bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Lays of Graelent and Lanval, and the Story of Wayland
Authors: Schofield William Henry
Published: January 2021

In the Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg, the hero comes all unknowing and unknown to the court of his uncle, King Mark, and charms the company there assembled by the melody of the music he makes on a harp.

Thise olde gentil Britons in hir dayesOf diverse aventures maden layes,Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge;Which layes with hir instruments they songe,Or elles redden hem for hir plesaunce;And oon of hem have I in remembraunee,Which I shal seyn with good wil as I can.Chaucer: Prologue to the Frankeleyn's Tale.
XII.—The Influence of Piers Plowman on the Macro Play of Mankind
Authors: Keiller Mabel M.
Published: January 2021

In the Macro play of Mankind the central motive is the tilling of a piece of ground “To eschew ydulness,” a motive, as Dr. Brandl points out, foreign to all the other morality plays. According to him it is introduced from the “Ackerfeld motive” of Lydgate's Assembly of the Gods. “Für die Quellenfrage sind die Uebereinstimmungen zwischen ‘Mankind’ und Lydgate's ‘Assembly of Gods’ wichtig. Auch in dieser allegorischen Erzählung ist der Mensch (Freewill) auf einem Felde (Mikrokosmos) gedacht. Virtue eilt dahin um Gnade zu predigen. Aber auch Vice stellt sich ein und schickt zunächst drei Gesellen (Temptation, Folly, Sensuality) voraus, von denen einer das Feld mit Unkraut besät (nach Matthäus 13, 24 ff.). In Folge dessen muss in der Schlacht um den Menschen Virtue zurückweichen, Freewill neigt sich zu Vice und wird nur dadurch gerettet, dass Virtue verstärkt zurückkehrt, worauf er mit Gewissen, Vice aber mit Verzweiflung zusammenkommt (Triggs' Ausgabe, S. 28-34).”
XIV.—The Harmonizing of Grammatical Nomenclature, with Especial Reference to Mood–Syntax
Authors: Hale Wm. Gardner
Published: January 2021

It probably does not often happen that a worker in Latin and Greek addresses a body of workers in the modern languages, or the converse. But there is nothing unnatural in such a proceeding, and it ought indeed to be a common thing. We of the classics and you of the modern languages have the same convictions to maintain in the scheme of education,—first the conviction of the charm and civilizing power of great literature, and, second, the conviction of the interest and educational efficiency of literary-historical and linguistic science. The difference between us is purely one of chronology. We proceed by identical methods. We cultivate the same great field, and our respective holdings in that field overlap. We are natural friends, if either party has a friend. Our interests, in their large and final bearings, are identical. Classical studies cannot really flourish in a university in which they are looked upon with hostility 'by the teachers of modern languages. But neither will the study of modern languages, beyond the strictly vocational ideal, flourish permanently in any atmosphere in which, for any reason, classical studies are asphyxiated.
Suicide in the Plays of Shakespeare
Authors: Hanford James Holly
Published: January 2021

In an essay on Sophocles and Shakespeare, the late Professor John Churton Collins makes, about the latter's use of the motive of suicide, some striking remarks which have hitherto, I believe, been allowed to pass unchallenged. The attitude of the two dramatists toward the crime is, he says, exactly similar:

“By neither of them has any glamor of sentiment been cast over it. In no case is it associated with honor, but in all cases with intemperance or ignominy, or with both. … In the suicide of Ajax, the one instance in which Sophocles has represented suicide as a deliberate act, what impresses us throughout is the utter demoralization of the victim… . Labouring at first in a turbid storm of frenzy, he regains self-mastery only to reduce to the dominion of a perverted will an anarchy of conflicting emotions—rage, shame, remorse, pity, grief—perishing desperately, a laughing stock to his foes, a source of sorrow and reproach to his friends. So perish Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Brutus, Cassius, Titinius, Cleopatra, Antony, Enobarbus, Goneril, Othello, and, it would seem, Lady Macbeth. In none of these cases is self-destruction associated with anything but intemperance or retribution. ' The foul'st best fits my latter part of life,' exclaims Enobarbus; and it is remarkable that the poet should have put into the mouth of Brutus, the noblest of those who fall by their own hands in the tragedies, not merely a condemnation of the act generally, but a condemnation of the one suicide which tradition has universally glorified, and which even Bante appears to have excepted from the catalogue of crimes:

I did blame Cato for the deathWhich he did give himself; I know not how,But I do find it cowardly and vile,For fear of what might fall, so to preventThe time of life: arming myself with patienceTo stay the providence of some high powersThat govern us below.

