bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Lxxxi: The Origins of Modern German Polite Sie-Plural with Particular Reference to the Works of Christian Weise
Authors: Metcalf George J.
Published: February 2007

It is only within the last few decades that scholars have been inclined to agree with Andreas Schmeller's statement regarding the origin of the polite Sie-plural forms in modern German: “Den schon ums Jahr 1683 vorkommenden Höflichkeits-Plural Sie haben wir Deutsche vermuthlich dem ellipsierten Plural Euer Gnaden zu verdanken.”
XXI. Re-Enforcement of Negation in Early Italian
Authors: Brown Charles Barrett
Published: February 2007

Re-enforcement of negation by the application of words or phrases denoting small value or amount was not unknown in Latin, and was a practice that naturally carried over into the Romance languages. In referring to terms thus employed in Romania, grammarians do not always quote sources or cite the earliest text in which a term appears; to remedy this deficiency for early Italian, where necessary and possible, is the purpose of the present discussion, as well as to list additional terms that previous investigators have overlooked.
XXVI. Die Kunst des Übergangs bei la Fontaine
Authors: Spitzer Leo
Published: February 2007

Ce La Fontaine qu'on donne à lire aux enfants ne se goûte jamais si bien qu' après la quarantaine …. Sainte-Beuve.

… ce style

Tout oublié qui fut jadis si doux,

Et qu'aujourd'hui l'on croit facile—Musset

Ubrich Knoche in seinem schönen Artikel “Betrachtungen über Horazens Kunst der satirischen Gesprächsführung” (Philologus, xc [1936], S.373 ff.) zeigt, von demhorazischen Präzept ausgehend:

Non satis est pulchra esse poemata: dulcia sunto

et quocumque volent animum auditoris agunto,
XXVII. Antiquarian Interest in Elizabethan Drama Before Lamb
Authors: Williams Robert D.
Published: February 2007

Charles Lamb, in the whimsical autobiographical sketch which he wrote in 1827, boasted that he “was the first to draw the public attention to the old English Dramatists, in a work called ‘Specimens of English Dramatic Writers,‘ who lived about the time of Shakespeare.” Lamb's first biographer, Talfourd, pictures the Specimens as slowly and almost imperceptibly working out “the genial purpose of the editor in renewing a taste for the great contemporaries of Shakespeare.” Ainger describes Lamb as a dispeller of ignorance and remarks of the Specimens:

The very idea of the collection was a bold one… . With the one exception of Shakspeare, the dramatists of the period, between “the middle of Elizabeth's reign and the close of the reign of Charles I,” were unknown to the general reader of the year 1808?
XXIX. The Romantic Debate in the French Daily Press of 1809
Authors: Carnahan D. H.
Published: February 2007

THE main struggle between the French Romanticists and Classicists occurred in the third decade of the nineteenth century. Hostilities, however, had begun much earlier. MM. Edmond Egglie and Pierre Martino in the first volume of their work Le Débat romantique en France have described the conflict from 1813 to 1816.
Beowulf and the Blickling Homilies and some Textual Notes
Authors: Brown Carleton
Published: February 2007

Richard Morris, in editing the Blickling Homilies, called attention to a passage in the xviith Homily which presents striking resemblances to the description of the mere of Grendel in Beowulf, “of which [in his opinion] it is probably a direct reminiscence.” Though almost sixty years have passed since this resemblance was pointed out, during this whole period it has received scant attention from students of Old English, being either ignored altogether or dismissed with only brief discussion.
If All the Sky were Parchment
Authors: Linn Irving
Published: February 2007

The present paper, though it has a bearing upon the problems of comparative literature, does not deal directly with literary works themselves, but is confined to the study of a single rhetorical figure which made its appearance more than two thousand years ago and still lingers in folk rimes of the present day. This rhetorical figure, which is striking enough to be easily identifiable, can be traced all the way from the Orient to Western Europe and thus serves as a floating straw to mark the currents and eddies in the stream of literary tradition.
Dante's “La Petra”
Authors: Fletcher Jefferson B.
Published: February 2007

Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam.

As an Italian scholar has said, Dante's “rime pietrose” are a “questione pietrosa.” The rime pietrose—Pietra or Petra poems—are, strictly speaking, a small group of poems in which there is word-play on the lady's name and disposition. One thinks of Shakespeare's “Will” sonnets. Barbi allots to the Petra group one sestina, one sestina “doppia,” two canzoni, and a doubtful sonnet. Other critics would add more poems as being similar in mood and motive. D'Ancona, conceiving la Pargoletta, la Petra, la Donna Gentile, and Lisetta as “una persona in diversi atteggiamenti,” would include in one cycle nearly all Dante's lyrics not addressed to Beatrice. Certain others would identify la Petra with one other of Dante's ladies. Thus Zenatti, Santi, Misciatelli identify her with la Pargoletta; Serafino identifies her with Gentucca. At the other extreme, Federzoni rejects the idea of a Petra group altogether.
Johannes Stamler's Dyalogus
Authors: Nugent Elizabeth M.
Published: February 2007

