129631
A HANDBOOK TO
Literature
William Flint Thrall
and
Addison Hibbard
A HANDBOOK TO
Literature
REVISED and ENLARGED BY
C. Hugh Holman
THE ODYSSEY PRESS Newfork
COPYBIGHT, 1936, 1960
BY THE ODYSSEY PRESS, INC,
All rights reserved
A 9 8 7
PBINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
PREFACE
to the Revised and Enlarged Edition
IT HAS been my pleasant duty to act as a remodeler or modernizer
of the house that the late Professor William F. Thrall and the late
Dean Addison Hibbard built in 1936. The figure of a house being
remodeled seems to me an appropriate one to describe this revision,
for in modernizing a substantial structure one makes changes in its
decor, adds new lighting fixtures, replaces the plumbing, installs
the latest kitchen equipment, repaints the walls, and changes the
heating system. The result is a house that looks newer than it
really is, for if the original building was soundly planned, con-
structed of excellent materials, and solidly built, the remodeling
proves to be a process by which a sound structure is made more
useful and comfortable to the present-day user. This is exactly what
I have tried to do with the Thrall and Hibbard Handbook.
In the process of the revision I have found to my great pleasure
that I was working with a basic plan and a fundamental structure
so firmly and solidly made that their adaptation to the demands of
literary students in our time was a relatively simple task. A host of
critical terms and a group of critical attitudes have come into being
since the time when Thrall and Hibbard wrote their Handbook,
with the result that many new terms are now needed; these I have
tried to add. Some older terms have undergone modification of
meaning since 1936, and it has been necessary to rewrite or to
alter these; examples of such terms are image, ambiguity, myth.
The literary history of the past hundred and fifty years has been
undergoing a series of major re-assessments, and it has been neces-
sary to re-adjust historical articles to fit these changes. In the
literary history of the older periods, new attitudes and significant
new facts have appeared since the writing of the Handbook, and
some of these needed to be communicated to the inquiring student.
Some movements and schools that looked very important in the
mid-1930's have lessened greatly in significance, and statements
about them needed modification. Teachers using the Handbook
have noted omissions and have generously communicated them to
the publishers and to me; many of these omissions have been
remedied, but not all, since the authors ideal for the book is not
always the same as that of the individual user. Over the years a great
many teachers in various colleges and universities have helped with
constructive suggestions. But the ultimate decision to include or
Preface vi
exclude a topic has been mine, as all errors of fact and judgment
are mine.
In making this revision, I have studied each entry carefully and
I have made changes frequently only slight ones in practically
every article. I have deleted entirely only a handful of the original
entries, and I have added almost a fourth again in numbers of
articles and in actual length. The result is a thoroughly remodeled
house, one comfortable and useful, I hope, for our time, but it is
still the house that Thrall and Hibbard built.
My debts are many and beyond even my ability to recall. When
I think on my sources I am reminded of Washington Irving's state-
ment: "My brain is filled, therefore, with all kinds of odds and
ends. In travelling, these heterogeneous matters have become shaken
up in my mind, as the articles are apt to be in an ill-packed travelling
trunk; so that when I attempt to draw forth a fact, I cannot deter-
mine whether I have read, heard, or dreamt it." And certainly
Marcel Proust was speaking the truth when he called a book "a
great cemetery in which, for the most part, the names upon the
tombs are effaced."
Into the making of such a work as this, all one's study, reading,
and conversation go, but I would in this place single out certain
persons to whom I am immediately indebted. To my own teachers,
both undergraduate and graduate, my debts in this book are im-
measurably great. To my students at the University of North Caro-
lina this revision of the Thrall and Hibbard Handbook owes per-
haps as much as it owes to any single source, for over the years
they have shown me what they needed and their critical intelligence
has shaped and sharpened my efforts to satisfy those needs. To my
colleagues on the English faculty of the University my debts are
deep; in the immediate preparation of this revision, I have been
appreciably aided by Professors Richmond P. Bond, Robert B.
Sharpe, J. O. Bailey, H. K. Russell, and William Wells. For the
assistance and encouragement of my wife in this, as in all things,
only my debt exceeds my gratitude.
C. HUGH HOLMAN
Contents
Preface to the
Revised and Enlarged Edition
pagev
To the User of this Handbook
page viii
Handbook to Literature
Pagel
Some Standard Works on
English and American Literature
Page 513
Outline of Literary History,
English and American
Page 519
vii
To the User of this Handbook
THIS HANDBOOK consists of three parts: the Handbook proper, an
alphabetical listing of articles discussing terms in current use in
English and American literary history and criticism; an essay on
"Some Standard Works on English and American Literature," which
is intended as a brief bibliographical guide to further study and
exploration; and an "Outline of Literary History," which lists in
chronological order the major events in English and American
literary history from the beginnings to the present.
The authors have attempted to include in the Handbook proper
a comparatively brief explanation of the words and phrases peculiar
to literary study and which, in their experience, a serious student
of literature may wish defined, explained, or illustrated. No effort
has been made to be exhaustive in the listings or complete in the
comments; those terms likely to cause literary students trouble are
listed and those basic things which the student of English and
American literature will need to know are given.