Hamlet's remark in his famous soliloquy will occur to every one, but still more striking are the words in which Gloucester expresses his thankfulness that he has been saved from such a crime:

You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me;Let not my worser spirit tempt me againTo die before you please.
Sources of the Académie De L'art Poëtique of Pierre De Deimier: Peletier Du Mans
Authors: Gay Lucy M.
Published: January 2021

The liberal use that historians of the French language have made in recent years of the Académie de l'Art poëtique of Pierre de Deimier, arouses interest in the work itself. M. Brunot, in his admirable Histoire de la Langue française, resumes his criticism of the Académie with the words: “Bref, ce livre fait un contraste complet avec ceux qui l'ont précédé.” A study of the sources of Deimier shows, however, that the contrast is far from complete. Whatever contrast exists, lies largely, not in the principles of the doctrine, but in the interpretation and application of these principles.
On the Sources of Guillaume De Deguileville's Pèlerinage de L'Ame
Authors: Galpin Stanley Leman
Published: January 2021

The sources of the allegorical religious trilogy of the Cistercian monk and prior, Guillaume de Deguileville, have not been thoroughly investigated until comparatively recent years. In 1896, Tobler, reporting on Stürzinger's edition of the Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine, stated that Deguileville's characteristics as a poet must be compared to those of Jean de Meun and Daute, and that Deguileville's powers of description did not approach those of Dante. Gröber gives it as his opinion that Deguileville's trilogy was composed without any knowledge of the Divina Commedia, though there are analogies between the two. He cites St. Bernard, Aristotle, the Book of Daniel, the Apocalypse, Dionysius Areopagita, and ms. illustrations, as sources of certain features of Ame. J. E. Hultman, in an excellent study of the poet's life and works, brings to light the sources of a large part of the three poems. His is the first serious attempt to discover the literary antecedents of Deguileville, and is a thorough, though inevitably not an exhaustive, treatment of the subject. Farinelli points out additional analogies between Dante and Deguileville, at the same time denying the possibility of any direct influence.
Concerning Huchown
Authors: MacCracken Henry Noble
Published: January 2021

The Cambridge History of English Literature is the latest augmenter of the confusion that surrounds the mysterious mediæval poet, Huchown of the Awle Ryale. If this volume did not bid fair to become a work of authority for some years to come, there would be perhaps no need of a study concerning Huchown. Unfortunately, however, misstatements are already being made, based upon its authority, and there is therefore a real need of giving the whole matter a thorough overhauling. It is difficult to realize upon what slight grounds the confident assumptions have been made, which credit Huchown with writing so vast an amount of Middle English alliterative verse.
Patrons of Letters in Norfolk and Suffolk, c. 1450
Authors: Moore Samuel
Published: January 2021

The ordinary condition of the mediaeval poet or man of letters who was not connected with the court, but sought patronage among the country gentry or the citizens of provincial towns, was one of more or less complete isolation. If he found a patron he was fortunate, and when he had supplied that patron's needs, or had carried to a conclusion the work upon which he had, by his patron's interest and support, been encouraged to engage, he had little incentive to further literary production unless he could find new patronage. It is perhaps a result of this condition that so many books of the Middle Ages are the work of men who wrote but one book, and that one with the painful care of the amateur, rather than the sure skill of the trained writer. In the majority of cases, or at least in the most typical cases (since generalisations of this kind can be at the best only rough approximations), the provincial writer worked for a single patron, and his “public” consisted of his patron's family and intimates.
The Enueg
Authors: Hill Raymond Thompson
Published: January 2021

Among the many forms of poetic composition cultivated by the troubadours of Provence during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one of the most distinctive is that listed in the Leys d'Amors under the name enueg. This word, a Provençal form of the Latin inodium, means literally ‘vexation,’ or ‘that which is vexing;’ and technically it designates a poem which treats the annoyances of life from mere trifles to serious insults, from improprieties at the table to serious misdemeanors. This kind of poem, differing essentially in subject matter from the conventional erotic poetry of the time, belongs rather to that class known as sirventés; poetry which treats public or private affairs with either praise or censure. Like many of the sirventés, the enueg has now and then a didactic purpose; but in most cases the poet voices his own likes or dislikes without any ulterior motive.
The Source of Chaucer's Anelida and Arcite
Authors: Shannon Edgar F.
Published: January 2021

The question, as to the source of Chaucer's unfinished poem Anelida and Arcite is an unsolved problem. Professor Skeat points out in his introduction to this poem that the first three stanzas are from Boccaccio's Teseide, as are also stanzas 8, 9, and 10; and that stanzas 4 to 7 are partly from Statius. The origin of the rest of the poem, which is far the greater part, is unknown.
The Shaksperean Mob
Authors: Tupper Frederick
Published: January 2021

Among the scholars of Cambridge who essayed the presentation of Thomas Legge's Latin play of Richardus Tertius at St. John's in 1579, perhaps the most ambitious were those three ingenuous and versatile youths, Howland, Henlowe, Kendall, who enacted the “chorus tumultuantium civium.” Surely, “a little o'erparted”! Easier far with three rusty swords to fight over York and Lancaster's long jars than to portray through three, four, six, or even seven or eight persons the many-headed monster in its varying moods. To trace the evolution of mob-mind from the stage of orderly self-possession and personal consciousness through the psychic process of the withering of the individual and the accumulation of collective energy under the stress of exciting causes to its final state of a fiercely emotional and keenly suggestible crowd-self, lay of course far beyond the purpose and powers of Thomas Legge. Far, too, was this above the aim of such controversial playwrights of the Reformation as that Catholic author of Respublica who presented “the people” in the guise of a single smatterer of dialect. Yet this study of multiplied suggestion which has taxed the observation of ancient historian and modern psychologist has always and with reason made large appeal to that analyst of many men's motives, the dramatist. Humanity in the mass exerted its fascination sometimes over Shakspere's fellows and followers; but it cast a far more potent spell upon Shakspere himself—notably in the Jack Cade scenes (2 Henry VI) and in the two Roman plays of Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus.
XVIII.—French Influence on The Beginnings of English Classicism
Authors: Macintire Elizabeth Jelliffe
Published: January 2021

