Showing papers in "Modern Philology in 1974"

Defoe's prose style: 1. the language of interpretation

Abstract: Devil. We did. Cain. What spoke the Oracle ? he's God to me; What just Command d'ye bring, what's to be done? Why this lumbering blank verse at the head of an essay on Defoe's prose style ? To make the preliminary point that we should probably begin by enumerating styles, not generalizing about a style. The fact is that these lines appear here as verse for the first time; until now they have always been printed as prose.2 Whether or not I am correct in surmising that they originated as blank verse, previous commen- tators have noticed nothing anomalous about them. They have always passed as normal Defoean prose, yet they are clearly at odds with the prevailing view of his style. Critics are unanimous in stressing the plainness of Defoe's language, but this passage aspires to elevation through epithet and periphrasis; his syntax is usually characterized as loose and sprawling, and thus as structurally equivalent (or at least appropriate) to the homely naturalness of his vocabulary, but this passage strives for formality through metrical regularity, and through various figures of speech and thought.3

Transformation Symbolism and the Liturgy of the Mass in "Pearl"

Abstract: Although commentators have often recognized the pervasive presence of liturgical allusions and correspondences in Pearl, these ritualistic resonances have never, to my knowledge, been taken together as an essential index of the poem's meaning or used as a major interpretive device. To be sure, one early critic sought to define the entire substance of the work by seeing in it a hidden allegorical representation of, and tribute to, the Eucharist. But this attempt by R. M. Garrett was more of a supposition leading to a simple assertion than a genuine interpretation.' Understandably, critics and reviewers either discounted or ignored Garrett's thesis, which lacked convincing evidence while failing to account for most of the actual details in the Pearl poet's presentation.2 Moreover, A. C. Spearing's excellent study, "Symbolic and Dramatic Development in Pearl,"3 has since demonstrated the virtual necessity of viewing the poem's symbols-and the pearl symbol especially-in flexible, dynamic terms. Unlike Garrett's static, one-to-one equation between pearl symbol and Communion wafer, Spearing's transformational-process approach relates developing patterns of symbolism to the interior dramatic development of the narrator. By stressing the less mechanical how as well as the what of symbolism, Spearing has defined the probable course of future discussion on the topic. And yet, despite the possibly misguided substance of Garrett's thesis, his idea of applying research in liturgical backgrounds to a critical reading appears to be essentially viable. Where his treatment falls short is in its attempt to connect the pearl symbol in isolation with but one aspect of the eucharistic liturgy, the visible moment of elevation. Much too narrow in scope, Garrett's effort concerns itself neither with the mystery-action of the liturgy as a whole, nor with the transformational implications of specific elements such as the offertory procession and its accompanying notion of sacrifice. Had the essay done so, I believe it might have extended our appreciation of how the poet applied a gradually developing symbolism, and would have provided a deeper basis for understanding the possible elegiac construction of the poem. One of my purposes here, therefore, is to indicate, by identifying liturgical resonances, the extent to which the Pearl poet drew upon and might have been inspired by several aspects of the medieval Mass liturgy in composing his elegiac narrative.4 I also hope to reveal particular ways in which this

The Intention and Reception of Johnson's "Life of Savage"

Abstract: Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage is among the handful of eighteenth-century works that allow a historical test of the hypothesis underlying our most challenging recent criticism. Michael Riffaterre suggests that "the response of the reader to a text is the causality pertinent to the explanation of literature," because only by analyzing that response is it possible to identify the formal characteristics of any work.' Hans Robert Jauss argues that if there is to be any more literary history, "the traditional approach to literature must be replaced by an aesthetics of reception and impact." 2 Stanley Fish persuasively argues the case for an affective stylistics based on "consideration of the temporal flow of the reading experience" as it unfolds during each encounter with a text.3 At the 1970 English Institute conference, Wolfgang Iser discussed "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction." He points out that since the eighteenth century there has been in narrative prose a striking increase of indeterminacy, that is, of works allowing a variety of conflicting but mutually admissible interpretations. He also contends that what distinguishes literature-good literature-from other things is "the fact that it does not state its intentions, and therefore the most important of its elements is missing," an element to be found only in "the reader's imagination."4 All such criticism builds upon the assumption that any text's form, meaning, and intention are most clearly reflected not by the words on its pages, but in the responses it elicits from readers. This hypothesis is difficult to apply when dealing with pre-twentieth-century works, however, because there is so little detailed evidence of how they were read. The most famous response to Johnson's Life of Savage illustrates that predicament. It is hard to infer much about the biography's form, meaning, or intentions from Sir Joshua Reynolds's account of starting to read it "while standing with his arm leaning against a chimney piece," finding the book too fascinating to put down, and discovering after he had completed it that his arm was "totally benumbed.'"5

