Magere Ergebnisse fördert zutage, wer die echten Schelme in der deutschen Dichtung aufspüren will and dazu die üblichen bibliographischen Handbücher, die zusammenfassenden Darstellungen motiv- und stoffgeschichtlicher Art und die nach Gattungen geordneten Sachbücher befragt. Josef Körner nennt in seinem Bibliographisches Handbuch des deutschen Schrifttums nur eine geringe Anzahl von wissenschaftlichen Untersuchungen unter dem Stichwort “Schelmenroman”, wovon die meisten sich auch noch auf das 16. und 17. Jahrhundert und die Lazarillo- und Don Quichote-Nachahmungen beschränken. In seiner durch ungeheuren Fleiß ausgezeichneten Anhäufung von Material, The Literature of Roguery (1907), teilt Frank W. Chandler der deutschen Schelmenliteratur nur neun Seiten zu, wobei sie sich diesen Platz auch noch mit der Diskussion des Genres in Holland teilen muß. Außer kurzen Hinweisen auf die deutsche Schwankliteratur, Meier Helmbrecht, Wittenweilers Der Ring, das Liber Vagatorum, Sebastian Brants Das Narrenschijf und auf einige Barocksatiren werden nur Grimmelshausens Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch und seine späteren Simplicianische Schriften einer knappen Besprechung für würdig erachtet. Chandler schließt mit der Erwähnung mehrerer Robinsonaden und dem bezeichnenden Satz: “as elsewhere in letters, the ideal and the sentimental replaced picaresque realism. And so for a time the spirit of Rousseau and Richardson ruled.” Gero von Wilperts Sachwörterbuch der Literatur zählt einige der deutschen Übersetzungen und Nachdichtungen der Gattung im Barockzeitalter auf und nennt au der neueren deutschen Literatur Wincklers Der tolle Bomberg, Thelens Die Insel des zweiten Gesichts und Thomas Manns Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull. Das klassische Werkzeug aller Germanisten, der Merker-Stammler, räumt dem Schelmenroman auch nur verhältnismäßig wenig Platz ein. Es wird hingewiesen auf den Bayern Ägidius Albertinus, den “Vater des deutschen Schelmenromans” und seine Bearbeitung des “Gusman von Alfarache” und auf einige obskure Verfasser und Bearbeiter. Man beeilt sich jedoch hinzuzufügen: “Von einem deutschen Schelmenroman kann …kaum gesprochen werden.” Und weiter unten heißt es: “Sowohl die Schelmenromane wie die Romane Grimmelshausens haben … wenig Nachahmung gefunden.”

L'Influence de l‘œuvre de l'abbé Prévost dans la littérature secondaire de son siècle ne semble pas avoir été suffisamment reconnue. Cette influence fut considérable bien qu'affaiblie et comme obscurcie plus tard par le roman de mœurs anglais qu'il introduisit lui-même en France, et surtout par la renommée éclatante et plus durable de Jean-Jacques Rousseau qui, tout en coordonnant nombre d'idées éparses dans l‘œuvre de son devancier, sut imposer un système naturiste au monde par la seule force de son génie.

In the course of his insistence upon the necessity of a continued recognition of the popular ballad as a distinct literary type, Professor Gummere points out the value of a collection of Professor Child's critical remarks on the ballad and an attempt to determine their general drift. Such is the purpose of the present paper. Aside from the article in the Universal Cyclopædia, Professor Child's comments are mere obiter dicta, based upon no underlying principle and forming no part of a set purpose. They are, therefore, not easy to classify; the attempt to reduce them to order can be only partially successful, and any arrangement must appear more or less arbitrary. Yet some arrangement has seemed advisable and they have been roughly grouped under the following headings: (1) Authorship and Transmission; (2) Subject-Matter; (3) Technique; (4) A Comparison of the Ballads of 1857–1859 and The English and Scottish Popular Ballads of 1882–1898; (5) A Collection of General Comments upon Specific Ballads; (6) Summary.