It would appear, on investigation, that English classicism made itself firm roots in Elizabethan soil. Furthermore, that the plant was exotic, and came of French stock seems extremely probable. If this is our conclusion, it is necessary to premise the characteristics of an age possessing classic tendencies and show them to have appeared in sixteenth century English letters. Also we must trace interrelations of technique and theme between France and England, in order to support our latter deduction.
Some Notes of Gabriel Harvey's in Hoby's Translation of Castiglione's Courtier (1561)
Authors: Ruutz–Rees Caroline
Published: January 2021

A man's notes in his favourite books must have an interest quite distinct from that of the revelation of himself disclosed in what he invents or composes of his own motion. He is taken, as it were, unawares. The receptive and responsive regions of his intelligence under the touch of another mind are revealed in the passages that strike him, as in the annotations and reflections suggested to him. The reader who comes upon a volume so annotated may promise himself a new, probably a more intimate view of its quondam owner; aridity or abundance may equally surprise him. It is, then, with a sense of adventure that he will embark upon the perusal of notes like those of Gabriel Harvey in a book of such vogue and effect as the famous Courtier of Baldesare Castiglione, “fine Castilio,” as Harvey himself calls him.
Spenser's Muiopotmos in Relation to Chaucer's Sir Thopas and the Nun's Priest's Tale
Authors: Nadal Thomas William
Published: January 2021

Muiopotmos has long been a puzzle to the readers of Spenser. A poem of fantastic beauty built upon a trifle as a subject, a light and fanciful story of over four hundred lines with no apparent lesson or moral, Muiopotmos is altogether so unlike “our sage and serious Spenser” that critics have been baffled in their efforts to account for it.
II.—The Catalan Mascarón and an Episode in Jacob Van Maerlant's Merlijn
Authors: Crawford J. P. Wickersham
Published: January 2021

A popular allegorical subject in the Middle Ages was that which represented the struggle of the good and evil powers for the possession of man's soul. Frequently the evil power is centralized in the devil or his procurator, and the contest is excited by the harrowing of Hell and the release of the damned souls by Christ. According to some of the Church Fathers, the devil had certain rights over man after the first sin, a right which was the more legitimate since it was sanctioned by God himself. The whole subject is closely connected with the dogmatic traditions of the Church concerning the redemption. In the twelfth century, Hugo of St. Victor in his commentary on the fifteenth Psalm gives an account of a dispute between Christ and Satan, in which the devil asserts his right to man as having been consigned to him after the Fall. We find this reproduced in an Italian version of the thirteenth century entitled Piato del Dio col Nemico. According to other versions, the Virgin Mary undertook the defense of man against the claims of the devil. This idea was a product of the worship of the Virgin which affected so many of the doctrines of the Church. As the protecting Mother of sinners, she was the natural adversary of the forces of evil. Mary, the Queen of Heaven, was thus contrasted with Lucifer, the independent ruler of Hell. In certain cases, the story represents a trial scene in which Christ appears as the judge, the Virgin Mary as the advocate of mankind and Mascaron, the devil's procurator, as the plaintiff. This version is found in three texts, Dutch, Latin, and Catalan, which show marked similarities.
III.—Spenser, Thomson, and Romanticism
Authors: Cory Herbert E.
Published: January 2021

Many students of English literature are agreed that the Eighteenth Century stands in special need of reconsideration. In earlier days Wordsworth, Keats, and many more, with the new dawn on their lips, consigned their Augustan fathers and grandfathers to an ill-considered damnation. In our own age we have tried to be more tolerant. But our methods have been unfortunate. We admit the Eighteenth Century to be interesting, but interesting only in so far as it anticipates romanticism. In consequence all scholarship on the Eighteenth Century literature of England has become a mad scramble in search of romanticism. Since Professor Beers and Professor Phelps traced its growth in the Eighteenth Century it has become so fashionable to detect signs of revolt against neo-classicism that some brilliant critic of the future may gain distinction by turning the tables and by proving that a school of Pope actually existed. Of the many conceptions of the Eighteenth Century one of the most exaggerated is the notion that the influence of Spenser was one of the main forces that made for romanticism. It is the purpose of this study to examine the Spenserian problem by a brief analysis of those poems which fashion dubbed Spenserian Imitations. My contentions may be made more clear by departing from the strict chronological method and by taking Thomson's Castle of Indolence, a very composite poem, as a climax.
II.—The Earliest Precursor of our Present-Day Monthly Miscellanies
Authors: Foster Dorothy
Published: January 2021

When the reader of to-day considers the English origins of our monthly magazines of light literature, he seldom thinks back beyond the Gentleman's Magazine (1731-). The Tatler (1709-) and Spectator (1711-) he may regard as aside from the direct line of development, as they are not miscellanies. Yet in 1692 appeared in London a monthly periodical that is fairly startling in its resemblance to the Atlantics, the Harper's, the Smart Sets of our day,—the Gentleman's Journal, which is, I believe, the first notable English venture of its kind.
III.—Schiller's Tell and the Volksstück
Authors: Busse Adolf
Published: January 2021