The Dyalogus published by Johannes Stamler in 1508 when he was rector of the parish church in the little German town of Kissing, a suburb of Augsburg, has up to this time been so completely overlooked by literary critics that its appearance now may be in a measure classed as a discovery. Stamler himself has fared no better at the hands of biographers. A few bibliographers list the play, but with the exception of A. Veith in his Bibliotheca Augustana do scarcely more than quote the full title. Several give a detailed account of Hans Burgkmair's frontispiece, a woodcut depicting, besides the characters of the play, Pope Julian II, and the Emperor Maximilian I. But the woodcut was used only in the first edition, of which twenty-five copies have been located so far. It does not appear in the smaller Italian translation published the same year in Venice by the little-known Giovanni Padovano.
Congreve's Irish Friend, Joseph Keally
Authors: Lynch Kathleen M.
Published: February 2007

Fifty years ago Edmund Gosse observed: “We should know little or nothing of what happened to Congreve between 1700 and 1710 if it were not for the Keally letters.” The further statement must be made that in over two hundred years little or nothing has been discovered concerning the friend to whom those letters were addressed. Gosse knew only that Joseph Keally was of “Keally Mount, Kilkenny” and that he was “a relative of Bishop Berkeley.” Congreve's recent biographer, Mr. D. Crane Taylor, unaware of Keally's early death, deplores the “most regrettable” loss of letters later in date than those of Berkeley's Relics but concludes that Congreve and Keally “unquestionably remained close friends.”
Lucretian “Domestic Melancholy” and the Tradition of Vergilian “Frustration”
Authors: Shapiro Leo
Published: February 2007

In 1786 Gilbert Wakefield pointed out in a very specific way the similarity of certain passages in the poetry of Lucretius, Thomson, and Gray. In our own day, Miss A. L. Reed and Professor H. W. Garrod have indicated the same parallel passages in the three poets, as well as in Collins. My purpose here is to classify this Lucretian influence as definitely as possible, and to describe its genesis and diffusion as part of a broader Vergilian stream.
James Thomson and John Norris
Authors: Drennon Herbert
Published: February 2007

In a previous article I showed that James Thomson's juvenile poem, “The Works and Wonders of Almighty Power,” was for the most part a paraphrase of certain passages in the Moralists, a philosophical rhapsody, by the Earl of Shaftesbury. Another one of Thomson's juvenile poems, “Upon Happiness,” contributed to The Edinburgh Miscellany in 1720, was inspired by a letter John Norris wrote at All-Souls College, April 18, 1683, entitled “An Idea of Happiness: Enquiring wherein the greatest Happiness Attainable by Man in this Life does consist.” In addition, Thomson was perhaps indebted to John Norris for some of the general treatment of theme found in his “Preface” to the second edition of Winter (1726).
Redburn's Prosy Old Guidebook
Authors: Thorp Willard
Published: February 2007

I will not quote thee, old Morocco, before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities would only be skipped and dishonoured by shallow-minded readers; and for me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing from a guidebook—the most vulgar and ignominious of thefts!—Redburn.

The purpose of this paper is to add another chapter to the constantly growing account of Melville as a writer who, in calculating his effects, often had recourse to travel diaries and guidebooks to furnish him with factual information and with dramatic episodes, which appear as the authentic experiences of his characters. In this instance the book is Redburn, the novel which he regarded as one of the least of his works, but which many besides John Masefield have admired as a spirited and sometimes harrowing narrative of a boy's running away to sea.
Poetical Affiliations of Gerard de Nerval
Authors: Rhodes S. A.
Published: February 2007

In one of the several accounts Théophile Gautier gave of the life and works of his friend Gérard de Nerval, he expatiated on the extraordinary modesty of the man. The tumult and turmoil of the age was destined to die down; the whisper of Nerval's voice has been echoed down the years, and has become sweet music. His poetical lineage has radiated in every direction, and constitutes the purest lyrical filiation of the century.
Is Walter Pater an Impressionistic Critic?
Authors: Child Ruth C.
Published: February 2007

Walter Pater is commonly known as an impressionistic critic. Many who use the term of him consider it a compliment. For instance, A. J. Farmer admires him greatly, and calls the Preface to the Renaissance an “admirable plaidoyer” for impressionistic criticism. He explains it thus:

La beauté, écrit-il [Pater] en substance, ne sairait se réduire à une formule ab straite; elle est multiple et diverse, elle varie selon les époques et même selon les individus. A quoi bon essayer de l'enfermer dans tel principe d'ecoie, dans tel concept fatalement arbitrare? La tâche de critique ne consiste-t-elle pas plutôt à communiquer au lecteur ses enthousiasmes, à lui décrire les sensations qu'il a éprouvées devant l'ceuvre d'art, à lui montrer les images qui se sont succede dans le miroir de son ame?
The Vowel in Rather in New England
Authors: Penzl Herbert
Published: February 2007

It seems to be a widely accepted opinion that the words father (<OE fæder) and rather (OE rather <*hrathor) have had an identical historical development since ME. Both words occur in the questionnaire of the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada. Both have been recorded regularly with rather placed in two entirely different contexts—“I'd rather go” and “rather cold.” The more than 400 records of the Atlas reveal conditions in present-day dialect. We shall try to establish, by comparing the vowel qualities as recorded in father and rather, whether the theories of the scholars are confirmed or not.
The Russian Symbolist Movement
Authors: von Mohrenschildt D. S.
Published: February 2007

In Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, the Symbolist movement started as a reaction against the positivism and utilitarianism of the preceding epoch. The eighties and the early nineties were periods of pervading rationalistic thought. Dostoevski and Turgenev were dead. Tolstoi had withdrawn from literature to expound his dogmatic, rationalistic Christianity. The poetry of the so-called civic poets had sunk to the lowest possible level. It was the “autumnal” period of Russian literature.
Chaucer and Graunson: The Valentine Tradition
Authors: Braddy Haldeen
Published: February 2007

Geoffrey Chaucer and Oton de Graunson, as members of the retinue of the Duke of Lancaster, were thrown into close personal association, and Chaucer's translation of some of Oton's balades affords conclusive evidence that literary connections also existed between the two poets. The full extent of Oton's influence upon Chaucer can not now be accurately determined, inasmuch as some of Oton's poems have been lost and even of those which have been preserved some are still difficult of access. We are specially fortunate, therefore, in having available a sequence of Valentine poems by Graunson, who seems to have been the first to popularize this type of verse in fourteenth-century England. Chaucer himself, notably in the Parlement of Foules and the Complaint of Mars, also took part in this cult of Saint Valentine's Day, and there thus seems reason to expect that an examination of Oton's Valentine poems may supply evidence which will be helpful in interpreting these Chaucerian pieces.
The Gurney Series of Religious Lyrics
Authors: Robbins Rossell Hope
Published: February 2007

In the sale of the large collection of Gurney Manuscripts in 1920 one manuscript was overlooked, and still remains in the possession of Mr. Q. E. Gurney of Norwich, the brother of the former owner. Miss Allen supplies some information in regard to the date and the previous history of this manuscript; and a list of its contents (omitting, of course, the prose Abbey of the Holy Ghost) will be found in Carleton Brown's Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse.
Mabbe's Paganization of the Celestina
Authors: Houck Helen Phipps
Published: February 2007

The Celeslina's probable influence on the early stages of the English drama through the adaptation published in 1530, its direct though perhaps slight influence on the English realistic novel, and its much greater indirect influence through its stepchild, the picaresque novel, lend interest to the translation published in 1631 by James Mabbe, or “Maybe,” as he may have pronounced his name, since he uses the punning pseudonym Don Diego Puede-ser. Despite numerous errors, some as elementary as confusing subject and object or turning a grandson into a nephew, Mabbe's work is a brilliant achievement. It does not read like a translation; nor does it read like the Spanish Celestina. Apparently the translator set himself to erase the vertical line of the Middle Ages completely, to paganize the work, and to make it represent the Renaissance spirit as he felt it.
Fresh Manuscript Sources for a Life of William Congreve
Authors: Hodges John C.
Published: February 2007

No major English writer contemporary with William Congreve has left such scant information about himself. Biographers have feared, as Edmund Gosse tells us in 1888, that “the opportunity for preparing a full and picturesque life of this poet has wholly passed away.” When Gosse revised his life of Congreve in 1924, he found that the intervening thirty-five years had added practically nothing to our knowledge.
The Esprit of the Esprit des Lois
Authors: Cabeen David Clark
Published: February 2007

That the title of the Esprit des Lois is an accurate description of the contents of the book has not been seriously questioned, nor has the form of its translation into English as the Spirit of (the) Laws. But the extensive use of esprit by Montesquieu in the book has attracted the attention of most of its critics from the eighteenth century on. In the Lettres persanes, an ironical reflection of the manners, morals, customs, and laws of eighteenth-century France, the use of esprit is taken for granted; merely to amuse and interest is, clearly, a legitimate objective in a work of this type. But in a treatise of universal jurisprudence the frequent introduction of esprit has naturally provoked much comment, and some criticism.
A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Hands of Garrick and Colman
Authors: Stone Geo. Winchester
Published: February 2007

By 1755 English dramatic audiences as well as English dramatic critics were less concerned with faults in the construction of Shakespeare's plays then they had been twenty years earlier. Largely because of Garrick's excellent acting, the focal point of Shakespearian criticism was shifting from consideration of plot structure to consideration of character delineation. But even though advance was being made in the new criticism as well as in the growth of Shakespeare idolatry, such a varied mixture of realistic material, classical mythology, and fairy lore as Shakespeare used in A Midsummer Night's Dream was bound to fail in presentation. Pepys, nearly one hundred years earlier (September 29, 1662), had seen the play and had remarked that it was the most insipid and ridiculous one he had ever witnessed in his life. In 1716 Richard Leveridge presented his Comick Masque of Pyramus and Thisbe at Lincoln's Inn Fields, where it had nine performances (from April 11 of that year until September 9, 1723). As the title suggests, it was a brief handling of Bottom's playing artisans—a mere fragment of Shakespeare's play. On January 21, 1745 an anonymous Mock Opera, Pyramus and Thisbe, appeared at Covent Garden and enjoyed some twenty-two performances until April 13, 1748. The music was composed by John Frederick Lampe, and the play was slightly longer than Leveridge's. No other performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in any of its parts is recorded until 1755 when Garrick made his first attempt to give his audiences some more of the material of the play. He was wise, as subsequent events proved, not to try to present it at that time in its entirety. Yet he was vitally interested in the whole of the play and joined eight years later with his friend George Colman in an attempt to produce it in its Shakespearian form.
Lessings Miss Sara Sampson: Die Erste Englische Uebersetzung
Authors: Schneider Heinrich
Published: February 2007