Cynewulf's "Elene:" Manuscript Divisions and Structural Symmetry

Abstract: The structure of Elene has never received any detailed attention, although some critics have claimed to be dealing with structure while actually analyzing theme. John Gardner, for instance, is content with an analogy between Elene and homiletic structure: the first fourteen fitts comprise an exemplum, to which the last fitt is a moralizing epilogue.1 This analogy reveals none of the unique qualities of the poem, since the same structure can be claimed for The Dream of the Rood, Physiologus, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and other Christian poems. Thomas D. Hill remarks that Elene is "a clearly segmented poem" resembling "a series of panels on a church wall,"2 but he says nothing about the specific structural divisions or their significance. Apart from these observations, all that can be gleaned from Elene criticism is an assumption that the poem falls into three parts-an introduction, body, and epilogue-dealing, respectively, with Constantine, Judas, and Cynewulf.3 The most important structural problem, the possible significance of the manuscript divisions, remains unresolved. The precise function of sectional divisions in Old English poetry, of course, remains an unsolved problem. Henry Bradley's proposal, that the sectional divisions represent loose parchment leaves used by the poet in composing,4 was refuted by Gollancz.5 The alternative proposed by Max F6rster and Gollancz, that the fitt divisions represent convenient reading portions, on analogy to the lectiones familiar to monks,6 was rejected by B. J. Timmer on grounds of insufficient evidence.' Timmer argues that the fitts represent units of composition, "psychological units" which "agree with the momentary inspiration of the poet";8 and, more recently, the fitt divisions have been referred to the exigencies of oral composition.9 It is generally thought that the fitts in Old English poetry are acceptable thematic units and that the sectional divisions are probably authorial,

Affective Coherence, a Principle of Abated Action, and Meredith's "Modern Love"

Abstract: George Meredith's idiosyncratic notions about sentimentalism, egoism, comedy, and the harmony of blood, brain, and spirit have been thoroughly explicated. But a closer investigation of Meredith's formal idiosyncrasies may lead to a better understanding of his works and perhaps even to a new path of inquiry into the elusive principle of coherence in many Victorian novels.1 Modern Love, for example, receives praise for its artistry, but critics stress that the husband is a sentimentalist and egoist and then emphasize the autobiographical ramifications of the poem.2 Comments by biographers, however, indicate very clearly that in Modern Love Meredith successfully integrates personal emotional history with his artistic design. Lionel Stevenson says: "The whole group takes rank with the great sonnet sequences as a personal record of passion presented in a condensed and vivid series of emotional glimpses."3 And Siegfried Sassoon's remarks suggest that the artistic design dominates the personal history: Meredith's wife's death, Sassoon says, "had come as a relief, causing him no disintegrating emotion. Hence his ability to produce Modern Love, refashioning his own love tragedy with the control of art, intellect, and irony to a human drama from which, in his creative capacity, he could stand aside."4 In spite of one critic's curious inability to enjoy Meredith's artful transformation of somewhat sordid and confessional material," I think few readers would argue with one implication of Stevenson's and Sassoon's comments: because of its artistry, the poem moves us regardless of how much we know about Meredith's life and philosophy and, furthermore, about peculiarly Victorian attitudes toward love and marriage.6 Years ago Ernest Baker remarked that "Modern Love is like a novel in having a plot";' yet only a few critics-primarily Norman Friedman