There seems to be universal agreement among Schiller's critics that his last drama, Wilhelm Tell, means a serious change of attitude toward the ideal which had guided the poet in its predecessors. Some scholars candidly regret its looseness of form, calling this a mistake which the poet should have avoided. Others endeavor with all possible pains to fit the play into the straight-jacket of the established model, and to justify the poet's willful deviations from the rules he himself had laid down. A third group asserts with much praise that the poet has written a real Volksstück—i. e., in this case, a play for the people—by choosing intentionally a popular style and form, and by making a whole people the hero of his play.
Ye and You in the King James Version
Authors: Kenyon John S.
Published: January 2021

In Morris's Historical Outlines of English Accidence, § 155, occurs this statement: “…in Old English Ye was always used as a nominative, and you as a dative or accusative. In the English Bible this distinction is very carefully observed, but in the dramatists of the Elizabethan period there is a very loose use of the two forms.” Similarly Lounsbury: “Ye in the language of Chaucer invariably denotes the nominative; you the objective; and this distinction will still be found observed in the Authorized Version of the Bible.” Emerson: “This is the use in Chaucer, and in the English Bible of 1611, the language of which, however, is based on the translations of earlier times.” Smith: “This distinction is preserved in the King James Version of the Bible: Ye in me, and I in you; but not in Shakespeare and later writers.”
XXI.—Charles Lamb, the Greatest of the Essayists
Authors: MacDonald W. L.
Published: January 2021

It has been the custom of historians of literature to discuss essays as if there were no essential difference between, say the Essays of Bacon and those of Macaulay, or between the Spectator and the Essays in Criticism. In his recent book, The English Essay and Essayists, a work which, however comprehensive, leaves much to be desired on the score of adequacy of treatment, Professor Walker makes a distinction between “essays par excellence” and compositions on scientific, philosophical, historical, or critical subjects, which agree with the former, “only in being comparatively short and in being more or less incomplete.” Lamb's essays he considers the best example of the “literary form;” yet when he comes to discuss the Essays of Elia he does not attempt to show wherein these pieces differ from the compositions of Elia's contemporaries or successors. Every reader is vaguely conscious of a difference of kind between the essays of various writers; for example, between those of Macaulay, Stevenson, Carlyle, etc., and the pieces by Hazlitt or Charles Lamb; and it is part of the intention of the following paper to indicate the nature of this difference. Generally speaking, the secret lies in the fact that Lamb carried on the traditions of the English essay, the tradition that found its first conscious spokesman in Bacon, was afterwards perpetuated in the periodical essays of the eighteenth century, and found its fullest, if not its latest, expressions in the Essays of Elia.
William Godwin as a Sentimentalist
Authors: Allen B. Sprague
Published: January 2021

Virtually all the current discussions of William Godwin devote the bulk of their attention to the elucidation of the anarchic social philosophy of his Political Justice (1793), and, as a rule, they give serious consideration to his first subsequent novel, Caleb Williams (1794). They deal perfunctorily and apologetically with St. Leon (1799), and generally refuse to extend their discussion beyond it so as to include Fleetwood (1805), Mandeville (1815), Cloudesley (1830), and Deloraine (1833). There is, indeed, much to be said for this lapsing of the spirit of inquiry, as any reader of the uninspired minor fiction of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century knows. But the neglect of Godwin's novels and, more particularly, the failure to examine their relationship to Political Justice result, I think, in a misconception of their tendencies and the diverse nature of their appeal to his generation. Preoccupation with Political Justice, and, in a less degree, with Caleb Williams, has thrown into bold relief the frigid rationalistic elements in Godwin's thought. This is, of course, the place where the emphasis belongs in a discussion of Godwinism, but at the same time this point of view overlooks some important qualities of his later work. The fact is that a reader coming to Godwin's novels would, unless he were very observant and analytic, have difficulty in distinguishing between Godwin's fiction and the sentimental literature with which he was already familiar. He would find that whatever might be his theory, in practice, at any rate, Godwin reveals a constant inclination for the rhapsodic and lachrymose situations of contemporary literature. Certainly the reader would discover little emotional restraint in Deloraine's description of Emilia as “a being just descended from celestial spheres, new lighted on the earth” or in the account of Julian, who, haunting Cloudesley's grave, “threw himself on his knees on the earth, kissed the turf that covered the dead body of his protector.” These are the usual excesses of Rousseauistic children, a Saint Preux, a Werther, or a René, but they create an unexpected impression in the work of a recognized rationalist. In this paper the object is to take full account of Godwin's sentimental tendencies and to attempt to show their relationship to his rationalism. If we can explain this paradoxical union of reason and feeling, we shall, perhaps, understand even better than before why he had such a profound influence upon his contemporaries.
The Romanticism of Guy de Maupassant
Authors: Moore Olin H.
Published: January 2021

The naturalistic reaction against Romanticism was a more or less conscious return to classical models. Romantic diffuseness was banished. The limpid prose of the classical conteurs came back to its own. The ideal of the naturalistic novelist was to maintain a classical, impersonal point of view, which rendered impossible the gushing of Romantic lyricism. Nineteenth-century science, heir to the raison of Rousseau's enemies, the philosophes, replaced Romantic emotion. Disdaining the fantastic plots of the Romanticists, the naturalists tended to make of their novels merely a series of scenes, like Le Sage, and like Marivaux.
The Virtue of Friendship in the Faerie Queene
Authors: Erskine John
Published: January 2021