Unter den Uebersetzungen deutscher Dramen in die englische Sprache nimmt die auf amerikanischem Boden entstandene und 1789 in Philadelphia anonym erschienene Übertragung von Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Trauerspiel “Miβ Sara Sampson” als eine der ersten eine wesentliche Stelle ein. Durch ihren Ursprung kommt ihr auβerdem für die Erkenntnis der frühen Einflüsse deutscher Literatur auf Amerika besondere Wichtigkeit zu. Da die deutsche Literatur im 18.Jahrhundert in diesem Lande fast unbekannt war, hat jede damals hier veröffentlichte Uebersetzung eines Literaturerzeugnisses ganz allgemein grosse Bedeutung. Diese wächst in jeder Beziehung, wenn es sich dabei um das Werk eines Dichters vom Range Lessings handelt.
De Quincey's Cessio Bonorum
Authors: Forward Kenneth
Published: February 2007

If De Quincey has more than once proclaimed his mastery of the pure theory of political economy, he has also admitted, as in the Confessions, his occasional incapacity for systematic “domestic economy.” The extent of that incapacity is indicated, however, less in what he wrote for publication than in his anxious letters to the publishers who were the sources of his earned income; and Professor Eaton's faithful and judiciously proportioned new biography amply attests the reality of the financial tribulations which perplex that correspondence. But, while Professor Eaton's account of individual actions for debt—protested bills of exchange, homings, arrests, flights into and out of sanctuary—is impressive, if not appalling, the official records of De Quincey's cessio bonorum in 1833, which seem to have been overlooked hitherto, provide a general summation of his desperate financial plight in one of his most difficult years. The story of that action, as I may now piece it together with the assistance of Mr. W. M. Parker of Edinburgh, will show that in 1832 De Quincey actually suffered imprisonment for debt, though very briefly; that, in taking the benefit of a kind of personal bankruptcy procedure peculiar to Scots law, he acknowledged in 1833 a total indebtedness of £617 16s. to some fifty-one creditors; and that in his desperation he was driven to list among the debts due him the “gift” of £300 made to Coleridge in 1807.
De Sanctis' Criticism: Its Principles and Method
Authors: Rossi Joseph
Published: February 2007

The writers who exerted the greatest influence on the development of De Sanctis' thought are Vico and Hegel. We do not know exactly when De Sanctis became acquainted with Vico's theories. As early as 1833 he struck a friendship with Enrico Amante, who at that time was deeply immersed in the study of Vico, and he shared an apartment with Amante for three years, between 1837 and 1840. It is possible—and even probable—that De Sanctis was introduced to the study of Vico by his friend. Be that as it may, it is certain that the esthetic ideas of Vico constituted a powerful factor in the development of De Sanctis' critical theories. Cardinal tenets of De Sanctis' criticism—such as the sensuous character of poetry, phantasy conceived as the peculiar poetic faculty, the antithesis between poetry and philosophy, the psychological rather than logical approach to poetry—are obviously derived from the Principi d'una scienza nuova.
Browning's Letters to Isabella Blagden
Authors: Knickerbocker K. L.
Published: February 2007

The letters written by Robert Browning to Isabella Blagden constitute the longest sustained correspondence carried on by the poet with any individual. The correspondence extends over more than twenty years, and for more than ten years of that time letters once every month were exchanged. This scheme of exchange—Miss Blagden to write on the twelfth and Browning to reply on the nineteenth—was begun in June, 1862. The correspondence ended in December, 1872, within a few weeks of the death of Miss Blagden. In bulk the letters outweigh those written to any other individual except Elizabeth Barrett. In style they are loose, usually hurried, dynamic, faultily constructed, friendly letters—full of gossip, opinion, detraction, dogged frankness, and honest vehemence. They are Browning, unadorned and prosy. Possibly no other single source offers so much information concerning his intimate life.
Populism in the Novel Before Naturalism
Authors: Shortliffe Glen
Published: February 2007

The affinity of modern Populism to certain aspects of the Naturalist school in France has found general acceptance. Few critics, however, have attempted to trace this line of descent further back into the nineteenth century. Zola himself saw no precursors in the field of the proletarian novel beyond the confines of his own school, and cited Germinie Lacerteux as the first work bringing to the novel a sympathetic treatment of the humbler classes of society. Mr. Felix Walter has shown that the famous preface to the first edition of this novel constitutes a variety of pre-populist manifesto. Yet the claim of the Goncourt brothers to have produced “un roman vrai”—like their boast: “ce livre vient de la rue” —strikes no new note in the literary history of France. Almost a century earlier Rétif de la Bretonne had advanced substantially the same claim for his Pied de Fanchette, further noting that this seeming originality belonged to still another before him.
Rondeaux du ms. 402 de Lille
Authors: Françon Marcel
Published: February 2007

Tels que des flots dans un grand fleuve, nous avons chacun un petit mouvement et nous faisons un peu de bruit dans le large courant qui nous emporte; mais nous allons avec les autres et nous n'avançons que poussés par eux … Si inventeur que soit un esprit, il n'invente guère; ses idées sont celles de son temps, et ce que son génie original y change ou ajoute est peu de chose. (H. Taine, Essai sur Tite Live)
Spenser's Rosalind: A Conjecture
Authors: Banks Theodore H.
Published: February 2007

Many efforts have been made to identify the Rosalind of Spenser's Shepheardes Calender. The following conjecture approaches the problem from a study of Mr. Douglas Hamer's article in the Review of English Studies for July, 1931, entitled Spenser's Marriage, which reaches the conclusion that in April, 1580, Spenser was newly married.
Notes on Three of Fielding's Plays
Authors: Woods Charles B.
Published: February 2007