Alliterative patterns in the hypermetric lines of old english verse

Abstract: tive pattern: of the usual three primary stresses in the on-verse, two almost always alliterate with the primary stress that begins the second measure of the off-verse, the normal position of that verse's one alliterating stress. I also noted that in such lines, where the second stress of the three in the off-verse alliterates, the first stress position is usually filled by primary stress and that the final nonalliterating primary stress sometimes participates in a purely secondary alliterative pattern. A more systematic and detailed examination of the whole body of hypermetric-and possibly hypermetric-lines tends to confirm those basic conclusions about their alliterative patterns, but it also makes it evident that there are other aspects of these verses that are worthy of consideration. To turn first to poems other than those that are suspected of notable corruption, or that present peculiar difficulties,3 the poems that present the most sizable groups of hypermetic lines are, in more or less descending order: Judith, Guthlac I, The Dream of the Rood, Genesis A, Elene, and Beowulf. The total of complete hypermetric lines in these six poems amounts to somewhat under 200,4 of which only around thirty deviate from the basic alliterative pattern a a x / x a x.5 Such a line as Beowulf 1163 is absolutely typical: "gan under gyldnum beage, pewr pa godan twegen."6 One line of the eleven Pope counts as hypermetric in Beowulf deviates slightly: 1167, alliterating on the pattern x a a / x a x-"paet he haefde mod micel, peah pe he his magum naere." Bliss considers 1167a to be normal, but from a rhythmic point of view the sudden appearance of one normal verse in the midst of a long hypermetric passage would seem unsatisfactory, and it is not really necessary to read it as an intruder when it can be scanned as three measures in exactly the same way as the other hypermetric lines of Beowulf, differing only in the placement of its alliterative stresses.7 This pattern is not unexampled in presumably correct hypermetric lines elsewhere; within the six poems presently under consideration, there

Between Jest and Earnest: The Comedy of Sir John Vanbrugh

Abstract: The soft stones of Blenheim by now need constant care, but Vanbrugh's playshappily the word is more durable-have weathered unharmed more than forty years of rare and sporadic attention. Perhaps The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697) would be better left as they stand, unencumbered by the scaffolding of busy critics. But the conclusion reached by Bonamy Dobree in 1928, after he had edited not only Vanbrugh's original plays but also his translations, has not yet, it seems, been adequately shaken. "Since his work is not very difficult or subtle, and conveys no unique outlook, there does not seem to be very much to say about it," said Dobree; and whether successive students of the plays turning to the four volumes from the Nonesuch Press have been cowed by this pronouncement or not, only a few of them have ventured into print.' Writing for the most part in the additional shadow of John Palmer, they have tended, like him, to see Vanbrugh as a transitional figure between, as Palmer had put it, "two kingdoms" of comedy. While they have been kinder than Palmer in judging the plays, dropping, for instance, his accusation that Vanbrugh is "immoral," still, I believe, they have failed to do him justice.2 For, judging from the two original plays he completed, Vanbrugh had, if not a "unique outlook," then one that for its subtlety and seriousness of purpose deserves a better reputation.3