No reader of Renaissance literature need be reminded that when Spenser wrote, friendship rivalled love as a poetic theme. High friendships give life whatever good it has, says one of Castiglione's courtiers; and the Elizabethan gentleman agreed with him. If the Elizabethan gentleman was also a story-teller, the thought of friendship, it seems, usually put happy devices into his plot-making, as the thought of Helen's beauty, if he was a poet, kindled his style. Yet Spenser, who himself enjoyed friendships with the best, and who of all men should have risen to the theme of friendship, wrote of it very lamely. At least, so his critics decide. Their general verdict is that of the six books in the Faerie Queene the fourth, on the virtue of friendship, is, in spite of splendid episodes, the least satisfactory as a story and the least comprehensible as an allegory.
The Development of the Tatler, Particularly in Regard to News
Authors: Greenough C. N.
Published: January 2021

It is well known that when Isaac Bickerstaff began his lucubrations in 1709, he projected a periodical which, in accordance with the Quicquid agunt homines… nostri farrago libelli that so frequently served as the motto of its earlier numbers, should include various departments, of which one was to be the department of foreign and domestic news. It is also well known that this department was virtually abandoned before the Tatler had half run its course, and absolutely given over long before January 2, 1711, on which day Steele bade goodbye to his readers. But the precise rate at which the department of news diminished in importance, and the causes which probably governed the change, have been the subject of some very inaccurate statements and conjectures, although not all references to the matter have been wide of the mark.
Whitman as a Poet of Nature
Authors: Foerster Norman
Published: January 2021

The life of Walt Whitman may be divided roughly into two parts. The first extends from his birth on Long Island in 1819 to that “transparent summer morning” when be and his soul lay together on the grass and the sudden revelation came with its surpassing peace and knowledge; the second embraces the rest of his life, when he lived under the “potent, felt, interior command” and set forth his propaganda to America.
The “Character” in Restoration Comedy
Authors: Baldwin Edward Chauncey
Published: January 2021

Every reader of the Restoration comedy of manners cannot fail to be impressed with the frequent occurrence of the character-sketch. Often this is of a typical personage having no part in the action, as when in Wycherley's Plain Dealer, Novel and Olivia together in dialogue form describe Lady Autumn, her daughter, and a fop, none of whom appears in the play. Again, one notices a marked use of the dramatic convention of making one actor describe another who is about to enter. A typical instance occurs in the scene just mentioned when Novel describes in the form of a “character,” Lord Plausible, and is interrupted by that gentleman's entrance.
Thomas Warton and the Historical Method in Literary Criticism
Authors: Rinaker Clarissa
Published: January 2021

Thomas Warton's Observations on the ‘Fairy Queen’ of Spenser has hardly yet received due recognition as the first important piece of modern historical criticism in the field of English literature. By the variety of its new tenets and the definitiveness of its revolt against pseudo-classical criticism by rule, it marks the beginning of a new school. Out of the turmoil of the quarrel between the ‘ancients’ and the ‘moderns’ the pseudo-classical compromise had emerged. The ‘moderns’, by admitting and apologizing for a degree of barbarity and uncouthness in even their greatest poets, had established their right to a secure and reputable place in the assembly of immortals, although on the very questionable ground of conformity with the ancients and by submitting to be judged by rules which had not determined their development. It was thus by comparisons with the ancients that Dryden found Spenser's verse harmonious but his design imperfect; it was by applying the classical rules for epic poetry that Addison praised Paradise Lost, and that Steele wished an ‘Encomium of Spencer also.‘
The Dating of Skelton's Satires
Authors: Berdan John M.
Published: January 2021

Satires are of two general types. Those in which the general characteristics of humanity are subjected to ridicule, and those in which the attack is directed at specific individuals and definite events. The first, since humanity has not greatly changed thru the centuries, always retains about the same amount of interest. Nor is it ever much resented because, as Swift says, “satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for any offense by any, since every individual person makes bold to understand it of others, and very wisely removes his particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of the world, which are broad enough, and able to bear it.” This however by no means applies to satire of the second type. There the contemporaneous interest, heightened by the excitement of the knowledge of the persons or the events, is purchased at the expense of posterity enlightened only by a depressing foot-note. Unhappily it is to the second class that Skelton's satires belong. In his lifetime he was palpitatingly alive; as is shown by Hall, his epigrams were on everyone's lips, and even before his death, as in Eastall's Hundred Mery Talys (1526), he was a celebrated character; today his satires are like old riddles the answer to which has been forgotten. The reason for this condition is not only that he dared not, or cared not, to be too plain, but also that, owing to an absence of dates, we cannot be sure exactly to what period his allusions refer. The earliest editions that we have, altho undated, are at least twenty years after his death. This may be because all the copies of the early editions have perished, or because, as he himself intimates in Colin Clout (1239-41), no early editions were allowed to be printed. A second result arising from this condition is that equally we can never be sure of his text. Consequently his satires, at times apparently intelligible, are yet as a whole hopelessly confused.
Repetition of Words and Phrases at the Beginning of Consecutive Tercets in Dante's Divine Comedy
Authors: Johnston Oliver M.
Published: January 2021

