aristotle to the present day but the relation between metaphysical poetics and more practical and specific rhetorical analysis. In the brief historical survey which forms one part of this essay it will not be my purpose to suggest that any of these writers meant exactly what I shall mean in later parts where I describe the structure of poetry. Yet throughout the essay I shall proceed on the theory not only that men have at different times used the same terms and have meant differently, but that they have sometimes used different terms and have meant the same or somewhat the same. In other words, I assume that there is continuity in the problems of criticism, and that a person who studies poetry today has interest in what Plato said about poetry.
Stages of Old French Phonetic Changes Observed in Modern Spanish
Authors: Delattre Pierre
Published: January 2021

Old French, until the end of the Gallo-Roman period, was physiologically characterized by articulatory laxness to a high degree. This laxness of articulation chiefly manifested itself by intensifying certain syllables while weakening others, and by producing diphthongs and affricates out of strongly situated sounds while others tended to disappear or remained as they were. During the ninth century, physiological characteristics of precisely opposite nature started to appear, and French gradually gained in tenseness until it became about what it is today: the tensest of known languages. We reject here the theory proposed by W. von Wartburg concerning the effects of Germanic invasions on early Old French changes. “Le provençal s’étendait autrefois jusqu’à une ligne qui allait depuis l'embouchure de la Loire jusqu'aux Vosges méridionales. Cette ligne coïncide assez exactement avec une limite ethnique et politique qui s’était formée vers 500, grâce aux invasions germaniques.” And we accept the opposite views which attribute the early Old French laxness to the Celtic substratum and only the tenseness of a later period to the Germanic superstratum. They are well exposed by Dauzat:

A partir du IXe siècle, de nouvelles directives s'accusent très nettement dans le langage. Sans doute, nombre d‘évolutions en cours continuent leur développement. Mais des tendances très différentes apparaissent, en contraste complet avec celles qu'on a observées auparavant.“ ”A ce moment (842), la fusion des races (Gallo-Romains et Francs) est faite, comme le montre, dans le domaine juridique, la territorialité des coutumes (expression de la féodalité nouvellement constituée) qui se substitute, au Xe siècle, à la personnalité des lois. Les conséquences phonétiques de cette fusion apparaissent très importantes: ce n'est pas un hasard si notamment le cycle des palatalisations consonantiques (que le latin primitif et classique ignorait et qui s'ouvre dès le IIIe siècle) se clôt avec l‘époque carolingienne pour faire place à des tendances toutes différentes.
The Source-Book for Hudson's Green Mansions
Authors: Baker Carlos
Published: January 2021

In the forty-two years since its publication, there has grown up around Hudson's Green Mansions and its heroine, the forest-girl Rima, an aura of mystery which has been rather deepened than dispelled by Hudson's editors and biographers. “If there was any secret about Rima,” says one of them, “forty years of friendship never discovered it to me … Sometimes I have thought that there was a Rima, some woodland child whom the boy Hudson had loved, and then again I come back to the thought I now hold to, that she is the embodiment, but no more than that, of all his imaginations concerning the girl-woman who would have satisfied his body and soul.” Later the same writer elaborates on the concept of Rima as Hudson's spiritual mate. “His opposed contrasted figures grew out of the soil, and if Rima seems to come down from heaven, she was yet a being who sprang living from his memory of some white and lovely children, whom he had known on the pampa.” Such words as these merely add mist to mystery, and romancing to romance, an editorial tendency in which less ecstatic commentators than Mr. Roberts will hesitate to concur.
Jóhann Sigurjónsson's Fjalla-Eyvindur: Source, Chronology, and Geography
Authors: Magoun Francis P.
Published: January 2021

That Jóhann Sigurjónsson's Fjalla-Eyvindur (“Eyvindur of the Mountains”) is “one of the most powerful of modern dramas” and a great classic of modern Icelandic literature is scarcely open to question. In the face of what appears to have been an inadequate performance, an anonymous American critic wrote nearly a quarter of a century ago that the play had “something akin to Synge in the poetry of its naturalism, and something akin to Wagner in the huge scale of its simplified plot.” It has enjoyed popular success on the stage of Iceland, continental Scandinavia, and Germany; it has served as the subject of what one is given to understand was an exceptionally beautiful and impressive Swedish silent film. The play has been relatively neglected in the English-speaking world; whether it is “too stark, relentless and cold to have a popular success in the commercial theater of Broadway” is an interesting matter of speculation. In any event, this heroic pastoral tragedy, cherished classic of Icelanders, ranks high among examples of twentieth-century dramatic art and is a work worthy of much study and reflection.
George Ripley and Thomas Carlyle
Authors: Slater Joseph
Published: January 2021

In the spring of 1835, George Ripley, a young Unitarian minister of Boston, remembered an old debt. For some years he had been a leader in that transplantation of German literature and philosophy which was now flowering into Transcendentalism. He could read Kant in the original tongue, and he owned a redoubtable library of German biblical criticism and idealist philosophy. Three years before, in the Christian Examiner (xi, 375) he had explained the differences between Kant and Coleridge and asserted the superiority of Kant; this very spring he had written for the same journal (xviii, 167-221) a biography of Herder and a closely critical review of Marsh's translation of Herder's Spirit of German Poetry. But he was still young enough in erudition to remember the names of those who had first turned his eyes to Germany: the Herder article began with a statement of his indebtedness to “sound and liberal scholars, like Carlyle.”
A Jester at the Grail Castle in Wolfram's Parzival?
Authors: Weigand Hermann J.
Published: January 2021

The fifth book of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival tells the story of Parzival's visit to the Grail Castle, where he beholds the Grail and its attendant mysteries and fails to ask the question which would have restored the stricken king to health and made Parzival the guardian of the most sacred and precious object this side of Paradise. Parzival's reception by the King is preceded by an episode of twenty-two lines that, taken at face value, is entirely out of keeping with the atmosphere of the situation about to be witnessed and with the interpretation of its elements in a much later part of the story. Not only every modern reader feels it to be off key, but the scribe of one of the manuscipts—G—also presumably found it offensive in its context and left it out. The episode runs as follows:

Parzival has been courteously received by the Fisher-King's domestics. He has been disarmed and allowed to wash, his beauty has been admired, he has been given a costly mantle to wear, and he has been complimented on his knightly bearing. At that moment a messenger enters and with peremptory gestures and a voice shaking as though with anger summons the guest to appear before his master. Parzival suspects foul play: his sword is not in sight. He clenches his fist so that the blood spurts from under his nails. The attendants forestall an act of violence by explaining: Sir, this man is a privileged prankster, for all that we are sad. Pray, restrain yourself and don't be angry. He only meant to announce that the Fisher is ready to receive you. Parzival is then conducted into the great hall.