Blake and Cromek: The Wheat and the Tares

Abstract: William Blake's most famous designs were those which Robert Hartley Cromek commissioned to illustrate Robert Blair's poem The Grave. The engravings were printed in 1808 (twice), 1813 (twice), 1826, and 1926 and reproduced in 1847, 1858, 1903, 1906, 1928, 1963, and 1969. They were, however, the occasion of a bitter controversy between Blake and Cromek, which has made Cromek seem a figure more monstrous than manly. Some facts which have recently come to light make possible a fuller understanding of the relationship between the two men, suggest that Blake was more patient and tolerant than appeared formerly from the vitriolic verses about Cromek which he poured into his Notebook, and indicate that there was a surprising breadth of aesthetic and intellectual sympathy between Blake and Cromek, at least for a time. The genesis of the Grave designs is now fairly plain. According to Blake's letter of November 27, 1805: "MW Cromek the Engraver came to me [about September 18051] desiring to have some of my Designs; he namd his Price & wishd me to Produce him [402] Illustrations of The Grave A Poem by Robert Blair. In consequence of this I produced about twenty Designs which pleasd so well that he with the same liberality with which he set me about the drawings has now set me to engrave them." Cromek showed Blake's designs to numerous Royal Academicians and issued a four-page Prospectus, which has only recently been discovered (pls. 1-3).3 Blake apparently asked Cromek to send a copy of this Prospectus to Hayley, for in his November 27, 1805 letter to Hayley he wrote of the subscription proposals which "you will see in the Prospectus which he [Cromek] sends you in the same Pacquet with the Letter." This new Prospectus of "Nov. 1805" specifies in particular that Blake is to be the engraver of fifteen (not twenty) of his own designs; it corresponds, except in number of engravings, with the terms of Blake's letter to Hayley. Blake evidently did not then know that the number of plates had been reduced when he wrote to Hayley, but the rest seems in order. Blake had probably begun etching vigorously when he received the commission from Cromek, and evidently by the time of the "Nov. 1805" Prospectus he had finished "a Specimen of the Stile of Engraving" which the Prospectus announced could "be seen at the Proprietor's, Mr. CROMEK." This specimen must be the only plate of the series which Blake is known to have completed, the rugged "Death's

Samuel Johnson's Sources for "The Life of Roscommon"

Abstract: Johnson's biography of Wentworth Dillon, Fourth Earl of Roscommon, is of special interest to the scholar investigating The Lives of the Poets primarily because of the various revisions it underwent before inclusion in the 1783 "corrected" edition of the Lives. The first "Life of Roscommon," which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for May 1748, displays a curiously un-Johnsonian format: of its approximately 2,630 words, roughly eight-ninths are relegated to footnotes.1 As Boswell points out, Johnson "afterwards much improved" this essay and "indented the notes into text" in order to include it in the fourth volume of Prefaces, Biographical and Critical (1779).2 In addition to making stylistic changes, Johnson primarily expanded his description of Roscommon's poetic character and individual works, adding very little new biographical information. Finally, some minor changes and additions appeared when his "Life of Roscommon" was published in The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1783). Determining Johnson's immediate source for the biographical information in any of these three versions might seem to be a very simple undertaking. In the footnotes to the 1748 "Life," Johnson repeatedly refers to "Fenton's notes on Waller." In the 1779 and 1783 "Lives," he likewise records his indebtedness to "Mr. Fenton, from whose notes on Waller most of this account must be borrowed, though I know not whether all that he relates is certain."3 It has been customary, because of such statements, to assert that Johnson based his biography of Roscommon on The Works of Edmund Waller ... Published by Mr. Fenton (1729; rep. 1730, 1744).4 If we accept Fenton's Waller as Johnson's source, we must arrive at several incorrect conclusions concerning Johnson's 1748 "Life of Roscommon." First, Johnson must have used more than one source in gathering biographical information, since he quotes a lengthy passage from John Aubrey's Miscellanies upon Various Subjects (1696), which deals with the preternatural intelligence Roscommon received concerning his father's death. Second, Johnson seems to have been careless in making biographical identifications, since he erroneously reports that Dr. Hall, Roscommon's tutor, afterward became Bishop of Norwich. Fenton's Waller more accurately identifies Dr. Hall as merely "a person of emi-