The only adequate and trustworthy account of Fielding's théâtre is that given by W. L. Cross in his three-volume biography, The History of Henry Fielding (New Haven, 1918). Yet, in my opinion, three of Fielding's plays, The Letter-Writers (1731), The Modern Husband (1732), and Eurydice Hiss'd (1737), have received inadequate treatment from Professor Cross, for he has failed to indicate their sources properly.
The Metrical Tale in XVIII-Century England
Authors: Draper John W.
Published: February 2007

The poets of the early nineteenth century are thought of primarily as lyrists; and yet, in the case of all the leading figures, especially the two most popular, Scott and Byron, the bulk of their work is narrative, and for the most part metrical tales. These narratives vary widely in subject-matter and atmosphere: sometimes, as in Crabbe, the purpose is simply to tell a realistic story; sometimes as in Wordsworth, to point a moral or adorn a bit of autobiography; sometimes, as in Coleridge and Byron, to give the reader a new and exotic shudder; or, as in Scott and Keats, to delight with the mysterious and forgotton past; or, as in Shelley, to inculcate a social doctrine. At first sight, this prevalence of narrative seems to be an utter departure from the preceding hundred years, in which satire and didacticism are supposed to have extinguished the versified tale; but a closer examination, especially of minor writers, shows that the eighteenth century had an unbroken tradition of such writings. The existence of this tradition has generally escaped attention, partly because the works of such minor poets are hard to find, and partly because the genre was of rather dubious repute, being akin to the “ballad” of the time, and was hardly included in the literary “kinds” generally accepted by critics and theorists.
Diderot's Influence on Rousseau's First Discours
Authors: Krakeur Lester Gilbert
Published: February 2007

The problem of ascertaining whether Diderot or Rousseau was responsible for the original inspiration of the Discours sur les sciences et les arts has been a vexing one to biographers and students of both men. Though the famous paradox belongs to Jean-Jacques by reason of his exploitation of it, the question is none the less one of exceeding interest. Rousseau's work, as Lemaître remarks, is but a reflection of his life, the incidents of which “sont à peu près toutes des oeuvres de circonstances. Et la grandeur de conséquence fait qu'il devient émouvant de les voir sortir de si petites causes et si accidentelles.” And it is to the accident of Diderot's intervention that the initial impulse, which was to have such momentous consequences, is frequently attributed. “Il y a tout lieu de croire que c'est lui qui suggère à Rousseau la fameuse réponse à la question posée par l'Académie de Dijon,” affirms the author of a recently published work.
James Hogg's Forgotten Satire, John Paterson's Mare
Authors: Strout Alan L.
Published: February 2007

In the The Newcastle Magazine, xv (Jan. 1825) I discovered the satire which all students of Hogg know he wrote, but which is thought never to have been published, John Paterson's Mare. In this satire, Hogg allegorically presents the friends and enemies of Blackwood's Magazine (somewhat as he had done in the Chaldee Manuscript), and incidentally introduces, most interestingly, Jeffrey's critical treatment, in the Edinburgh Review, of such contemporaries as Joanna Baillie, Tom Moore, Ritson, Byron, and the Lake Poets.
Hawthorne's Feathertop and R. L. R.
Authors: Kern Alfred A.
Published: February 2007

Professor randall stewart, while editing Hawthorne's American Notebooks from the manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library, called my attention to the initials “N. B.—R. L. R.” in the following note and asked me if I could tell him to whom they referred. The present paper is a belated attempt to answer his question.
François de Curel: Observations Sur la Creation Dramatique
Authors: Lévêque André
Published: February 2007

En 1894, M. Binet, qui venait de fonder L'Année psychologique, eut l'idée de s'adresser à quelques-uns des auteurs dramatiques de son temps pour leur demander des renseignements sur la façon dont ils concevaient leurs pièces et les composaient, espérant ainsi “éclaircir la question si importante, si mal connue, si peu étudiée, de l'imagination créatrice.”
The Dialect of the Corpus Glossary
Authors: Kuhn Sherman M.
Published: February 2007

The Old English words in the Corpus Glossary constitute one of the oldest extant texts in the English language, and one of the three longest in the Mercian dialect. Linguists now agree that the glossary was compiled somewhere in Mercian territory during the eighth century. Palaeographical evidence points to the eighth century as the period of compilation. Concerning two important questions, linguistic opinion seems at present vague and uncertain: First, to what extent is the language of Corpus the result of dialect mixture? Second, what is the relationship between the language of Corpus and that of the most important of the texts now looked upon as Mercian, the Vespasian Psalter?
The A-Text of Piers Plowman and the Norman Wars
Authors: Huppé Bernard F.
Published: February 2007

Tyrwhitt (about 1790) dated the A-Text of Piers Plowman upon the evidence of a reference (Passus v, 10–20) to a southwest wind storm which occurred in 1362. Scholars have generally accepted this as the date of composition. But Professor Cargill has shown the reference to have no value in deciding the terminus ad quem in view of the specific and lively records of this storm to be found in later sources: John Richesdale, for example, born after the time of the storm, as he tells us, speaks of it familiarly just as we might of the great blizzard of '88, still a memorable event.
Character and Action in the Case of Criseyde
Authors: Mizener Arthur
Published: February 2007