The Divine Comedy contains three examples of the repetition of a word or a phrase at the beginning of successive lines, one where the first word of a line is repeated from the last of the preceding line, another pas-

Per Me Si Va Nella Citta Dolente,

Per Me Si Va Nell' Eterno Dolore,

Per Me Si Va Tra La Perduta Gente.
Notes on Manuscripts of the Prophécies de Merlin
Authors: Paton Lucy Allen
Published: January 2021

The thirteenth-century French prose romance, Les Prophécies de Merlin, of which we have no later edition than the sixteenth century, has hitherto received little attention. Notices of some of the manuscripts; appear in the printed catalogues of manuscript-collections, but none convey an idea of the contents of the romance except the description of two manuscripts in the British Museum given by Ward in his Catalogue. Practically only two other writers have entered upon any discussion of the Prophécies:—Sanesi, in the introduction to his edition of the Storia di Merlino, an Italian version of the romance, and Taylor, who in a recent dissertation on political prophecy, substantially repeats the information given by Sanesi. Both of these works are so important for the student of the Prophécies de Merlin that it is a pity to allow certain statements made by the authors to remain unsupplemented by facts which naturally have come to the notice of anyone who, like myself, is preparing an edition of the French text of the Prophécies.
Casimir Delavigne Intime: From Unpublished Letters from his Father and other Relatives in France to his Uncle in Louisiana
Authors: Fortier Alcée
Published: January 2021

The French critics of our day judge the work of Casimir Delavigne with a severity which I consider unjust. His Messéniennes, of which the first three were published in 1818, made the hearts of his contemporaries thrill with patriotic enthusiasm, and his Parisienne, music by Auber, written during the Revolution of 1830, was, for a time, as popular as the Marseillaise. One will always read with pleasure his fourth and his fifth Messénienne, Vie de Jeanne d'Arc, and Mort de Jeanne d'Arc, and the second of his Nouvelles Messéniennes, Trois Jours de Christophe Colomb.
XI.—The Debate on Marriage in the Canterbury Tales
Authors: Hinckley Henry Barrett
Published: January 2021

Scholars have always recognized that there is a large degree of appropriateness in the assignment of the various Canterbury Tales to their respective tellers, and in a few cases an appropriateness also to the situation. Recently there have been determined efforts to extend the application of these principles as far as possible. Conspicuous among these is the position asserted with great emphasis and confidence by Professor Kittredge, who would have us believe that Groups D, E, and F of the Canterbury Tales constitute a “complete and highly finished” “act” in Chaucer's “Human Comedy;” that the Wife's Prologue is a fling at the Clerk; that this gentleman finds it “gall and wormwood” and in his Tale and Envoy makes a deliberate and a studied reply; that during the Merchant's Tale the Wife is “still in the foreground,” and even “holds the centre of the stage”; and that the Franklin, by a process that is “manifestly deliberate,” carries the debate to “a triumphant conclusion by solving the problem.”
XIII.—The Legend of St. Wulfhad and St. Ruffin at Stone Priory
Authors: Gerould Gordon Hall
Published: January 2021

In a recently published volume I have referred to the curious relationship that subsists between the legend of St. Wulfhad and St. Ruffin, which is known to us through the Cottonian ms. Nero C. XII, and a set of verses dealing with the founders and benefactors of Stone Priory in Staffordshire, which has been preserved by Dugdale in the Monasticon. In my Saints' Legends I had not the space to present in detail the evidence by which these two documents are connected, nor to discuss freely the interesting problems that they suggest. The evidence is of such a character, and the problems involved are so novel, that a further consideration of the matter seems desirable.
A Source for Medwall's Nature
Authors: Mackenzie W. Roy
Published: January 2021

A comparison of Henry Medwall's Morality Nature and John Lydgate's poem, Reson and Sensuallyte, makes it plain that the two works exhibit remarkable coincidences of character, situation, and language. The general resemblance is obvious enough. In each of the works the plot is allegorical, and in each the hero, who is entitled “Man” in the Morality and, impersonally, “I” in the poem, is a type figure representing mankind. This representative of humanity is in each case approached by the lady Nature, who, after giving him a careful explanation of herself and a thorough list of admonitions, finally sends him away to travel through the world. The allegory which follows is of the familiar type in which the life of man is represented by a journey; but the manner in which this journey is undertaken is carefully specialized in the poem, and in this special form is so strikingly reproduced in the play that one may readily conclude that the former supplied much of the material to be found in the latter.
Four Hitherto Unidentified Letters by Alexander Pope
Authors: Smith M. Ellwood
Published: January 2021

A short Defence of two Excellent Comedies, viz. Sir Fopling Flutter, and The Conscious Lovers; in answer to many scandalous Reflections, on them both, by a certain terrible Critick, who never saw the latter, and scarce knows anything of Comedy at all.
The Theme of Paradise Lost
Authors: Peck H. W.
Published: January 2021

Lovers of Milton's poetry occasionally note with regret signs that his great epic is losing its influence upon the mind of the race. Hence, any attempt to revive interest in Paradise Lost deserves the sympathetic attention of students of literature. Such an attempt is the article of Professor E. N. S. Thompson, The Theme of Paradise Lost, printed in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, March, 1913. As I venture to differ from the writer, however, in a number of important particulars, I shall attempt to formulate what seems a more comprehensive view of the meaning of Milton's epic.
Beowulf and the Tragedy of Finnsburg
Authors: Lawrence William Witherle
Published: January 2021

