It seems now to be generally agreed that Anglo-Saxon poetry is different from modern poetry not only in verse form and subject matter but is an entirely different kind of poetry. The basic study in the re-evaluation of Old English poetic technique is Francis P. Magoun, Jr's “Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry,” which applies to Old English poetry the discoveries of Milman Parry and Albert Lord about formulaic diction in Homeric poetry and in the oral poetry of Jugoslavia. Subsequent studies which further explore formulaic diction in Anglo-Saxon poetry are Magoun's “Bede's Story of Cædman: The Case History of an Anglo-Saxon Oral Singer” and an earlier paper of my own, “The Diction of the Signed Poems of Cynewulf.” These articles focus attention chiefly on the formula, which usually occupies the space of one verse or one measure of a verse. Professor Magoun also opened up the problem of the theme as a larger formulaic unit in “The Theme of the Beasts of Battle in Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” suggesting that the theme is essentially a convention, which the poet might call upon when he had a battle to narrate. The wolf, eagle, and raven do not advance the action: they are essentially ornament. It seems likely that such poets depended less on what moderns usually think of as inspiration than on a large stock of formulaic diction and of set pieces or themes.

The qualities of universality and unity in the Lazarillo de Tormes are interrelated factors through which the reader perceives and reacts to the reality presented although he does not identify himself in any way with the characters and scenes. This perception and reaction depend primarily upon three aspects of the novel: (1) the visualizing element, (2) multiple levels of humor, and (3) the unified concept of the total experience of a human being. Obviously the unknown author of the Lazarillo did not invent these characteristics, but rather fused qualities present in various literary types of his age. We shall be concerned here not with the relation of each aspect to a larger literary tradition, but with the manner in which each is utilized in the novel itself.

Some conception, explicit or implied, of the relationship between art and nature is basic to the writer's as well as the critic's view of his own function. But because of the fundamental nature of our own bias in this matter we find it difficult to recover the attitude toward art and nature held by a writer of an earlier period. In the case of the Renaissance, and specifically of Spenser, much of our difficulty stems from now widely held views of art and literature as a spontaneous, vital, organic flowering forth of nature conceived in its ideal potentiality, of literary insight as a synthesizing vision in which the aesthetic and the moral blend, of imaginative creation as the opposite of deliberate contrivance, “cold” artificiality, and external ornament. In accordance with such views, C. S. Lewis, in his discussion of the Faerie Queene in The Allegory of Love, speaks of the “exquisite health” of Spenser's imagination; he says that “most commonly” Spenser understands Nature as “unimpeded growth from within to perfection, neither checked by accident nor sophisticated by art”; he claims that with insignificant exceptions Spenser “uses art to suggest the artificial in its bad sense,” employing the central episodes of the Bower of Bliss and the Garden of Adonis to develop a crucial antithesis of sterile, deceptive, sinister artifice and fruitful, naive, genuine nature. I would like to show that Spenser's attitude toward deliberate artifice is considerably more positive, or at least ambivalent, than Mr. Lewis claims and that Spenser is much less consciously aware of art and nature as polar oppo-sites than a modern reader is likely to expect.

Since its initial vogue during the lifetime of Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece has received short shrift from the general public and little more attention from critics and scholars. This relative neglect has done much to obscure the actual importance of the poem; for, quite apart from its intrinsic merits as poetry, The Rape of Lucrece constitutes one of the most explicit and illuminating documents which bear upon Shakespeare's development, and especially upon his coming of age as an artist. Written almost certainly during the year immediately preceding its registration on 9 May 1594, and hence in the interval between Shakespeare's apprentice experiments in the theater and his mature dramatic achievements with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the poem provides unique information about Shakespeare at a crucial point in his career. Frankly advertised, moreover, as a serious poem on a serious theme, it bears every evidence of having been undertaken by its author as a premeditated and highly self-conscious bid for recognition as a serious literary artist. Indeed, in the deliberate thoughtfulness of its conception and the conscientious care of its execution The Rape of Lucrece is one of the most laborious and studied works of art that Shakespeare ever produced. And as such, it affords a revealing index to the kind of thinking imposed on its creator at the time, and by the process, of its creation.

One of the most disturbingly dramatic, and least admired, scenes in Shakespeare is that in which Prince John of Lancaster subdues the rebels in 2 Henry IV. His strategy, unheard of in any other general in Shakespeare's plays, is not to win in open field by plain force but by legalistic subtlety to trick the rebels into an armistice. He agrees, ostensibly, to all the provisions of redress demanded by the Archbishop, Hastings, and Mowbray; the leaders drink amicably in the sight of their armies; the rebel troops are dismissed; and then with a chilling suddenness John arrests the leaders for high treason and commands his army to “pursue the scatter'd stray.” To cap this dubious triumph, John piously rejoices, “God, and not we, hath safely fought today.”