A good deal of attention has been devoted to the question of Chaucer's intention when he created the character of Criseyde. Almost all answers have as their starting point a common assumption: that Chaucer was doing his best to create a unified character in the modern sense of the phrase. They start, that is, from the assumption that Chaucer meant Criseyde's character and actions to appear all of a piece and from the fact that he made her false to Troilus in the end. Only two conclusions are possible on the basis of these premises: either Chaucer intended Criseyde's character to appear compatible with her betrayal of Troilus from the first, or he intended it to appear to change during the course of the narrative in response to the events. The first of these conclusions, with its assumption as to Chaucer's conception of things, is the one most frequently encountered.
Milton's Prosody in the Poems of the Trinity Manuscript
Authors: Diekhoff John S.
Published: February 2007

In an article entitled “Terminal Pause in Milton's Verse“ I have tried to show that in spite of the great and very proper concern of critics with Milton's use of the “verse-paragraph,” the study of Milton's prosody must be in terms of the linear unit, the study of the paragraph being largely a rhetorical problem. In these terms, Robert Bridges' Milton's Prosody is a formulation of the rules of Milton's later blank verse. But Bridges gives very little attention to any of the poems in the Trinity College Manuscript, and none to the readings peculiar to the manuscript, from which we may learn a good deal of Milton's concern for prosody. Of the poems in the manuscript, Comus alone is in blank verse. We shall examine it first, after a brief review of Bridges' findings.
The Campaign to Substitute French Neoclassical Tragedy for the Comedia, 1737–1800
Authors: Qualia Charles B.
Published: February 2007

The introduction of French neo-classical drama into Spain in the eighteenth century met the most determined opposition on the part of patriotic Spaniards. French lyric and epic poetry had little influence, for France had given comparatively little attention to them during the great period of Louis XIV. The fable, satire, letters, and other genres were accepted in Spain without causing much disturbance. It was not so with the drama.
Chatterton's African Eclogues and the Deluge
Authors: Sypher Wylie
Published: February 2007

Some have credited Coleridge's Kuhla Khan with a “magic” lacking to almost every other poem in English. Though more finished in its artistry, Kuhla Khan is, however, no more “magic” than parts of Chatterton's African Eclogues; in fact, as E. H. W. Meyerstein in his excellent Life of Chatterton was apparently the first critic to point out, there are sundry arresting likenesses between these Eclogues and Kuhla Khan. Since the Rowley poet is in his strange “romantic” way similar to Coleridge, is it possible to penetrate the “shaping spirit of imagination” behind the African Eclogues, as Mr. Lowes has penetrated the imagination behind Kuhla Khan? The purpose of this discussion is to show the manifold effects of the Rev. Alexander Catcott's Treatise on the Deluge on three “magic” poems.
Religious Experience in Werfel's Barbara
Authors: Stamm Israel S.
Published: February 2007

In an article reviewing Werfel's collected poems from the Catholic point of view, Cornelius Schroeder, a Franciscan, maintains that despite constant references to God in his poetry Werfel does not experience any real religious faith. It is Schroeder's contention that Werfel does not succeed in finding a solution to the conflict between nature and spirituality which is so prominent in his poetry:

Als geistiger Mensch kommt er nicht hinweg iiber die Zwiespältigkeit von Natur und Geist, kommt er nicht los von der Qual, in welche die Geburt für die Erde den Geist gestiirzt hat.
The Runic Inscription of Codex Latinus Monacensis 13067
Authors: Selmer Carl
Published: February 2007

After the introduction of Christianity the use of runic characters diminished considerably in continental Europe. While in the times of King Chilperich and Venantius Fortunatus the runic script still played a rôle in public life, it fell into disuse in subsequent periods in central Europe, a fact which is deplored by Otfried in his introduction to the Gospels: Res mira, tam magnos viros, sapientia latos, sanctitate praeclaros, cuncta haec in alienae linguae gloriam transferre et usum scripturae in propria, lingua non habere. It will, therefore, be of interest to discover an unpublished runic inscription in CLM. 13067, a codex belonging to the eleventh or the twelfth centuries. It must be regarded as quite an unusual occurrence to see here the runic characters transcribing a Latin sentence and taking the place of a Hebrew inscription.
An Interpretation of the A-Text of Piers Plowman
Authors: Stone George Winchester
Published: February 2007

In none of the scholarly treatments of the texts of Piers Plowman have I seen the theory advanced that the A-text is a contraction or an abridgment, for any purpose whatsoever, of the B- or C-texts. I take it that B is an enlargement of A, and that C is a revision of both. A, therefore, is the seed, whereas the other two are second thoughts, either of the A poet or of others, and it makes little difference which. If the three texts were written by one man, it is important to know what his original purpose was before one discusses his afterthoughts. If the poets are three, it is still important to know what he meant and planned who gave an idea to his followers.
The Curtain on the German Stage: Its Introduction and Early Use
Authors: Jordan Gilbert J.
Published: February 2007

Siegfried Mauermann in Die Bühnenanweisungen im deutschen Drama bis 1700 (1911) made the assertion that we cannot seriously reckon with the presence of a curtain on the German stage before 1600. Since Mauermann's monograph is well documented with numerous quotations of stage directions in which there is no mention of a curtain before 1600, one would be inclined to agree, were it not that several studies made since then incidentally present material that definitely disproves Mauermann's conjecture. As apparently no investigation gives a reasonably complete survey of the introduction and early use of the curtain on the German stage, the following findings are presented.
Lenten Casts and the Nursery: Evidence for the Dating of Certain Restoration Plays
Authors: Gray Philip H.
Published: February 2007