It is generally agreed that had either Hyperion or The Fall of Hyperion: A Vision been completed, the result would have been a lofty utterance of Keats' best wisdom in fundamental matters. As to what these matters and this wisdom comprised there has been wide difference of opinion, particularly in respect to Hyperion.* In The Fall the poet, speaking in his own person, gives us some pretty clear hints; in Hyperion we must guess the meaning from the nature of the story and the characters. Hyperion, the longer of the two, is usually held to be the better poem; it is certainly the more cryptic. It has been variously explained as signifying: “the unity of all existence”; “a self-destructive progress toward good … that beauty and not force is the law of this change … light and song passing into union and perfection out of elemental crudeness”; as “the old dynasty of formless powers, driven into oblivion by new creators of form and order”; as “the epic of the Revolutionary Idea”; and as the apotheosis of “disciplined imagination” and “a state in mental stature where all facts, pleasant or otherwise, will appear in their proper perspective.”

Although the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher had been revived in great numbers after the reopening of the London theaters in 1660, their popularity declined so steadily during the eighteenth century that by the time of Garrick's retirement from the stage in June, 1776, only two plays, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife and The Chances, both comedies, were still being presented as stock pieces at Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket. Shortly after Garrick's retirement, however, several of the neglected plays were revived, and, in spite of the competition of intensified Shakespearean revival and the unquestioned predominance of assorted spectacle and melodrama, a varying degree of interest in the Elizabethan twin playwrights continued until the retirement of Edmund Kean from the stage in March, 1833. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to determine the extent to which the neglect of Beaumont and Fletcher was amended during the years 1776–1833 and to ascertain the significance of the revivals as related to various contemporary interests as well as to the generally favorable or unfavorable circumstances for production.

In the literature on Notes from the Underground the protagonist is always called “the underground man” (podpol'nyj chelovek), as if he were an archetypal entity, rather than “the narrator,” an accepted literary convention of the Icherzählung. The nomenclature is significant, for critics have treated the work as the turning point in Dostoevsky's development, ransacked it for philosophical, political, and sociological formulas, noted the profound psychology, but have never analyzed the Notes in detail as an artifact. By so doing critics distort the Notes structurally and substantively, because they concentrate on and overemphasize the first part of the work almost to the exclusion of the second, and because they accept and discuss the narrator's formulations in this part without analyzing them as the expression of a literary creation. The purpose of this study is to examine the unity of the Notes: to ascertain the relationships of its two parts; to indicate the thematic function of ordering episodes in a particular sequence; to note the recurrence of certain objects, the symbolism involved therein, and its effect on the unity of the Notes; finally, to assess the effect of artful integration on the apparent “meaning” of the work.

For in this processe Parrot nothing hath surmysed, No matter pretendyd, nor nothyng enterprysed, But that metaphora, allegoria with all, Shall be his protectyon, his pauys, and his wall. (ll. 205–208) THE wall of metaphor and allegory that Skelton built around his Parrot perhaps served to keep off the pursuivants of his archenemy, Cardinal Wolsey; certainly it has proved a formidable obstacle to the comprehension of the reader of today. The Reverend Alexander Dyce, to whom we are indebted for what is still the only edition of Skelton's poems deriving directly from the sources, provides illuminating notes to scattered passages in Speak, Parrot, but admits his inability to make the whole intelligible. Friedrich Brie, whose learned Skelton Studien has contributed much to our knowledge of the poet, omits the troublesome Parrot altogether from his consideration except for a short note on the question of date. Koelbing essays merely to sketch its general structure with but occasional specific reference. The only reasoned attempt at clearing the confusion of the satire is that of Professor Berdan in Speke, Parrot, An Interpretation of Skelton's Satire.

In an age when symbols are being discovered in literary works where critics of an earlier period would never have dreamed of looking for them there is probably little need to defend a study of symbolism in Grillparzer's work. Indeed Grillparzer himself recognized that there is a symbolic element in all art and reproached his own time for its refusal to acknowledge the symbolic aspect of poetic truth. Das goldene Vließ, moreover, is not the only drama in which Grillparzer uses symbols. In Sappho, for instance, the lyre, the laurel wreath, the rose, the statue of Aphrodite, and the dagger all have symbolic significance. Even the title of Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen reflects symbolic motifs. In that drama subtle variations on the water imagery predominate but are reinforced by symbols such as the dove, the tower, the Leda song, and the lamp. In Libussa, to cite one more example, there is a highly developed circle symbolism as well as symbolism involving flowers, vegetation, and metals.