The ghost in Hamlet is essential to the plot of the play and to an understanding of both the problem of Hamlet and his character. Therefore it is not surprising that it has engaged the close study of critics who offer various and conflicting interpretations.

“Those who remark their religious experiences are generally looked on with Ridicule;” wrote James Boswell, “but very unreasonably, for they are experimental philosophers upon the most important subject.” No one can read BoswelPs Life of Johnson or any of the Boswell Journals and letters without recognizing the vital place religious thought held in his life, for he was a man who did remark his religious experiences with interest and without embarrassment. An outline of his religious life demonstrates the profound revolutions and constant turmoil of his religious thought and indicates the lasting impression religion made on the man James Boswell.

Herder's whole attitude to language develops quite coherently out of one single remark. This is the description, early in the Fragmente, of primitive language as “sinnlich.” As a qualification this would hardly have ranked high amongst aesthetic criteria at the time. Indeed it is doubtful whether, when here first enunciated by Herder, it was meant to imply praise or even approval. Having just said: “Bei den Gegenständen fürs Auge muste die Geberdung noch sehr zu Hülfe kommen, um sich verständlich zu machen,” Herder goes on to say of this early stage of language “und ihr ganzes Wörterbuch war noch sinnlich.” The wording of this statement is significant. “Die Geberdung muste noch sehr zu Hülfe kommen … ihr ganzes Wörterbuch war noch sinnlich”—in these two noch's there is the suggestion of imperfection. This is not surprising. Adelung suggests that sinnlich, meaning “based on unclear perceptions” is opposed to vernünftig meaning “based on clear perception.” Sinnlich, for him, implied therefore a certain degree of imperfection. It has been suggested that Herder was merely echoing G. F. Meier's rendering of Baumgarten's term sensi-livus meaning “pertaining to the faculties of sensation.” Poetry, according to Baumgarten, was “oratio perfecta sensitiva.” And this is how Herder's apparently neutral description turns almost imperceptibly into a value-judgment; for it soon becomes apparent that he considers poetry not only as the earliest, but as the highest form of literature.

The aim of this essay is to examine Descriptive Sketches (written in 1791–92, published with An Evening Walk in 1793) as a poem with its own personal and stylistic integrity. Though not, of course, a great or even very exciting work of art, its relation to Wordsworth's growth as man and poet has been neglected. One reason for this neglect is Legouis' account of its derivative nature: the many borrowings in it from eighteenth-century writers and the extensions of their technique. Legouis is controvertible only on the ground of method: by atomizing the poem he shows convincingly that a great proportion of phrases have a direct or exaggerated relationship to that “gaudiness and inane phraseology” Wordsworth was later to condemn. His view of Descriptive Sketches as mainly patchwork, though sincere and really alive to nature, has prevailed almost continuously. The few notable attempts to go beyond Legouis should, however, be mentioned. M. L. Barstow, an exact reader, discriminates Wordsworth's “faults” from those of the eighteenth-century landscape school, and states against Legouis that what we find in Descriptive Sketches is “not the remnant of an old style; it is the crude but vigorous beginning of the new.” But because of her specific approach, the study of Poetic Diction, she does not, except in a general way, correlate Wordsworth's stylistic struggle with a particular phase in his personal development.

Is Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance chiefly the story of Hollingsworth and his unsuccessful philanthropic scheme, or the story of Zenobia and her tangled relations with Hollingsworth, Priscilla, Westervelt, and Old Moodie, or the story of Coverdale, the cold observer, or the story of the Blithedale experiment? Any of these candidates could be defended. Hollingsworth has the strongest effect upon the plot, and Hawthorne originally intended to name the novel after him; Zenobia is the most vivid character, and her story receives even more space than Hollingsworth's; Coverdale is the character whom we know most intimately; and although Hawthorne prefatorially states that his description of the communal farm “is altogether incidental to the main purpose of the romance,” his remarks about Blithedale's purpose, operation, and failure constitute an evaluation of the Brook Farm experiment. Yet none of these sub-plots clearly dominates the rest. Unless some principle of unity holds them together, Blithedale is at best a noble failure; until we are aware of this principle of unity, we cannot read the novel with satisfaction.

This Paper had its origin in three main considerations: (1) my observation of the many references to Thomas Arnold's ideas and works in Matthew Arnold's familiar correspondence; (2) my recognition of many striking parallels in the Biblical criticism of the two men; and (3) my gradual realization that the great wealth of scholarship about the Arnolds contained no detailed attempt to indicate the precise nature of Matthew's indebtedness to his father's ideas about the Bible. The unlikeliness of any unique indebtedness is, of course, patent when one considers the wide diffusion of liberal religious ideas in mid-nineteenth-century England and, more particularly, when he remembers Matthew's expressions of interest on various occasions in the work of Spinoza, John Smith (the Cambridge Platonist), S. T. Coleridge, C. C. J. Bunsen, Renan, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, and Benjamin Jowett. Nevertheless, the inherent probability of at least a contributory influence, a predisposition to accept similar ideas from other sources, appeared to justify a comparative study of the criticism of the Arnolds.