In determining more narrowly the date of A Session of the Poets, commonly ascribed to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, c. 1676, the dating of the play Wits Led by the Nose has proved to be of preliminary concern, since it contains the first known reference to A Session. Wits Led has on the title-page verso “August 1677,” the date when it was licensed for printing, but there is no external evidence for the date of composition or of its acting at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. Falling back on internal evidence, we find this not explicit, but of a significance beyond the dating. The internal evidence for the acting date offers a clue to an unsettled question of identity: who made up the “younger part” of the King's or Duke's Company that acted in Lent, and what relation if any did these actors bear to the Nursery? The answer to this may provide another principle for determining the acting date of certain Restoration plays—the principle, namely, that a particular set of actor's names in a dramatis personæ may have a seasonal significance.
The Publication and Profits of Dryden's Virgil
Authors: Ward Charles E.
Published: February 2007

Dryden's profits from the publication of his translation of Virgil have long been a topic of considerable interest and speculation. Malone, in 1800, pieced together as much information as he could gather from secondary sources then available to him; but he was explicit in regarding as fragmentary his interpretations of Dryden's profit from this work. The whole question is indissolubly bound up with the agreement between Dryden and his publisher, Jacob Tonson, for the publication of the translation.
La Tragédie Française Au XVIIIème Siècle et le Théâtre De Métastase
Authors: Guiet René
Published: February 2007

De tous les dramaturges étrangers connus en France au XVIIIème siècle, Métastase soulève l'enthousiasme le plus général. Alors que Shakespeare, par exemple, n'obtient que des louanges fort mitigées, et restera, en somme, pendant tout le siècle “un génie plein de force et de fécondité,” mais “sans la moindre étincelle de bon goût,” le librettiste italien a pour lui la faveur à peu près sans réserve de la critique contemporaine. De fait, on voit presque en lui l'heureuse contrepartie de Shakespeare. L'abbé Raynal, par exemple, le juge “un écrivain diffus, mais délicieux, et qui joint à beaucoup d‘élégance et de délicatesse, du sentiment et du pathétique.” Si Shakespeare éveille un intérêt plutôt scandalisé, Métastase, par contre, plaît par la variété de son œuvre où chacun peut trouver quelque chose qui satisfasse son goût: certains s'attendrissent sur des situations touchantes et morales, dignes du drame bourgeois; Diderot cite de Métastase un passage “bien vrai et qui peint fortement la tendresse des mères.” La plupart voient en lui l'auteur de tragédies régulières. Certes, on le loue parfois pour ses qualités lyriques, et à ce point de vue, Saint-Lambert le met au dessus de Quinault; de même, l'enthousiasme débordant de J-J. Rousseau dans son Dictionnaire de Musique est causé par les qualités éminemment musicales de la poésie de Métastase et non par les procédés dramatiques de l'auteur. Saint-Lambert et Rousseau placent ainsi le poète dans son vrai jour. Mais, le plus souvent, on dégage les livrets de Métastase de toutes considérations musicales, et on les juge sur leur valeur dramatique: “Ses pièces, pleines d'esprit, de situations, de coups de théâtre et d'intérêt,” écrit le Président de Brosses, “feraient sans doute un plus grand effet si on les jouait en simples tragédies déclamées, laissant à part tout le petit appareil d'ariettes et d'opéra qu'il serait facile d'en retrancher.” Voltaire, après de Brosses, ne cesse de développer la même idée. Il loue la régularité des tragédies-opéra “du célèbre abbé Métastasio,” “comparables à tout ce que la Grèce a eu de plus beau, si elles ne sont supérieures;” supérieures parfois aux tragedies de Corneille; produits d'un talent “que, depuis les Grecs, le seul Racine a possédé parmi nous.” Palissot, et plus tard Le Prévost d'Exmes, font, après Voltaire, la même apologie et conservent le même point de vue. C'est ce qui explique que l'imitation de Métastase se soit fait sentir dans la tragédie régulière, avant d'envahir la scène de l'Académie Royale de Musique. En effet, ce n'est qu‘à partir de 1783 qu'apparaissent, sous forme d'opéras, des adaptations de Métastase. Bien avant cette date, les auteurs dramatiques français se sont emparés de l'ceuvre du poète italien, dans l'espoir de trouver chez lui des procédés qui puissent insuffler un peu de vie à la tragédie qui languit. La vogue pour Métastase se fera sentir surtout après 1751, date de la publication des premiers volumes de la traduction de Richelet.
The Æsthetic Revolt Against Naturalism in Victorian Criticism
Authors: Decker Clarence R.
Published: February 2007

Victorian society, however emphatic its hostility to French Naturalism, was not unanimous in its disapproval. Indeed, many of the bitterest critics softened their reproaches as the century advanced. Robert Buchanan, for example, not only modified his earlier position in later years, but became a staunch defender of Zola. In 1877 he had aligned himself with the forces of virtue and goodness as embodied in the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the aim of which was to save the land from the blasphemers Rabelais, Boccaccio, Baudelaire, Swinburne, Rossetti, Meredith, Zola, Ibsen, Wagner, George Moore, and many others.
Meredith's Literary Theory and Science: Realism Versus the Comic Spirit
Authors: Robinson E. Arthur
Published: February 2007

