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.”

Robert greene himself tells us actually .very little about his university career except that he was a gadabout who finally proceeded to the M.A. degree.

One of the preliminary problems that confronts the textual investigator of the Canterbury Tales is to determine which if any of the early prints can claim to rank with the manuscripts as independent authorities. It seems to be generally agreed that no account need be taken of any edition later than that which Thynne included in his collection of the Chaucer's works printed by Godfray in 1532, but of the six prints of the Tales of which that was the latest no complete investigation seems yet to have been attempted. My object in this paper is to make a beginning by subjecting to critical analysis the first 116 lines of the Knight's Tale as they stand in these six editions.

During recent years, despite—or possibly because of—T. S. Eliot's commendation, George Chapman's verse has appealed to a fit audience, though few indeed. One of the reasons for this neglect has been the inaccessibility resulting from insufficient knowledge of the tradition and technique of platonic allegory in the Renaissance. Since Battenhouse's pioneering effort at explicating The Shadow of Night, other scholars equipped with a fuller knowledge of platonic iconography and mythology have attempted to part the veil of obscurity by reestablishing a coherent intellectual and historical context and have enhanced our understanding of several of the more difficult poems, notably Hero and Leander and Ovids Banquet of Sence. It may be time to examine a poem which has not been noted for artistic accomplishment in order to determine to what extent such a context reveals a consistent poetic mode in Chapman's verse.

Africa, the world's second-largest continent, speaks over two thousand languages but rarely translates itself. it is no wonder, therefore, that Ferdinand Oyono's francophone African classic Une vie de boy (1956), translated into at least twelve European and Asian languages, exists in only one African translation—that is, if we consider as non-African Oyono's original French and the English, Arabic, and Portuguese into which it was translated. Since 1963, when Obi Wali stated in his essay “The Dead End of African Literature” that African literature in English and French was “a clear contradiction, and a false proposition,” like “Italian literature in Hausa” (14), the question of the language of African literature has animated debate. Two decades later, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o restated Wali's contention, asserting that European languages led to African “spiritual subjugation” (9). Ngũgĩ argued strongly that African literature should be written in African languages. On the other hand, Chinua Achebe defended European languages, maintaining that they could “carry the weight of African experience” (62).

Study of the Gawain-poet in recent years has greatly increased: and with increase it has also grown more intelligent and appreciative. In 1922 there appeared the late Professor Emerson's ‘Notes on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ (JEGPh. XXI) and ‘Some Notes on the Pearl’ (PMLA. XXXVII), two suggestive and penetrating studies which anticipated many of the emendations and notes of the edition that was to follow three years later. In 1925 there appeared what scholars had long been hoping for, a carefully edited text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This edition, the work of two British scholars, Professors Tolkien and Gordon, provides the reader with good notes and a competent working glossary. The notes, however, it must be said, are sometimes too brief in their discussion and give too little recognition to the work of previous annotators, where credit was justly due. Professor J. R. Hulbert's review of the new edition, which appeared later in the same year (Mod. Phil. XXIII. 246–249), though brief, contains a number of comments which succeeding scholars must take into account. In 1927 Professor Emerson published a further study of the Pearl (PMLA. XLII), and more important for our purpose, his review of the new edition (JEGPh. XXVI) which threw further light on many a textual crux and clarified some details of the story. Nor have studies of Sir Gawain been confined to criticism of the text. Fräulein von Schaubert (Engl. Stud. LVII), has postulated an English rather than a French origin for the poem, thus taking issue with the views of Kittredge. Also translations of the poem have been published by S. O. Andrew and T. H. Banks which keep the alliterative measure of the long line and endeavor not unsuccessfully to maintain the bob and wheel arrangement at the stanza's end.

Every aspect of organic life, including sexuality and death, is comprehended in Ulysses as a moment or aspect of a general circulation whose primary figure is eating and the digestive process. But the digestive process is a form of decomposition, and in one sense Ulysses is a stomach or tomb in which language breaks down into its constituent units—ultimately, letters, the elements of an onomatopoeic notation for human speech. Ulysses works between the figure of onomatopoeia (as the limit of mimesis) and that of infidelity (as an image for the undermining of all ontological security at the sexual-gastronomic level) to reconceive mimesis as the isomorphism between two decompositional series, one involving language and the other the body.

He who would enter upon anything like an adequate explanation of the remarkably complex and contradictory character of Chaucer's Wife of Bath must expect heavenly guidance and receive aid from the stars. Though one may not be quite prepared to accept entirely the pronouncement that she “is one of the most amazing characters … the brain of man has ever conceived,” still she is so vividly feminine and human, so coarse and shameless in her disclosures of the marital relations with five husbands, and yet so imaginative and delicate in her story-telling, that one is fascinated against his will and beset with an irresistible impulse to analyze her dual personality with the view of locating, if possible, definite causes for the coexistence of more incongruent elements than are ordinarily found in living human beings. Some time ago when I proposed casting the horoscope of the Wife of Bath, it was with the supposition that rules of natural astrology might be used exclusively in the interpretation of certain data, concerning planets and their influence, which Chaucer has furnished us; but it is not entirely so. In the full presentation of the Wife's “fortune”—her character, personal appearance, and the significance and location of mysterious “marks” about her body—constant reference must be made to what the mediæval mind believed to be truths found in the “science” of celestial physiognomy and perhaps of geomancy.

