Parallels in poetic device between the Old French epic and the Old Welsh elegy, though numerous, appear to have escaped general notice. A consideration of these parallels can prove suggestive regarding the possible sources of the devices involved.

The well-known tenso between Giraut de Bornelh and Linhaure (Gr. 281, 1 = Gr. 389, 10a) whose identification with the Prince of Orange, generally accepted today, stands to the credit of Adolf Kolsen, reveals Raïmbaut as an adherent of trobar clus. Our poem, however, is one of those in which that aristocratic troubadour does not adhere to his artistic convictions. We can be glad of this attitude on the part of the poet because it gave us a poem attractive in its easy-flowing rhythm, simple versification, and continuous presentation of charming thoughts and motifs, from the doubts and hesitations of the beginning to the triumphant finale of the self-confident knight. To reach this goal, the poet takes particular care to connect the stanzas of his poem by repeating in the beginning of each of them the idea on which he closes the preceding stanza and developing it into a new one. He thus forms, as it were, coblas capfinadas, not in the usual sense of metrical technique, but in a higher artistic sense. Besides this stylistic phenomenon, there are two features that seem to me characteristic of this poem. (1) Much as he likes apostrophes to God and the saints, in none of his other poems does Raïmbaut concede to God such a dominant and intrinsic rôle concerning his love as in this one. (2) So God, Love, and Chivalry, those three essential elements of medieval thinking, are blended here into a mental and artistic unity hardly equaled in any other troubadour song.

In Romania, xxxix (1910), 451, Salvioni bitterly attacked Bàrtoli because the latter had dared to assert that Italian giorno is of French origin. One of Bàrtoli's arguments—and precisely that very one which aroused Salvioni's wrath—was that some regions of Southern Italy have the form yuornu (with a uo) which is not what one would expect should the word represent there Lat. diurnum. Entirely misunderstanding Bàrtoli's neolinguistic theories, Salvioni writes with the typical dogmatic style of the Neogrammarians:

Può parere veramente strano—deve però insieme rallegrare come una prova che la verità s'impone malgrado tutto e tutti [!]—può parere strano, dico, che si chedano delle armi alia fonetica in uno scritto nel quale ostentatamente s'afferma non esservi “esempi normali,” cioè non esservi norme fonetiche. Ma colla dialettica sua il Bàrtoli se la veda lui. Qui si vuol solo objettare, poiché il Bàrtoli ricorre per juorno [that is yuorno] alla Francia settentrionale, che si dovrebbe pur dire perché l'antico francese jρr(n) non sia stato adottato con quella vocale che quasi s'imponeva, cioè coll'ρ, che poi, per effetto della metafonesi, diveniva u.

“There is a wooded place in the midst of a vast wilderness and at the center of the peoples to whom we are preaching. There we have placed a group of monks living under the rule of St. Benedict, who are building a monastery.” So writes St. Boniface, in the year 751, to Pope Zacharias. Several years earlier Boniface had sent his favorite pupil, Sturm, into the forest of Bochonia to find a suitable location for a monastery. The site they finally agreed upon was a place called Eichloh, on the banks of the river Fulda. Here the monastery was dedicated in 744. So pleased was Boniface with this haven in the wilderness that he, born an Anglo-Saxon from Wessex, adds in his letter to Pope Zacharias: “Here I am proposing, with your kind permission, to rest my age-worn body for a little time and after my death to be buried here.”

Many of the remarkable qualities of the Jeu d' Adam have long been recognized and warmly admired: the subtlety of its characterization and motivation, the vivacity and freshness of its dialogue, the skill with which its verse forms have been handled. Yet its author has never been given sufficient credit, it would seem, for the originality of his composition. Here is a play still attached to the church, through its use of the church itself and of church properties, through its incorporaton of liturgical lectiones and responsoria, and through its adaptation and translation of a liturgical Ordo Prophetarum; nevertheless its author has dramatized and visualized for himself, with more spirit and imagination than any of his successors (he had no known predecessors), the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. Surely a man capable of such creative and untrammelled writing needed few “sources” and may be presumed, when proof to the contrary is lacking, to have drawn largely upon his own inspiration.

Dès 1843, J. -J. Ampère faisait honneur à Jean de Meun d'être le devancier ‘des érudits païens et matérialistes du XVIe siècle’; il voyait dans la seconde partie du Roman de la Rose l'origine d'une série d'œuvres où se remarquent les éléments d'une philosophie naturaliste, et il indiquait que, par un curieux mélange du sacré et du profane, cette philosophie se présente à l'aide d'images et de comparaisons suggérées par le rituel catholique. Nous nous proposons d'étudier d'abord cette utilisation de la liturgie chrétienne à des fins étrangères à celles de l'Eglise. Nous verrons ensuite comment le culte de la Nature s'accompagne de la glorification de l'homme, de l'éloge de la science, et de l'idée que la dignité humaine réside dans le travail et dans l'amour. Nous nous demanderons, enfin, dans quelle mesure le naturalisme du XVIe siècle se relie à la tradition médiévale.

Dans la Xe édition de la Chrestomathie de l'ancien français de Bartsch-Wiese on lit le début du plus ancien texte a. fr. traitant la matière d'Alexandre, dans la forme suivante:

Dit Salomon al primier pas,
quant de son libre mot lo clas,
'est vanitatum vanitas
et universa vanitas.'
poyst lou me fay m'enfirmitas,
toylle s'en otiösitas,
solaz nos faz' antiquitas,
que tot non sie vanitas.

