It is a well known fact that the ground-work of the story of Saint George as told by Richard Johnson in his Seven Champions of Christendom is represented by the Old French, or better the Early English, story of Sir Beves of Hamtoun. The object of this article is to determine the history of the fusion of the two traditions.

When Saint George had become the champion of the English knights during the third crusade, the official sanction being given at Oxford in 1222, it is not difficult to understand why the story of his life should have passed into a new phase of its development. Before the crusades only the legend of his martyrdom was known in Western Europe. There, however, he had always been represented as a warrior, ‘miles egregius,’ and now during these expeditions he became the battle saint, whose timely aid brings victory to the Christian armies.

A unque la temática religiosa constituya una de las facetas más ricas de toda la creación galdosiana, no cabe duda que ésta alcanza su apogeo en el autor, como cantera de materia novelable, entre 1876 y 1878. En cuatro Novelas de primera época, publicadas entre los años citados, concentró Galdós toda su extraordinaria capacidad de concreción literaria sobre esa problemática de actualidad insoslayable: Boña Perfecta (abril, 1876), Gloria (diciembre, 1876; mayo, 1877), Marianela (enero, 1878) y La familia de León Roch (junio, octubre y diciembre, 1878).

Perhaps the most curious episode in Henry Fielding's masterpiece occurs toward the end of Tom Jones's journey (Book xii, Chapters xi–xii), when Tom, Partridge, and their less than Virgilian guide lose their way in the darkness of a stormy winter's night—a night, indeed, so obscure and inclement that Partridge, whose Jacobitism extends to a belief in demons as firm as that of James I, believes the company to be enchanted. Having strayed from the plain high road to Coventry into a dirty lane, the wayfarers at length discern the lights of a barn and hear the confused noises of merrymaking from within. Inquiring the road to Coventry, Tom, together with his companions, is given shelter and hospitality in the barn by a strange, jovial crew who prove to be “no other than a Company of Egyptians, or as they are vulgarly called Gypsies … now celebrating the Wedding of one of their Society” (xii, xii).

Relationships between verse content and. music in the love songs of the Provençal troubadours are not easily defined. One is tempted to seek in these cansos an expressiveness corresponding to our own acceptance of the term and to consider the melodies, like those of a modern art song, to be largely inspired by meanings and emotions of the texts. But it is not at all certain that the establishment of a close sentimental rapport between words and music was an objective overtly recognized and desired by the troubadours: if there were poet-composers who on occasion projected through melody the spirit of a poem, this was by no means a universal occurrence. Authoritative opinion on the subject is difficult to form because so little troubadour music has been preserved. All the more important then to examine carefully the evidence we do possess. Worthy of particular attention are the poets whose melodies remain in sufficient quantity to permit evaluation of individual attitudes and techniques. Such a poet is Peirol, troubadour from Auvergne, who flourished during the Golden Age of Provençal song, cultivating chiefly the love poem. His works provide material of genuine interest, often neglected where it might prove most illuminating. Despite the comparatively large number of melodies, relationships between verse content and music in his cansos have never been studied. To investigate these relationships will therefore be the aim of this paper.

Philosophical poetry is seldom original; and ever since the assertion by Alexander Dalrymple, in the eighteenth century, that “Sir John Davies' poem on the Immortality of the Soul is chiefly taken from Nemesius,” there has been speculation as to the source of that once popular work. Grosart, in editing Davies' poems, rejected Dalrymple's statement as “absolutely untrue, an utter delusion,” and claimed for his author the merit of “deep and original thought.” But other critics have generally ignored this claim and suggested various sources for the poet's inspiration. Courthope again named Nemesius as the most probable. In a volume devoted exclusively to the study of this poem, Professor E. H. Sneath maintained that Davies was influenced by four thinkers: Aristotle, Cicero, Nemesius and Calvin. A German scholar more recently denies any influence of Nemesius, but thinks Davies derived his ideas from a study of Aristotle's De Anima modified by a reading of religious commentators, notably Thomas Aquinas. The latest and best suggestion, although it has been presented only in a brief and casual manner, is, that Nosce Teipsum is a re-statement of the Neo-Platonic tradition which permeated Christian thought in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Victor Hugo, le poète le plus éminent de son époque, était aussi un des romanciers les plus en vue de la jeune école romantique. Auteur dramatique, la richesse et la fécondité de son imagination étaient renommées. Sa réputation de penseur et d'artiste était grande. De moindres personnages eussent été satisfaits. Pas Hugo. Son ambition convoitait une réputation d'érudit. La parution de Notre-Dame de Paris en 1831 lui permit d'ajouter cette nouvelle fleur à sa couronne.

