The significance and literary ante cedents of the garrulous bird which seizes Chaucer “at a swappe” and bears him aloft “to a place, Which that hight THE HOUS OF FAME” have long been subjects of controversy. Garrett identified it with “the eagle of folk-tales who carries the hero to a high mountain.” Rambeau regarded it as “ein symbol der philosophie, aber einer sehr humoristischen art von philosophie, die ihn tröstet und mit seinem loos versöhnt.” In Sypherd's opinion, it combined “three functions—1. the messenger of a divinity; 2. the guide to a hero on his journey; 3. the helpful animal” (p. 86). Whereas Lounsbury stressed the influence of Ovid's account of Ganymede, both Rambeau and Chiarini emphasized Chaucer's indebtedness to the eagle of Dante's Commedia.

“Now there is a man,” says Hrothgar's coast watch as Beowulf appears. No one doubts that nisþæt seldguma means this, once the litotes is resolved, but the precise meaning of the half line is another matter. Seldguma has been compared to Old Norse húskarl and the phrase then read as “this is no mere retainer.” It has been translated as “stay-at-home, cottager,” and compared to Old English cotsetla.

No humanist of comparable influence upon Renaissance learning has been so little known and so long ignored as Joannes Susenbrotus. In addition to two fairly popular Latin grammars, Susenbrotus compiled a definitive treatise on the figures of speech, the Epitome Troporum ac Schematum, which during the century following its first appearance in 1541 was the most frequently printed and widely used work of its kind. As T. W. Baldwin has amply established in William Shakspere's Smalle Latine & Lesse Greeke, in the second half of the 16th century this Epitome generally became the standard work from which English schoolboys—including most probably Shakespeare himself—learned their precepts for eloquence. The influence of the Epitome, moreover, extended far beyond the limits of the Latin curriculum and penetrated yet more deeply into the cultural life of England through various English adaptations. On the continent, in German-speaking areas particularly, the influence of Susenbrotus was no less extensive, but even there his fame did not endure. Despite his considerable contribution to sixteenth-century learning and the wide fame of his Epitome, no encyclopedic or biographical work of the present century so much as mentions his name. The most complete account of Susenbrotus' career, in fact, is a five-page study which appeared more than half a century ago in an obscure diocesan publication—a study still of value, though limited in range and inaccurate in some of its conclusions. There is distinct justification, then, for a detailed study of a man whose importance modern scholarship is only just beginning to recognize.

Much of the fascination—and complexity —of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales may be attributed to the elusiveness of Chaucer's point of view. Is the “I” of the General Prologue Chaucer the man, Chaucer the poet, or a persona created for the situation by the poet? In order to arrive at a satisfactory interpretation of either the Prologue or the Tales as a whole, we have first to decide as best we can who it is that is reporting to us the appearance, characters, actions, conversations, and stories of himself and his fellow pilgrims.

My contribution to this year's conference of the Modern Language Association is an inquiry which can hardly be reduced to concrete terms: Meaning and Destiny in Western Literature. And yet our attention is to be engaged by five concrete literary figures—symbolic not only of the spirit of the people in whose languages they originated, but of the spirit and soul of the European community as a whole. They have been familiar to you from your youth—as familiar as the skyline of your native mountains, or your cities, or as any landmark in the town of your childhood: Oedipus, Hamlet, Don Quixote, Don Juan, and Faust.