El cuento septenario es de grant santidad.—Berceo, Loores 143a. There are in Berceo's verses besides the prevailing Alexandrine half-lines of seven syllables a few hemistichs of five, six, eight, nine, and even ten syllables. These may be considered as due to the alterations and mistakes of the copyist. Such is the position taken by Fitz-Gerald in his critical edition of La Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos and in his treatise on the versification of the same work. He is supported by Henríquez Ureña, who finds the regularity of Berceo quite exceptional in Old Spanish poetry, and who believes him to be the only versifier we can call correct from the Cid to D. Pero López de Ayala. Others, not finding credible this unique position of the poet, may care to see in his lines traces of the tendency to ametric verse that is supposed to have influenced all the other writers of the cuaderna vía stanza. A third position has been championed by Lang, who, remaining silent about the odd lengths other than those of eight syllables, affirms “that no convincing argument has as yet been advanced against the thesis that Gonzalo de Berceo admitted the native octosyllable quite as much as the other authors of the cuaderna vía.”

The unity of Beowulf is at least secure in the person of the hero whose character and actions provide the basis for any critical examination of structure and theme. According to some, this is all that holds the epic together. Others see more than a sequence of disconnected episodes related to one person. In their view, the fights with Grendel and his dam are united to the dragon fight in the opposition of hero and king, youth and age, the beginning and ending of a life of achievement. It is in their spirit that I have attempted to take a fresh view of the subject with special reference to unity of theme and treatment. The suggestion is that this unity is to be found in the theme of redemption and judgment treated in a way which skilfully blends the Germanic hero with the Christian saint. The symbolism is not regarded as contrived or studied, but rather as of that kind which is the usual result of an author's finding an apt subject to illustrate his theme. A symbolic interpretation does not, after all, exclude a literal interpretation; it contains it. The dragon, for instance, can be both a universal symbol and a very literal and particular monster. We have surely become too literal-minded if we suppose that the audience of Beowulf could see no universal significance in the epic story because they accepted the literal truth of the narrative. The many symbolical interpretations of the Biblical narrative during the period which followed bear witness to the improbability of this view. Once the underlying theme of redemption and judgment is adopted and is seen to be the epic theme par excellence, the process of selection from myth and legend becomes somewhat clearer, and there is no longer the necessity to account for a gap between the Grendel fights and the dragon fight. The details in the fifty-year reign of the hero would have been irrelevant. An epic is surely not a biography nor a chronicle nor a mythology, although it draws upon all these.

In 1926, coming upon Spengler's Decline of the West, Yeats was amazed and delighted. “Here is a very strange thing,” he wrote to Sturge Moore, “which will show you what I meant when I wrote of individual man not being shut up in a bottle.” While he had been drawing his diagrams for the historical sketch in A Vision, Spengler's first edition had been going through the press. Had there been some occult communication? “I can almost say… that there is no difference in our interpretation of history (an interpretation that had never occurred to anybody before) that is not accounted for by his great and my slight erudition.” Though Yeats exaggerated, the similarities are substantial; but the means of communication are more various than he wished to allow. Many of Spengler's views were far from novel; and Yeats's early acquaintance with philosophies of history was much broader than his disclaimers of erudition imply. In fact, by 1895 his own historical symbolism was taking clear form; and like Spengler's system, it was amply nourished by the common thought of nineteenth-century Europe.

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.

Shortly after 1800 S. T. Coleridge gradually developed a set of personal symbols which he used thereafter in poetry and prose, sometimes consciously, to symbolize great turnings in his life and great, steady longings. The number of symbols seems rather limited; the referents lead mainly toward his love for Sara Hutchinson. It is possible that symbols for other important elements of Coleridge's experience will yet come to light. So far as I have been able to discover, there is nothing “universal” in the symbols which I have identified: they are specifically, and of course connotatively, allusive to events in his past life.