The purpose of this paper is to correlate George Meredith's theory of literature with his philosophy of evolution. At the present time, Meredith's fame rests primarily upon his conception of the Comic Spirit, brilliantly elaborated in the Essay on Comedy and exemplified in many of the novels. His acceptance of natural evolution, and his extension of its principles into a threefold hierarchy of physical, mental, and spiritual attainment, are apparent in his philosophy and poetry, but are often obscured by the very brilliance of the comic social analysis in the novels. The influence is there none the less; it is readily observed in the psychological springs that move the more important characters, and it helps to shape Meredith's attitude toward fiction as a whole. The present study pertains chiefly to this second aspect—the relation between Meredith's evolutionary doctrine and the theory of literature by which he approached his own and his contemporaries' writing.
Situation and Character in Till Damaskus
Authors: Dahlström Carl E. W. L.
Published: February 2007

In this paper, I am analyzing Strindberg's trilogy To Damascus with regard to two basic elements—situation and character. Through this study, as well as others in kind, I hope that eventually a literary æsthetic may be evolved. The final purpose, of course, is the attainment of æsthetic judgment in literature.
Light on the Dark Lady: A Study of Some Elizabethan Libels
Authors: Angell Pauline K.
Published: February 2007

For the past thirty years the ingenuity of Shakespeare scholars has been challenged by a series of libellous publications, the principal contribution to which is a book called Willobie his Avisa, or the true picture of a modest Maid and of a chaste and constant wife. It was published in 1594 and contains the first mention of Shakespeare:
Weltanschauung im Puppenspiel vom Doktor Faust
Authors: Thalmann Marianne
Published: February 2007

Wenn O. Schade (Weimarisches Jb., v, 242) im Vorwort zum Weimarer Puppenspiel vom Dr. Faust den Stoff “im allgemeinen deutsches, im besonderen protestantisches Eigentum” nennt und betont, dass “kein Tropfen katholisches Blut” in seinen Adern ist, so trifft er damit den Kern des Faustproblems. Aber Faust wäre nicht das Problem des deutschen Menschen, wäre er nur aus einem Ast unserer Entwicklung erwachsen, wäre er nicht zugleich ein Spiel aus den Spannungen protestantischer und katholischer Atmosphäre. Und gerade das Puppenspiel rollt die Entwicklung des Stoffes auf, die dem ganzen Volk gehört, an der die lebendige Theatertradition vieler Jahrhunderte mitgearbeitet hat. Und in diesem Spielkreis stellt uns die komische Figur vor Fragen, die auf dem Boden der rein protestantischen Faustproblematik nicht gelöst werden können.
Pardies and the Cartesian Beast-Machine
Authors: Rosenfield Leonora Cohen
Published: February 2007

The Jesuit father Ignace-Gaston Pardies, mathematician and physicist of some renown in his time, published in 1672 a Discours de la Connoissance des Bestes, famous then, but little known today. Amidst the mass of material on the general controversy of the souls of beasts, this work is outstanding for its brilliance, literary charm, and degree of originality. It is well worth examination, for its own merits and its bearings on the dispute in which it proved an influential contribution, and because of the curious fate to which the book was destined. For the Discourse, which went through numerous editions and caused considerable stir in the Republic of Letters was, although purporting to be a refutation of the Cartesian mechanistic view, reputed to be intended as a defense of that system. From Pardies' own day to the present age, uncertainty has existed as to how the treatise is to be classified.
Parallels to Ideas in the Lettres Persanes
Authors: Crisafulli Alessandro S.
Published: February 2007

The Lettres Persanes, on which Montesquieu worked in leisurely fashion for perhaps ten years, reflect to a large extent the voluminous reading he must have done during this time. Their great variety of subjects implies numerous possible sources of inspiration, not all as yet indicated by Montesquieu scholars. It is my purpose to consider as possible sources of some ideas in the Lettres Persanes three authors of Montesquieu's epoch—Malebranche, Leibniz, and Shaftesbury. By the expression “possible sources” I mean that there are between Montesquieu and these three writers some relationships of ideas which may imply influence, since Montesquieu esteemed these writers and knew, or could have known, their works before 1721, the date of the publication of the Lettres Persanes. Two of these authors, Malebranche and Shaftesbury, were in fact greatly admired by Montesquieu. Ranking them as highly as Plato and Montaigne, he even calls these four writers “the four great poets.”
Voltaire's Candide and Gracián's El Criticón
Authors: McGhee Dorothy M.
Published: February 2007

Perusal of some Voltairian conte material not long ago elicited two cursory observations which have since seemed to be confirmed by more detailed reading. They concern the evident interest which the seventeenth-century Spanish moralist, Gracián, appears to have evoked in Voltaire. The observations, as first made, were these: that in a list of Voltaire's library, works of Gracián stand out prominently, in both Spanish and French; that El Criticón, a moralistic tale of a traveling naïf and his realist-tutor, presents not only an interesting link in the adventure genre, but seemingly a hint of the Candide-Martin relationship of the conte philosophique} The suggestion of a connection, conscious or not, between El Criticón and Candide was, on first observation, based upon superficial comparison. The present brief inquiry will attempt to confirm the point that a reasonably close connection does exist—one which receives attention neither in editions of the contes nor in other critical works on the period.