Readers of The Times of London know Oliver Edwards' column as literary chat. It is no secret that Oliver Edwards is Sir William John Haley, editor of The Times and formerly Director-General of the B. B. C. In August 1957, on the publication in England of Gérard Jean-Aubry's biography of Joseph Conrad, Sir William launched an attack on Ford Madox Ford. “Time has an exorable way of taking its own revenge,” he begins. “When Joseph Conrad died, many who had affectionate regard for that master … were hurt or outraged at the way Ford Madox Ford seemed to cash in on the event. In a book about Conrad, in articles, and in other reminiscences the only purpose that could be discerned was to glorify Ford, even if that meant somewhat diminishing Conrad… . Ford's nature and experiences were such that by that stage in life he no longer had any touch with reality and had lost what little perspective he ever had.” As the column continues, the accusations become more personal. Ford was “a bit of a bounder,” he writes, whose “inaccuracies were … congenital and venial… . The question remains why Ford acted the way he did.”

Although Frank Norris' first two novels have been valued both for their intrinsic worth and for their importance in the history of American naturalism, they have also been severely criticized for their inconsistencies. Summarized broadly, these charges are, first, that there is a lack of consistency between Norris' dramatization of a deterministic system in McTeague and his frequent avowals of individual moral responsibility in Vandover; and, secondly, that there are inconsistencies within the novels themselves—that Norris appears to free McTeague from responsibility for his behavior and yet adopts a moral tone when discussing McTeague's sexual desires, and that though Norris for the most part blames Vandover for his choice of an evil life, he also seems to indicate in several passages that Vandover is the victim of irresistible larger forces.

No better “optical symbol” can be found for one aspect of Henry James than the photograph taken in 1906 showing him in top hat, cane and gloves in hand, bending slightly forward in the classic Daumier pose, taking in impressions of a painting. This is a portrait, however, not merely of the occasional James— the art critic, friend and befriender of painters, biographer of a sculptor—but also of the essential James—the master of the art of fiction. That his love of pictures and familiarity with the studio world were grist to his mill is evident in stories and novels such as “The Madonna of the Future” and The Tragic Muse in which his depiction of the artist and exploration of aesthetic questions are thematically central. Reflecting his experience of art less obviously but more significantly are the pictorial effects and art allusions permeating his fiction, both early and late. For though James was first and foremost a literary artist preoccupied with the problems of his own craft, his responsiveness to the visual arts was so keen, was so much an integral part of his consciousness, that it inevitably made itself felt in his literary technique. Clearly, a study of the pictorial aspects of his fiction is justified for the light it may cast on his method as well as on individual works.

It is now generally known that Bernard Shaw had no love for Augustin-Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), father of the French pièce bien faite (“well-made” play), or Scribe's well-known disciple Victorien Sardou, whose technical bravura Shaw scornfully dubbed “Sardoodledom.” Perhaps his most outspoken recorded condemnation of the prolific playwright and his factory of collaborators is this (undated) outburst to Archibald Henderson: “Why the devil should a man write like Scribe when he can write like Shakespeare or Molière, Aristophanes or Euripides? Who was Scribe that he should dictate to me or anyone else how a play should be written?” To be sure, a good many literary critics of the past century have disparaged this form of drama, combining a complex plot with a maximum of theatrical ingenuity and an absolute minimum of thought. But Shaw's call to arms against the well-made play and its popular and successful founder echoed so loudly over so long a period that it could not help but arouse many disinterested spectators. No quarter would be, nor could be, given to this mountebank, this cheap magician of the stage.

That curious psychological phenomenon, the involuntary memory, is not an original discovery of Proust. Nor does he claim it as such, since, in Le Temps retrouvé, he himself mentions Chateaubriand, Baudelaire, and Nerval as predecessors. Critical investigations have since amplified this list. What is original, however, is Proust's use of it: only he conceived of its many facets—poetic, dramatic, philosophic— and exploited its possibilities by incorporating it centrally in the substance of a novel. Within his own work the involuntary memory underwent a lengthy evolution, appearing in embryonic form from the outset in Les Plaisirs et les jours and recurring, progressively more refined, in all subsequent writing, but not fully modeled nor centrally placed until the final work. In La Recherche three separate forms of the involuntary memory are delineated. There is a dream memory operating in a state of full or partial somnolence found principally in the “Ouverture” and in La Prisonnière where the senses and imaginative powers pursue a course unchecked by reason or will, where the evocations are fleeting, vague in contour, limited in significance and never surprising. There is a sentimental memory evoking a person once loved by the narrator (Gilberte, his grandmother, Albertine), in effect resuscitating that person since the narrator experiences her as present, as a living reality within him, surrounded by the full force of all old emotional ties.