In “To the great Variety of Readers” in the First Folio of Shakespeare, Heminge and Condell wrote:

Mlerch a traité de l'inversion absolue (c'est à dire de celle qui n'est pas conditionnée par un adverbe en tête de phrase) en français moderne dans sa Historische Syntax des Französischen,iii, 427 seq. et dans son article sur l'inversion paru dans Mélanges Bally (1939), p. 364 seq. Je résume en les combinant les deux rédactions. Le type arriva le général (sans pronom personnel il, “voilant” l'inversion, et sans adverbe: alors arriva le général) est similaire au type de phrase optative périsse le traître. La phrase enunciative ne connaît ce type-là en français moderne qu'avec des verbes de mouvement, alors que l'ancien et le moyen français étendaient la construction à beaucoup d'autres verbes. Exemples: … venait ensuite une façon de sac dans la célèbre description, par Flaubert, de la casquette de l'ignoble mari de Mme Bovary; entre Henri, sort Germaine, sonne l'Angélus dans des indications de scène de pièces de théâtre; arriva le général, survient une difficulté, s'approche un confrère, vint à passer un canot …, me vint tout de suite à l'esprit l'idée que …, les précédait immédiatement un monsieur en redingote, reste à savoir si …, n'importe; dans le style judiciaire: seront punis d'une amende … ceux qui …, et, par extension, ont collaboré à ce volume (suivent les noms); dans les proverbes: rira bien qui rira le dernier. Du même ordre est l'inversion après des conjonctions ne l'entraînant pas d'ordinaire, comme et et mais: et suivait le récit d'un accident;… mais voyage avec nous “le fils Mélèze,” et celle qui se trouve depuis le symbolisme dans les incidentes sitôt que s'accentue la diction: si plonge … Dans l'onde … Ta jubilation nue; enfin après seul prédicatif: seuls peuvent coexister avec lui mon travail et ton amitié. M.Lerchnote que le français moderne connaît ce type d'expression seulement avec un nom (arriva le général, non *arriva-t-il), alors que l'allemand peut dire dans la langue “écrite” aussi bien Kam einmal ein Bäuerlein que Lief er schnell es nah zu seh'n, et que le tour français en question est “archaïque” et “limité à la langue écrite.”

It has long been known that the distinction between sl and tl, which existed in Old Norse, has been lost in the modern dialects of Norway. In his Norsk Grammatik of 1864 Ivar Aasen wrote:

No literary quarrel in European annals surpasses for rancor the American one which involved the Peabodys, the Channings, the Hawthornes, and Margaret Fuller in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

The conjunction of the centenary of Shelley's death with the present interest in things pertaining to Spain and Spanish literature makes opportune an examination of the question: to what extent did Spain interest Shelley? For that this country did interest him will be borne out by even a superficial scanning of the titles in the older editions of his poems, while a perusal of his correspondence will disclose the fact that for at least the last three years of his life Shelley was a devoted student of certain phases of Spain's history and literature.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the literary, folkloristic, and social significance of the “peasant-tournament,” a type of mock-epic generally neglected by literary historians. Perhaps the two outstanding examples of this genre are The Turnament of Totenham and the tournament in Heinrich Wittenwiler's Ring, both of which appear to date from the first half of the fifteenth century. The Turnament is an alliterative burlesque written sometime before 1456 by an unknown English author, who set the scene of his work at Tottenham, a village near London. Its 234 verses tell of a peasant tournament in which doughty village swains contend for the hand of Tyb, the reeve's daughter. The tournament of Lappenhausen is the opening episode in Wittenwiler's Ring, an amazing comic-didactic poem written in northeastern Switzerland about 1420. The Ring tells of the love, courtship, and marriage, of Bertschi Triefnas and his lovely hunchbacked, flatfooted, goitered sweetheart, Metzli Ruerenzumph. In the opening scene, which comprises about a thousand verses (vv. 105-659, 830-1279), Bertschi and his twelve companions ride to the village green and challenge all comers to joust in the name of womanhood. Finding no one who dares withstand them, they joust with each other until joined by Neidhart of Reuental, a peasant-hating nobleman who arrives in disguise and gives them a thorough drubbing.