The scientfic confession of faith of the Neo-Grammarians, already upon various occasions fragmentarily announced, has found its first systematic presentation in Paul's ‘Principien der Sprachgeschichte,’ which has just appeared in a second revised and enlarged edition. Inasmuch as this book reflects the views of a number of distinguished scholars who claim to have revolutionized linguistic science, it demands our attention a priori and necessitates an exposé of its fundamental views and presumptions : for this much commended New Method of the school of neo-grammarians must finally take its stand upon linguistic principles entirely different from those of earlier enquirers. It is these principles which determine the method even should they be as yet but half realized. A non-partisan critic will be little disturbed if the members of the new school boast of feeling greater earnestness on behalf of science than others, or if in any other way they recommend their new tendenz. He will endeavor, before all things, to follow out the historical development of the new principles, he will test their worth and authority, from which the propriety of their application would readily appear.

A recent defense of Paul et Virginie argues that the status of this work as a masterpiece can be appreciated if we concentrate on its poetic qualities and disregard its often contradictory didacticism. Yet this didacticism can be seen to be integrated into the work's “poetry” if we note that it functions on three levels. The first level is characterized by the demonstration of the irresistible conditioning effect of civilization, even in remote colonies. The second level is informed by the basic pessimism regarding life on earth that pervades the text. Subtending these is a solid mythical foundation which combines what Denis de Rougemont calls the “Tristan myth” with what Joseph Campbell calls the “monomyth of the hero.” The form, style, and message are harmoniously unified in the story itself, but the implications of the work's narrative frame and its survival as literature tend to belie its celebration of death.

It is not a matter of mere chance that the conception of a “calling” or “profession” is meeting with special interest in Germany. Several books have been written on the subject, some with the intention of showing that a better understanding of the idea of a “calling” would contribute considerably toward the building up of a new and improved social order. While thus practical and political interests are debating the problem, an attempt to reach the root of the question has been made by the German sociologist, Max Weber, who in his work Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism,1 undertook to answer the question, Why does Protestantism seem to be particularly congenial to the capitalistic type of civilization? According to him, it is the conception of a “calling” as a God-given task, developed by Luther and incorporated into Calvin's religious system, which is responsible for this fact. The word Beruf, English “calling,” itself in its present meaning, originated, he asserts, in Luther's translation of the Bible, and from that source it spread throughout the Germanic world.

In his collection of essays Von Luther bis Lessing,1 F. Kluge discusses at some length W. Scherer's proposition, that Luther marks but a transition period in the history of the German language, while the Modern High German period proper does not begin till the middle of the seventeenth century. I cannot find in Scherer's Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur anything so definite as to warrant Kluge's assertion that for Scherer “Schottel marks the beginning of the Modern High German period.”2 In the chronological tables, the Modern High German period begins with the Peace of Westphalia, and after various works by Spee, Gryphius, Lauremberg, Logan, Angelus Silesius and Scriver, Schottel's Ausführliche Arbeit von der deutschen Hauptsprache is mentioned, but it does not appear from this or from anything in the text of the volume, that Scherer intended to give Schottel anything like as prominent a place in this period as he had given Luther in the one immediately preceding. That the efforts of Schottel and other grammarians and purists of the seventeenth century contributed much to the wealth as well as the purity and regularity of the modem German language, there can be no doubt. It needs to be determined what Schottel's own share in this work was, what contributions he made to the vocabulary, what reforms he suggested, what position he took with reference to the reforms suggested by others, how far he understood the spirit of the language and the tendencies of its development. The present paper is intended as a step in this direction.