Sacred or Profane?: Edward Taylor's Meditations on Canticles

Abstract: Edward Taylor's forty-nine meditations on Canticles (II.115-65) comprise the most extensive unit in the Preparatory Meditations.' These are the poems of Taylor's old age, written between 1713 and 1725, a period that concludes four years before his death. Upon first reading, the poems frequently surprise the reader with sensual imagery which seems so alien to Puritan sobriety. Taylor's analysis of Cant. 5:10-7:6 in Meditations 11.115-153 recreates dramatic encounters among the Bride, Bridegroom, and the Daughters of Jerusalem. He lavishly praises the Beloved's beauties emblemized by a white and ruddy complexion, a head like fine gold, lips like lilies dropping sweet-smelling myrrh, and his eyes like a dove's. With lyric fervor Taylor elaborates upon the biblical anatomy of the Spouse (II.134-44 and II.147-53)--her teeth like a flock of sheep from washing, temples like pomegranates, thigh joints as jewels, breasts like two young roes, and eyes like the fishpools of Heshbon. He glorifies the intimacy of love, the abundant interchange of affection which unites the Beloved and the Spouse of the biblical story. Scholars who do not entirely ignore these poems frequently use the meditations on Canticles to cement Taylor's reputation as a frustrated baroque poet misplaced in the wilds of New England. Unable to reconcile the extensive writing of poetry and seeming delight in provocative images with preconceptions of Puritan prosaism and denial of the sensual, they attribute the conflicts to Taylor himself.2 Caught in a bind between poetic desires and a sense of theological rigor, he writes poetry in secrecy, fearing condemnation by sterner Puritan theologians. In otherwise sober and sensitive analyses of Taylor's poetry, both Kenneth Murdock and Ursula Brumm puzzle over Taylor's outbursts of erotic fantasy. Murdock reasons that although Taylor "was an orthodox Puritan, he felt as a poet a sense of constraint within the bounds of the ordinary plainness and sobriety of the Puritan literary style."3 Ursula Brumm urges that "Taylor's fantasy... succumbs to the charm of biblico-Oriental word pictures" and to poetic analyses which "would surely have aroused the ire of his fellow theologians, who would have condemned his rich sensual imagery and his radical spiritualizations as the latest form of idolatry."4 Other critics consider that Taylor's inordinate fascination with sensual images from Canticles not only marks his departure from Puritan

Avarice and Cerberus in Coluccio Salutati's "De Laboribus Herculis" and Lydgate's "Fall of Princess"

Abstract: Of the various ways of representing the deadly sin Avarice in medieval art and literature, the most prevalent is didactically overt and focuses on the imagery of money-from pennies to great gold coins-and its containers-treasure-chests, coffers, bags, purses, and the like. From Langland's grotesque picture of the beetlebrowed, bleary-eyed, hollow and hungry man whose cheeks hang down like two leather purses to Spenser's equally graphic depiction of the threadbare, gout-ridden wretch whose iron coffers overflow with precious metals,' the figure Avarice presents a clear and simple message to the layman on the insatiable, repulsive nature of this sin.

"The Faerie Queene": The Incomplete Poem and the Whole Meaning

Abstract: The unfinished state of The Faerie Queene has posed the sort of critical problem that typifies the inadequacy of some of our aesthetic concepts. It is true that Spenser composed only six of the twelve books he planned to write (and a fragment of a seventh). Similarly, Chaucer finished only about twenty of the 120 tales he proposed for The Canterbury Tales. Perhaps critics have worried a little less about Chaucer's incompleteness than about Spenser's because Chaucer's work depends less upon rational design-is, if you like, less schematic, more loose and "additive" in principle. Instead of constructing an allegory of the virtues, with a clearly didactic purpose, he has put together a collection of stories within a narrative frame. Spenser, it would seem, must suffer far more by not having fulfilled his plan of presenting the twelve private moral virtues. Not only do we remain in some doubt about the particular virtues he would have chosen for the next six books but also about the order of these virtues and the light that this selection and order would have thrown upon the plan of the whole, including the precise significance of his ordering of the first six books. But besides the incompleteness of the allegorical scheme, the action itself is incomplete, since Spenser has chosen to plunge in medias res, leaving both the initial action and the concluding action to the unwritten twelfth book. Thus, even with the help of Spenser's prefatory letter the six completed books seem to give no more than a glimpse of a pattern which only the twelve would fully reveal. Although critics have argued for the unity of the poem on the basis of philosophical or poetic coherence, nevertheless the assumption remains that as an incomplete work it cannot communicate its whole meaning. The crux is in this notion of "whole meaning." Are we to agree that "without the unwritten books our appreciation of those we have must be incomplete"?' "Our loss," this critic explains, "in the six unwritten books, is great, and all the greater because of the cumulative method by which the poem's meaning is revealed." The reference to "a final unity," and the concern expressed for the greatness of our loss in that this was never attained, suggests a question: In what sense is The Faerie Queene to be considered an incomplete work? Is it incomplete as The Canterbury Tales are? Or as "Kubla Khan"? The "Finnsburg Fragment"? It would be as well for us to face this question of just what part, if any, of Spenser's meaning is incomplete. Surely it is not his purpose. That is stated clearly-all too clearly for some people-in Spenser's prefatory letter: "The generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline." If it is the plot structure which is obscured by the "beginning in the middle," again the prefatory letter is sufficiently explanatory. Nor can I agree with W. L. Renwick that the "incompleteness of The Faerie Queene obscures the construction more than incompleteness need, because the over-ingenious scheme did not grow out of the main action, or out of any action, but was devised from purely mechanical data of