The British Council conference on the teaching of English Literature overseas was held at King's College, Cambridge, England, 16–18 July 1962. As K. R. Johnstone, Deputy Director-General of the British Council, pointed out, this was the first conference on teaching English Literature overseas, though such teaching has been in progress for over a century. More than seventy-five participants came from twenty-five different countries, and had taught in many more. The discussions of the conference were taped and will be published in a 60,000 word book by the firm of Methuen.

Courthope, in his History of English Poetry, asks the question: “Does Spenser's work satisfy the test of Unity which must be applied to every great creation of art?” Answering this question, Courthope thinks that there is undoubtedly poetical unity in the general conception of The Shepherd's Calendar. But of the Faerie Queene, he says the following:

Attention has often been called to the extraordinary parallelism which exists between Sir Gowther, a fifteenth century English version of Robert the Devil, and the so-called Breton Lay of Tydorel. The latter is one of five anonymous romances published by Gaston Paris according to the manuscript in the National Library, which includes also the lays of Marie de France.

In this paper, I am analyzing Strindberg's trilogy To Damascus with regard to two basic elements—situation and character. Through this study, as well as others in kind, I hope that eventually a literary æsthetic may be evolved. The final purpose, of course, is the attainment of æsthetic judgment in literature.

Nietzsche began as an admirer of Luther and the German Reformation. The age of Luther ranked as high in his early opinion as the age of Goethe and Beethoven. From Menschliches, Allzumenschliches on, this favorable attitude toward Luther underwent a strong transformation. In the five years from 1878 to 1883, Nietzsche's second creative period, Luther emerged as a highly questionable figure, even as a most regrettable event in the history of German and European thought and civilization. But all these severe pronouncements on Luther were only a prelude to the scathing denunciations to come in Nietzsche's post-Zarathustra writings.

These Remarks are written on a hotel balcony overlooking the last of the plains of Lombardy and the beginning of the Alps. The first snowfall of the season covers the distant heights and outlines clearly the great barrier between Italy and the rest of Europe. Just here two thousand years ago was the edge of the ancient classical world. Beyond the Alps were the hordes that threatened that world, that were to conquer much of it, and that in turn were to absorb its culture and carry it to lands then undreamed of. Through all the changes of the millennia these mountains have looked down on this spot. The snows of early autumn with which they are powdered today are no doubt much the same as those surveyed by Hannibal with his elephants, by Caesar on his way to Helvetia and Gaul, by Napoleon, and in these latter days so tragically by Mussolini and Hitler.

Francesco Sansovino (1521-83), prolific translator, publisher, editor, and polygraph, deserves a place in the history of Renaissance culture, not because he can lay any real claim to originality but because he played a significant rôle in the dissemination of Italian literature. Of his many works one of the most popular and most important was without doubt his Concetti politici, a collection of maxims which first appeared in 1578, but which was subsequently republished in modified form in 1583, 1588, 1598, and 1608, together with Guicciardini's Av-vertimenti and Lottini's Avvedimenti civili. More important still, the original text of 1578 was translated into English in 1590 by Robert Hitchcock under the title of Quintessence of Wit, and as such was to make its contribution to the development of the English maxim and the English essay, as Elbert N. S. Thompson pointed out some years ago. In the preface to the 1578 edition, Sansovino states that he drew his 805 maxims from two histories and thirty-four authors, whom he lists by name. Among these authorities are Aristotle, Bembo, Cicero, Comines, Giovio, Guevara, Guicciardini, Livy, Plato, Polybius, Sallust, Tacitus, and Thucydides. The list, however, lacks one name, that of Machiavelli, the one writer that Sansovino consulted perhaps more than any other.

The Canterbury pilgrims, more fortunate than we, had heard to the end the Squire's Tale, and were busy exchanging with one another looks of approval and satisfaction. Now was the Franklin's opportunity. He determined to be the one to break the significant silence and become the spokesman of the praise of his companions, not only by reason of his very genuine enjoyment of the narrative just concluded, but also because of the chance he thus secured to bring himself into honorable association with the gentles on the pilgrimage.

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”

Wordsworth's intellectual and spiritual development terminates with the philosophy expressed in The Excursion. Here he accepts a Christian stoicism, colored strongly by ideas drawn from Kant. He even emphasizes the extreme dualism of Kant's ethics and tends to interpret morality as solely a matter of rational duty, sharply to be distinguished from a life of inclination. Indeed, he has grown very suspicious of human inclination and insists that man must transcend his natural disposition if he is to acquire any genuine dignity.