Between the Volga and the Ganges lies a vast yet little-examined zone of linguistic, religious, ethnoracial, and political contact shaped over many centuries by mobile communities of traders, saints, soldiers, and rebels. This is the space from which Velimir Khlebnikov, modernist poet and philosopher of history, articulates a vision of revolutionary internationalism. Khlebnikov's quasi-fictional journey from Russia's Islamic borderlands to the Indian subcontinent “in search of an idea that will free all oppressed people” transforms Madame Blavatsky's heosophical interpretation of ancient Indian religious philosophy into a cornerstone of political resistance against global imperialism in the twentieth century. The intersectional history of violence through which Khlebnikov imagines a community of minorities, misfits, and mystics wandering between the peripheries of the Russian and British Empires challenges monolithic constructs of the Orient as well as dominant discourses of Russian and Indian national identity.

En Général c'est l'amour courtois qui domine comme inspiration chez le noble baron Conon de Béthune. Né vers le milieu du douzième siècle, il devint régent de l'empire byzantin (qu'il avait aidé à fonder) en 1219, quelques mois avant sa mort. La chanson viii, dont il est question ici, semble avoir été écrite vers 1190. D'après le dernier éditeur, Axel Wallensköld, cette chanson ‘est remplie d'allusions obscures et écrite dans un langage singulièrement contourné.‘ Sans aucun doute le troisième couplet est la partie la plus difficile à expliquer de toute la poésie composée par Conon de Béthune. Malheureusement les explications fournies par Wallensköld dans ses deux éditions (Helsingfors en 1891 comme thèse et Paris en 1921) n'ajoutent presque rien à ce qu'on savait auparavant de ces huit vers.

Contrary to its negative reputation, Céline's literary opus, with the exception of Voyage au bout de la nuit, evolves toward a spirit of regeneration. Although inVoyage Céline shows the image of death as a paralyzing force to derive from man's egoism, his own artistic vision remains too self-centered to allow him to follow his intuition of the beauty of life. Mort à crédit, Casse-pipe, and Guignol's Band, as novels of initiation, are an attempt to eradicate this egoism, and the presence of death is now counterbalanced both by a structure that permits of catharsis and by the creation of archetypal figures representing the superior value of life. The pamphlets, despite their treatment of the Jews, emphasize and elucidate this shift towards affirmation. The novels of maturity, Féerie pour une autre fois, D'un château l'autre, and Nord, through their structure and symbolism, make explicit that Céline's basic artistic intention has become not only to transcend the disintegration of Western civilization but to provide the mechanism for a similar transcendence in his reader. In Rigodon, he reaches a level of contemplation from which even the collapse of a civilization can be seen as promising new life.

Two readings of crucial lines, one dependent upon the other, are typical of attempts to solve the riddle embodied in T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men. The term “empty” in the lines “The hope only/ Of empty men” is usually taken as synonymous with “hollow,” and the “multifoliate rose” is taken as a haven of escape, acceptable to hollow men, but intellectual and spiritual death for others. As a result, the concluding portion, “Life is very long,” of the final section is assumed to be spoken by the same “hollow men” whose aimlessness is symbolized in the first part of the poem.

For a long time, the luxuriance of baroque imagery so conspicuous in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins has tended to obscure one of its fundamental characteristics. His is a poetry of statement, intellectually formulated even when at emotional white heat, and scarcely at all, in any usual sense, poetry of suggestion or atmosphere. He could not have permitted himself to write otherwise even if he had wished, and he did not wish. Though obviously the poetry does not lie in the statement—he himself was explicit about this—still, when he found that even Robert Bridges had continual difficulty in making out his literal meaning, he resolved, he said, “to prefix short prose arguments” to some of his work. “These too,” he added, “will expose me to carping, but I do not mind.”