If there were ever an occasion when, to paraphrase the words of Sir Benjamin Backbite, a neat rivulet of text might meander through a meadow of marginal annotation, the Finnsburg Episode would provide it. Hardly any passage in Beowulf has gathered to itself such a mass of exegesis. This is not surprising when we consider the highly allusive manner in which the story is told, the unusual words and idioms, and the corruptions of the text. In the Finnsburg Fragment the same obscurities and corruptions abound, and if the narrative itself is less broken and allusive, these textual difficulties and the loss of lines at the beginning and the end make its interpretation difficult. Unfortunately, many problems still remain to be settled; the labors of scholars have failed to bring agreement upon many important matters.
Dogma und Dichtung des Mittelalters
Authors: Singer Samuel
Published: January 2021

Das großangelegte Werk Martin Werners “Die Entstehung des christlichen Dogmas”1 hat mir einen starken Eindruck gemacht. Wenn ich auch den wichtigen theologischen Streitfragen gegenüber mir kein Urteil anmaße, so weiß ich doch, was eine scharfe und klare Beweisführung ist, die ohne vorgefaßte Meinung gerade auf ihr Ziel losgeht. Vor allem aber ist mir eines dabei deutlich geworden: daß die Geschichte kein einfaches Continuum ist, in dem Sinne, daß das Neue einfach an das unmittelbar Vorhergehende anknüpft, sondern daß sich Gegenwärtiges, Vergangenes, Vorvergangenes und Längstvergangenes zu einem unentwirrbaren Zauberknäuel verflechten, den so und so oft die menschliche Phantasie mit ihren buntesten Fäden umspinnt.
Chaucer's Final -E in Rhyme
Authors: Southworth James G.
Published: January 2021

The present study of Chaucer's unaccented final -e, particularly his final -e in rhyme, must clearly be understood to be a study in phonology, not one in morphology. The question is not whether or not most of the forms surviving in spelling were at one time pronounced; it is the question of whether or not they were still pronounced in Chaucer's day (particularly by Chaucer in his poetry), and whether or not the grammatical forms furnish the best hypothesis for a possible pronunciation. An acceptable hypothesis, I think everyone would agree, not only should explain the majority of cases covered by it, but should not be unduly hampered by exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions. I believe that the generally accepted hypothesis of pronunciation on the basis of historical grammar is so hampered. When originally enunciated, this was not the case. Child recognized certain exceptions, Kittredge greatly expanded these, and recently Mrs. McJimsey has enlarged them still more. Material now available, though not available to the early investigators, warrants a thorough reinvestigation of the entire theory. Enough rules for the suppression of final -e within the verse have been accepted until at the present time only about 20 per cent of such final -e's are pronounced. The supporters of a theory that demands so many suppressions should be willing to examine a hypothesis based on additions rather than suppressions, especially when the exceptions to the basic rule are only 20 per cent of the whole rather than 80 per cent, and that 20 per cent can be simply explained.
Edward Burney's Illustrations to Evelina
Authors: Eaves T. C. Duncan
Published: January 2021

That graphic illustrations have value as criticism through the illumination they throw on the interpretation of a literary work at various periods of its history is an idea which, though not new by any means, has been somewhat neglected by scholars and critics. To those interested in such study it is apparent that the closer the relationship between author and illustrator, the greater the chance of a pictorial interpretation of the work acceptable to the author. For this reason Edward Burney's rare and almost forgotten illustration for Evelina is herewith reproduced.
The Meaning of “Fellowship' with Essence” in Endymion
Authors: Ford Newell F.
Published: January 2021

Is Endymion Keats's hymn to Platonism or to some related form of idealism? Is Cynthia a symbol of Plato's absolute Beauty or one of its derivatives? Is the shepherd-hero really a poet in disguise, a poet yearning for mystic union with transcendent, intellectual Beauty? With minor qualifications, an affirmative answer can be said to characterize the trend of criticism during the last sixty years.
Brockes Religion
Authors: Wolff Hans M.
Published: January 2021