Three Notes on the Junius XI "Christ and Satan:" Lines 78-79; Lines 236-42; Lines 435-38

Abstract: Though the particular detail of Satan \"sparking\" when he speaks is the product of a minor emendation, it has a respectable weight of scholarly opinion behind it.2 And if the emended text is accepted as valid, it may serve as a key to discovery of a source of many of the details of hell described in Christ and Satan. The source I propose is the apocryphal Visio Pauli.3 The Long Latin version of the Visio Pauli contains a section which describes the angels appointed to torment sinners: \"et de capillis capitis eorum scintille ignis exiebant, sive de ore eorum.\"' Grein and K6hler's Sprachschatz gives scintillas ejicere as the Latin equivalent of spearcian.5 The only other use of the term in the Anglo-Saxon corpus occurs in the gloss to Aldhelm's De Virginitate, where the form sparcendum translates scintillante.6 The possible sources and analogues from Christian writings that Clubb gives for line 78 of Christ and Satan (XSt) are interesting but essentially unsatisfactory: Jeremias 5:14; Ecclesiasticus 48:1; 4 Esdras 13:10; Revelation 11:5.7 The Jeremias citation refers to that prophet's mission to the Israelites; the Ecclesiasticus citation refers to the prophet Elias; the Revelation citation refers to the two olive trees which stand before the Lord of

A New Interpretation of the A and B Texts of "Piers Plowman"

Abstract: Piers Plowman is a fourteenth-century English alliterative poem that exists in three versions (designated A, B, C) composed according to most modern scholars by William Langland, but according to others (including me) by an author or authors unknown. Elizabeth Kirk, in The Dream Thought of \"Piers Plowman,\" approaches the poem from the point of view of single authorship and seeks thereby to understand the relationship and significance of the A and B versions.' This may at first seem to be a modest undertaking, but in truth it is beset with great difficulties. Efforts along this line by previous critics have been plagued by a surrender to the pressures of \"Langland harmonistics,\" a tendency to ignore or gloss over the differences among the three versions of the poem in the interests of defending the single-authorship theory. It is a pleasure to be able to report that Mrs. Kirk has managed to avoid this danger, and is thus free to recognize \"how extraordinarily, vividly, and excitingly different the three poems are from each other\" (p. 13), without feeling that this is a threat to her conviction about authorship. The differences in the forms of Piers Plowman (she says in her introduction) are indeed puzzling at times, but these difficulties can be attributed to a variety of recognizable causes. The texts themselves, in the nineteenth-century edition of Walter W. Skeat, at times give an erroneous impression of fuzziness or even meaninglessness; but this difficulty will soon be overcome with the appearance of a new edition (by George Kane and others) to which Kirk has fortunately had access. The history of Piers Plowman criticism has played an ambiguous role. The authorship controversy has both hindered and helped. On the one hand, \"defenders of single authorship... have generally minimized the differences between versions and failed to confront seriously enough what an extraordinary artistic and psychological process they were postulating\" (p. 4); on the other hand, \"the multiple-authorship theory advanced by J. M. Manly still lies behind the major advances in our understanding of the poem, since it was his realization of how striking the differences among the three versions really are that opened the eyes of singleand multipleauthorship critics alike to how drastically Piers Plowman challenges any conception, medieval or modern, of how artists work\" (p. 5). But are these differences striking enough to require, as Manly thought, an assumption of multiple authorship ? To this Kirk replies without hesitation: not at all. The difficulties, which are real, she says, are a sign of the artistic complexity of