Jack of Newbury's surface realism in characters, setting, and speech has led to an underestimation of its historical and literary value. A close reading reveals the consistent use of the Greco-Roman ethical-political conception of the state, epitomized in the figure of the ruler. Deloney shows his familiarity with this tradition, probably known to him through Erasmus and Sidney, in the three controlling motifs of his novel. First, the middle class of weavers, represented in Jack's household and dramatized in allegories and symbols, is portrayed as a self-sufficient state where peace and harmony reign. Second, this state is shown to be such because of the nature of its ruler, Jack, a benevolent, generous, wise man. Third, the middle-class way of life—hard work, thriftiness, material gains—serves as princely education; accordingly, Jack, from a menial position, goes on to become ruler of the state. Jack of Newbury, as a systematical reordering of an aristocratic tradition, represents the world view of the emergent middle class; and as such, a momentous shift in the social temper of the Renaissance and an important step in the evolution of the novel.

The Nightingale ode has been judiciously dealt with from inside the tradition of Keats scholarship by such experts as Sir Sidney Colvin, Ernest de Sélincourt, Douglas Bush, and H. W. Garrod. Recent reinterpretations by Brooks and Warren, by Thomas and Brown, by Allen Tate, F. R. Leavis, Marshall McLuhan, G. Wilson Knight, Albert Guérard, Jr., and others, have brought the Ode into contact with current critical theories. In following them here I can, I believe, be most useful by steering something of a middle course between the modern and traditional: with, however, an unusual emphasis upon general English Romanticism. My explication, then, will consider the Ode to a Nightingale as a Romantic poem, and will venture some exposition of its Romantic principles. I shall also try to bear in mind the implications of recent criticism.

Goethe with his elective affinities, Stendhal with his cristallisation, are among Marcel Proust's forerunners in the use of scientific analogies in fiction. In our time, D. H. Lawrence has made his readers familiar with electricity as an analogue for the passion of love. But it seems safe to say that no writer has ever made more varied and skillful use of metaphors from science than Proust. This is the more remarkable because A la Recherche du Temps perdu is better known for the allusions to painting and music than for the allusions to science. Admirers like André Maurois, Camille Vettard, and Jean Mouton content themselves with citing a few examples. A study of Proust's analogies from the sciences is interesting for several reasons. There is, for one thing, the question of Proust's scientific culture. Another question is the value of these analogies for clarification of the phenomena described. A third point of interest concerns their artistic value. Do they come up to the ideal of the author who wrote: “Je crois que la métaphore seule peut donner une sorte d'éternité au style … ”? What is the function of these metaphors in the novel conceived as a work of art?

Elsewhere I have written of the actors who travelled “softly on the hoof” through the length and breadth of Shakspere's England, and I propose here to deal with their successors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They make part—perhaps a more important part than is generally understood—of the history of the drama and theatre in a period that is full of life and interest even though the greater glory had departed. To the student of Elizabethan times the ways and means of these “weather-beaten weary travellers” are significant because the strollers were, and are, the most conservative of all players. They continued the ancient and honorable traditions of the Elizabethans long after the patent theatres, the new scenes out of France, the new comedy of manners, and, finally, the new sentimentalism, had crowded the very memory of the days of the Globe and the Blackfriars and stamped the customs and devices of those great times as subjects for mockery. But the later strollers are worthy of study in and for themselves, or at least in the light of their practical contribution to the stage history of their time. To be sure, their predecessors at Stratford-on-Avon who gave Shakspere his first glimpse of the puppets dallying, came at a more opportune moment; but those who followed made the most of their opportunities. Bright-plumed “birds of passage” were they, and wheresoever they passed most men were glad of their coming. They left long trails of debt behind them, and played more than one rather scurvy trick upon their hosts, but they brought the old plays and the new away from the cramped quarters of London's theatrical monopoly into the furthest corner of the provinces. They kept England merry England still, besides crossing the ocean and establishing the theatre in the colonies—including America.