Das Problem der religiösen Anschauungen, die dem Irdischen Vergnügen von Barthold Heinrich Brockes zugrunde liegen, hat in der Forschung keineswegs die Beachtung gefunden, die es in Anbetracht der Tatsache verdient, daß dieses Werk vom ersten bis zum letzten Gedicht religiöse Bedeutung hat und ohne eine genaue Kenntnis der Religion seines Verfassers schlechthin unverständlich bleibt. Die bedeutsamste Spezialuntersuchung, die diesem Problem gewidmet ist, ist der bekannte Aufsatz von David Friedrich Strauß (1861),1 und die Schlußfolgerungen zu denen dieser große Streiter für religiose Aufklärung gelangte, werden auch heute noch häufig ohne weitere Untersuchung angenommen.2 Strauß sieht in Brockes einen entscheidenden Wegbereiter des Deismus und charakterisiert ihn als einen Denker, in dessen Werk sich der Sturm vorbereitete, “der das Gebäude des positiv christlichen Religionssystems so schonungslos wegzufegen Anstalt machte.” Daß dieses Resultat einigermaßen überraschend ist und jedenfalls nicht dem ersten Eindruck des Werkes entspricht, dessen ist sich Strauß sehr wohl bewußt, doch fühlt er sich seiner Sache auf Grund der folgenden fünf Beweise sicher. “Die ganze Brockes'sche Naturpoesie ist ein gereimter physico-theologischer Beweis,”3 und wenn auch Brockes die Offenbarung nicht völlig aufgibt, so ist sie doch tatsächlich überwunden, denn “wer die gesamte Natur als Offenbarung Gottes begreift, der braucht nur den Muth zu haben, sich zu gestehen was er denkt, um jede besondere Offenbarung als überflüßig zu erkennen … ”4 Als zweiten Grund führt Strauß die Toleranz des Dichters an, die ihn selbst gegenüber Atheïsten nicht verläßt;6 seine scharfe Kritik an Christen und ihrem Wandel6 wie seine Charakterisierung Gottes als “Weltgeistes”7 stellen zwei weitere Bekräftigungen seiner These dar, und die Tatsache, daß Reimarus den Dichter in seine sonst so ängstlich gehüteten theologischen Geheimnisse einweihte,8 setzt dem Ganzen gewißermaßen die Krone auf.
Old English Riddle No. 57
Authors: von Erhardt-Siebold Erika
Published: January 2021

The poem 57 is one of the simplest and shortest of the whole collection of Old English Riddles, a gem of a riddle, if correctly understood. In my opinion the last line should be interpreted as ending with the statement that the little creatures “name themselves.” As yet no satisfactory solution has been found.
Sir Philip Sidney's Letter to the Camerarii
Authors: McMahon A. Philip
Published: January 2021

In the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery there is a letter from Sir Philip Sidney to the sons of Joachim Camerarii, which has been published once, without comment, but I am now able to offer improved readings and to trace some of its background. As this letter was not printed with complete accuracy before, the text is now given in full:

Optimi et Clarissimi viri. Accepi optatissimas uestras literas quas mihi iunctis nominibus scripsistis, ob easque gratias quas possum maximas habeo. meque tum ob hanc amicam mei recordationem, tum ob humanitatem mihi a vobis Nurimberge exhibitam magnopere uobis deuirictum fateor. Ego cum praecipuis reginae nostrae consiliarijs aliquoties de vobis collocutus sum, ipsique reginae uestri mentionem feci. et hoc uobis affirmare possum eos omnes uestro nomini bene cupere, et ut ocasio offeretur, spero id eos monstraturos. Doleo sane quod libri tanto labore ab optimo uestro Parente confecti, hactenus in lucem non fuerint editi. ego potissimum cuperem Politica eius et historica uidere, in quibus edendis si mihi uestras rationes uolueritis scribere, ego libenter ad sumtus faciendos meam operam adiungerem. interea ego me uobis etiam atque etiam cōrniendo ommaque foelicia precor. meque paratissimum fore uobis gratificari promitto. Egregium virū D. Doctorem Herclesianum vt meo nomine amantissime salutetis vehementer oro. valete optimi viri. Ex Aula Regia Londini. 1o. Ma [?] 1578.

Vestri Amantissimus

Philippus Sidnei[us]
The Comic Humours: A New Interpretation
Authors: Snuggs Henry L.
Published: January 2021

The Induction to Every Man out of his Humour, which contains Jonson's most significant statement about humorous characterization, has been universally interpreted by critics as follows: Jonson rebelled against the “abuse of this word Humour,” which had come to be used popularly to denote whim, affectation, or eccentricity. That spectators and readers of his comedies might understand the basis of his own comic characterization, he carefully defined humour in the strictly psychological sense:

As when some one peculiar qualityDoth so possesse a man, that it doth drawAll his affects, his spirits, and his powers,In their confluctions, all to run one way,This may be truly said to be a Humour.
Realism in Les Misérables
Authors: Moore Olin H.
Published: January 2021

It is my purpose to note a few indications of a trend toward photographic realism in the successive stages of the composition of les Misérables. While numerous studies of Victor Hugo's documentation have appeared, I believe that this is the first attempt to point out the changing character of that documentation, and to chart roughly a drift towards reportage. I shall rely mainly upon evidence from unpublished correspondence filed away with the manuscript of the novel, material neglected apparently even by the late Gustave Simon, who had access to Victor Hugo's workshop. The discussion will be limited to the following topics: (A) No. 7 Rue de l'Homme-Armé; (B) la maison Gorbeau; (C) the second residence of M. Gillenormand; (D) le restaurant Rousseau; (E) le Petit-Picpus; (F) Javert; (G) Thénardier.
The Revival of Cornish: An Dasserghyans Kernewek
Authors: Parry John J.
Published: January 2021

Among the Celtic tongues Cornish occupies a unique place. It is not a wholly dead language like Gaulish and Galatian, and neither is it an actively living one like Welsh and Breton, Irish and Scots Gaelic. Even Manx, few as the speakers of it may be, has maintained a living tradition. But Cornish was practically dead when the revival began in 1904, and it was well on its way to becoming a living language again when the second world war broke out. Whether this revival can survive amid the dislocation of total war remains to be seen.