Rhetoric and Ideology in a New History of German Literature

Abstract: Distrust of \"rhetoric\" and the \"rhetorical\" is a phenomenon by no means limited to the German cultural tradition. Such distrust has an ancient and honorable lineage deriving, as it does, from the very wellsprings of Western civilization. And yet, in its various historical settings, this cultural constant appears to take on varying degrees of intensity, to assume manifold nuances of meaning. In German intellectual and cultural life hostility to \"rhetoric\" and the \"rhetorical\" has seemed particularly virulent and, since the middle of the eighteenth century, based less on the philosophic rejection of rhetorical persuasion in favor of scientific proof and ever increasingly on an irrationalistic preference for Tiefe, Gemiit, Wortlosigkeit, over Konvention, Kiinstlichkeit, Logik und Intellektualitit.1 Against the background of this traditional contempt for rhetoric, one of the most interesting and significant developments in German scholarship and criticism since 1945 has been a new fascination, documented in numerous excellent studies, with the role of rhetoric and rhetorically influenced poetics in literary history, particularly the literary history of the medieval, renaissance, and baroque periods in Germany. Walter Jens's brilliant pro rhetorica is not a cry in the wilderness, but rather theexpression of an already accomplished, generally shared attitudinal change, a furor rhetoricus which shows no signs of abating.2 Undoubtedly the most significant intellectual stimulation for the renaissance of rhetorical studies in contemporary Germanistik has come from the Romance scholar Ernst Robert Curtius, both directly, through his own work, and indirectly, through the contributions of his students Gustav Ren6 Hocke and Heinrich Lausberg. Among the Germanisten themselves, scholars like Wolfgang Kayser recurred, after 1945, to the traditions of an older \"positivistic\" school of Germanistik more respectful of philological-historical detail and hence more sympathetic to rhetorical studies.3 At a deeper level, the renaissance of rhetorical studies in Germany since the end of World War II has received its impetus from two seemingly opposed forces. Insofar as rhetorically oriented poetic investigation is directed toward analysis of

Sir John Denham at Law

Abstract: The poet of Coopers Hill, Sir John Denham, has just crossed our ken in truer colors than at any time these 270 years; and his poem has fallen into our hands in a better version than even he saw. Professor Brendan O Hehir is responsible, in his life of Denham, Harmony from Discords (1968), and his edition of the poem, Expans'd Hieroglyphicks (1969). Unlike those who preceded him, O Hehir went carefully through the printed calendars of the great collections of primary materials. He did not, however, go through more arcane matters, especially those unnoticed in print. He missed, for example, the millions of documents which survive from the law courts of Denham's century. For a man like Denham, who was constantly going to the courts of record to sue and be sued, to register debts, sales, and purchases, that is a significant omission. Moreover, by omitting the state papers unnoticed in print, O Hehir also missed what should be the copy text of his Draft I of Coopers Hill.' The legal documents which O Hehir did not see constitute by themselves a reliable study of the rake's progress and recovery. When his father died on January 6, 1639, Denham was about twenty-five years old. He had been married three and a half years. Like most young men of his class, he had worried his father by gambling. Now he was master of a considerable fortune, consisting at least of two properties in Egham in Surrey (the rectory, some lands, tithes, and the advowson, worth a good deal, and a house, Inworths, in which he lived, worth only ?3 a year), five valuable estates clustered on both sides of the River Stour-four in Essex (three at West Bergholt, one at Little Horkesley) and one in Suffolk (Wissington Mills)-and another valuable estate in Essex, Woodhall, in the western end of the county. Together they were worth upward of ?10,000 to sell or mortgage. His father was scarcely quiet in Egham Church when Denham stepped forth as a systematic if a rather well meaning and repentant wastrel. He could already have borrowed ?400 from one Huntington Hastings Corney and given him some claim on the properties at Egham as security. Five weeks later (on February 12, 1639) he borrowed ?500 more from John Derbyshire. Both loans were undoubtedly at the customary 8 percent interest. Denham was yet a good enough risk that Derbyshire (later to his sorrow) did not insist on a mortgage. Six weeks later, Denham needed another large sum, and he had to grant a mortgage to get it. He began at home. He started a negotiation on March 28 to borrow ?500 from a "neighbour" at Weybridge, Anthony Samwell, and to give what amounted to a mortgage on the rectory, lands, tithes, and advowson of Egham. He would promise to pay Samwell ?100 a year for eight years. But Denham and Samwell delayed drawing up the indenture, so six weeks later, on May 8, Denham seems to have gone to the well again, this time for an unstated sum, and this time the mortgage was literally at home, being on his house, Inworths, at Egham. The money was provided by a family of Cottons to whom Denham's father had leased one of the estates at West Bergholt.2 Denham's wife belonged to a family of Cottons from Gloucestershire.