Cette façon de ponctuer, qui ne se trouve pas dans les autres éditions (qui, il est vrai, n'introduisent pas de ponctuations: P. Meyer, Stengel etc.), semble intimer que le poète, après avoir cité les deux lignes extraites de l'Ecclésiaste, veut nous apprendre que, étant infirme, il a trouvé moyen (il lui ‘est donné lieu’: l'explication de Foerster, ZRPh, vi, 423) d'occuper ses loisirs (forces) par l'étude de l'antiquité—étude qui nous délivre de la vanité du monde [et ainsi il étudiera l'histoire du héros ancien Alexandre]. Le poète (Foerster dit expressément: “meine [des Verfassers] Krankheit”) aurait alors mis en scène sa propre personne en nous informant de l'état de sa santé physique (infirme comme celle du vieux roi biblique)—et peut-être morale (serait-il sage comme Salomon?). Le cas rappellerait trop la fameuse explication, désormais datée, du dernier vers de la Chanson de Roland par feu Holbrook: [Ci falt la geste] que Turoldus declinet ‘car la vie de T. décline’ = il est vieux et ne peut plus continuer (après avoir composé 4000 vers!). Les anciens trouvères n'étaient pas à ce point autobiographical-minded—ils effaçaient leur personnalité devant les grands thèmes qu'ils chantaient. C'est le biographical approach des critiques modernes qui soupçonne des personnalités là où il n'y a qu'objectivité.

The Saracens in Italian popular literature are exotic. They are of French origin and came with the French epic into Italy, where this epic material found a second fatherland. For the Franco-Italian versions which served as a connecting link between the French poems and the court epics of Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, Ciecco da Ferrara, Tasso and the rest, one may consult the magistral work of Pio Rajna Le fonti dell' Orlando Furioso (Firenze, 1876), the same author's Ricerche intorno ai Reali di Francia (Bologna, 1872), and the Introduction of Johannes Hübscher's edition of “Orlando” in Stengel's Ausgaben und Abhandlungen. No. lx, (Marburg, 1886). The following works may also be profitably consulted: F. Castets, Recherches sur les rapports des chansons de geste et de l‘épopée chevaleresque italienne. (Paris, 1887); Vincenzo Crescini, “Orlando nella chanson de Roland i nei poemi del Bojardo e dell’ Ariosto,” Il Propugnatore, xiii, Pt. 1, 2 (Bologna, 1880).

The disputes centering about the oratorical value of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century punctuation in England have hinged mostly upon a study of printed tests current in Elizabethan times or shortly after. Professor Charles C. Fries, in a monograph surveying the whole of the discussion about Shakespeare's punctuation, notes that “some significance attaches to the fact ”that all of the five Elizabethan and Jacobean grammarians whose theories he adduces to help settle the dispute “refer to the use of these terms, comma, colon, and period, in classical rhetorical theory. ” And yet, in considering the question of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century punctuation, no one has investigated the systems of pointing which were associated with classical rhetorical theory and which may have been carried with that theory through the Middle Ages into Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Until an investigation of this matter is made, we are likely to be guilty once more of the pernicious practice of reading history backwards, understanding phenomena in terms of what succeeded them instead of what preceded, and explaining in terms already at hand for us phenomena which are not reducible to these terms.

The description of the seven planets in the Testament of Cresseid by the Scottish Chaucerian, Robert Henryson (c. 1425–c. 1500), is perhaps the most lively and arresting in English literature. Approximately one-third of the poem is devoted to the planets, and they play an essential role in the trial and punishment of Cresseid, who becomes a leper here and hereafter in the Troilus-Criseyde story. This note is an attempt to clear the way for the study of the origins and sources of the planet portraits and to shed some light on the competence of the poet.

By substituting astrological qualities for the mythological qualities of the ancient gods, Chaucer had pioneered and had made poetic capital of the astrological magic in which his age had come to believe. Henryson took full advantage of this fact. The Testament of Cresseid contains many elements of astrology: in the opening lines, the poet dates the poem by means of an astronomical periphrase in which he describes the Sun and Venus in opposition, a combination which signifies “A barren time … the Native impudent and bold in his wantonnesse and Lust, wholly occupied in scurvy and sordid actions, whereby he incurres great Infamy, Scandall and Disgrace,” and which sets the tone for the burden of the poem; the planets are ranked according to their astrological order, and Mercury is chosen speaker, a choice which accords with his influence over logic and debate; the choice of Saturn and Cynthia to deliver the verdict of leprosy is fitting, according to the astrological qualities of the humours, and the poet's treatment of the disease shows a detailed knowledge of astrological medicine.

One of the most interesting of the plays in the Towneley manuscript is the Processus Talentorum, Play XXIV. The central theme of the play, the gambling for Christ's coat, is present in all the gospels, in the Northern Passion, and in all the extant mystery play cycles. In the Towneley manuscript only, however, has a play come down to us devoted wholly to the theme. It is my purpose here to seek the probable steps by which this play arrived at its present state, to resolve so far as I can its stanzaic confusions, to study its possible relations to York, and to arrive at the probable date of its original composition and subsequent editings.

Oue Chaucer, pour sa traduction de Boèce, se soit servi de celle de J. de Meun est un fait établi. Toutefois notre curiosité va plus loin. Nous aimerions savoir si Chaucer a suivi un certain manuscrit et quel est ce manuscrit. On a suggéré ici même, il y a une vingtaine d'années, que Chaucer qui vérifie sans cesse son texte latin par la traduction de J. de Meun et qui puise indépendamment dans le commentaire de Trivet, a pu s'aider d'un manuscrit combiné de la traduction française, du texte latin et du commentaire de Trivet, tel qu'est p.ex.le ms.latin 18424 de la Bibl. Nat.