The Temptation of Christ and the Motif of Divine Duplicity in the Corpus Christi Cycle Drama

Abstract: The play of the Temptation of Christ occurs in three of the extant Corpus Christi cycles-York, Chester, and the Ludus Coventriae-and is named in the Beverly list. This play is especially interesting in at least three ways: dramatically, it presents alone on the stage the two great antagonists for man's soul in their first meeting on earth; structurally and thematically, it recalls and parallels the Temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden,' and anticipates the final encounter for man's soul at the gates of hell; and theologically, it interprets the Temptation in a way that strikes twentieth-century readers, including theologians, as naive or even grotesque.2 Strangely enough, this interpretation apparently took hold during the patristic period through a disregard of the grammar of the biblical Temptation texts in favor of attention to an apologetically more attractive argument that justified God's ways to Satan. After looking at the appropriate biblical texts and other sources of this immensely popular medieval conception of the Temptation and Satan, one can trace with much greater profit and enjoyment its manifestation in the Corpus Christi Temptation of Christ plays and at other points in the cycles. The medieval theory of the Temptation of Christ, based upon Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13, assumes that the devil tempted Christ primarily in order to discover whether Christ was the Son of God, a possibility that he suspected but of which he had great doubt. The biblical texts, if read correctly, cannot grammatically support this concept. In both Matthew and Luke the devil prefaces the first two temptations with the words: "If you are the Son of God...."3 But only a misinterpretation or disregard of the grammatical use of the common conditional particle "if" could result in the dramatic relationship of Christ and Satan in the cycle plays. Such a disregard apparently occurred, however, for the scriptural texts clearly reveal that the devil had no doubts at all. The Greek text, in all four of its occurrences, and with no manuscript variations (a fact remarkable in itself), is "' vd E L 701T EOV. . . ." 4 The conditional particle E' appears here with the second-person singular present indicative of the verb "to be," vE. An authoritative Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament says this about the word dE: "I. conditional particle if. 1. w. the indic.-a. in all tenses, to express a condition thought of as real or to denote assumptions relating to what has

Genres and Themes: A Reaction to Two Views of Chaucer

Abstract: No doubt there are more diverse examples of Chaucerian criticism in recent years than these two treatises, but they are adequate to justify, in the process of evaluating them, critical generalizations about present-day inclinations. Eliason's The Language of Chaucer's Poetry1 is loosely organized and informally phrased, apparently a catchall for points he accumulated in decades of lecturing-together with an index for which he apologizes, with many of the provocative ideas relegated to footnotes, and with hardly the semblance of a conclusion. Highly eclectic and commonsensical, he spends most of his time either half-agreeing or half-disputing with an endless parade of scholars and critics. In contrast, Steadman's Disembodied Laughter,2 though enigmatically titled, is impressively organized around a major crux in Troilus. With only occasional references to Chaucer's other poems, Steadman exhaustively explores the possible models for Troilus's ascent, but the resulting analysis of the poem, though a superior instance of "patristic analysis," is hardly uncontroversial.