A single alphabetical listing is made, with cross references at the
proper places in the listing. Whenever it has been possible in the
practical limits of the book, the essential information on a given term
appears under that term in its alphabetical place in the Handbook.
In the body of an article, a term used in a sense which is defined in
its proper place in the Handbook is printed in SMALL CAPITAL LET-
TERS; the term being defined and sometimes its synonyms are
printed in italic letters. If other articles in the Handbook will enrich
the student's understanding of a particular entry, the statement
"See AN APPBOPBIATE ARTICLE" is made at the end of the entry.
For example, the entry on Complication uses the terms PLOT, RESO-
LUTION, DRAMATIC STRUCTURE, RISING ACTION, ACT, and TRAGEDY,
all of which are defined in the Handbook; therefore, each of them
appears in SMALL CAPITAL LETTERS, a fact indicating that entries
on them may be consulted if one of them is not clear to the user
of the Handbook. On the other hand, the entry concludes with the
statement, "See DRAMATIC STRUCTURE, ACT," which means that
these entries contain supplementary material which will enrich the
user's understanding of complication. The word complication is
itself italicized since it is the term being defined.
viii
A HANDBOOK TO
Literature
HANDBOOK TO
Literature
Abstract Poetry: Poetry whose meaning results chiefly from its
sound qualities. The term is used by Dame Edith Sitwell to de-
scribe poetry that is analogous in its use of sounds to abstract paint-
ing in its use of colors and shapes. In abstract painting the meaning
is conveyed through the arrangement of colors and shapes without
the representation of physical objects; in abstract poetry, words are
chosen not for their customary meanings or connotations but for
the effect that can be produced by tonal qualities, RIMES, and
RHYTHMS. See ABSTRACT TERMS.
Abstract Terms: Terms which represent ideas or generalities as op-
posed to CONCRETE TERMS, which represent specific and particular
objects or entities. Abstract terms describes a quality related to but
not always the same as that described by GENERAL TERMS, in that
abstract implies the formulation of an idea by the logical process
of abstraction, in which the mind selects characteristics common to
the members of a group and builds a conception which describes
not one but all things of that same kind or marked by that same
quality, whereas general broadly means generic. For example,
"beauty" is an abstract term, "girl," a GENERAL TERM, and "Helen
of Troy" a concrete, specific term. In another sense, abstract words
may be described as words which do not have specific, observable
referents to which one may compare their meanings; note, for ex-
ample, the special use of the term in ABSTRACT POETRY, where this
meaning is intended. Abstract terms tend to describe ideas, con-
cepts, attitudes, attributes, qualities isolated from their embodiment
in a specific object. Their appeal is usually non-sensory. Although
they sometimes carry a heavy freight of undefined emotion for ex-
ample, "honor," "peace," "patriotism" (see CONNOTATION) they
are more usually lacking in the heightened emotional response
evoked by CONCRETE TERMS. Abstract terms are, therefore, par-
ticularly die language of philosophy and science; whereas the lan-
guage of literature tends more to the specific and emotional, to
Academic Drama *
that which can express its meanings through IMAGE and METAPHOR.
See CONCRETE TERMS.
Academic Drama: See SCHOOL PLAYS.
Academies: Associations of literary, artistic, or scientific men brought
together for the advancement of culture and learning within their
special fields of interests. The term is derived from "the olive grove
of Academe" where Plato taught at Athens. Though there are thou-
sands of academies of one sort or another bringing together men of
similar interests, there are in each country a few prominent organi-
zations usually with some sort of official or national responsibility.
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge,
for example, has agreed to render such service as it can to the Brit-
ish government in the realm of science, and the governmental au-
thorities have often called upon it for the solution of scientific prob-
lems. One general purpose of the literary academies has been, to
quote the expressed purpose of FAcadmie frangaise (originated
CflJ629), "to labor with all care and diligence to give certain rules
to our language and to render it pure, eloquent, and capable of
treating the arts and sciences." A secondary objective has often
been that of immortalizing great writers, though the success with
which great writers have been recognized by such organizations
is definitely a moot point. In addition to the French Academy and
the Royal Society already mentioned the following ought to be
cited: The Royal Academy of Arts founded in 1768 (England) ; the
Real Academia Espanola founded in 1713 (Spain) ; and the AMERI-
CAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS founded in 1904 (United
States). More like the original academy of Plato was the famous
"Platonic Academy" led by Marsilio Ficino, which flourished at
Florence, Italy, in the late fifteenth century and from which were
disseminated lie doctrines of Neo-Platonism (see PLATONISM)
which colored much Renaissance English literature.
Acatalectic: Metrically complete; applied to a line of poetry that
carries out fully the basic metrical pattern of the poem. See CATA-
LE33S.
Accent: In traditional English METRICS, the STRESS given a syllable
in pronunciation. Perhaps no aspect of PROSODY has been the sub-
3 Acrostic
ject of greater uncertainty than that dealing with the nature of
accent; it is considered to be a matter of force, of utterance, of dura-
tion, of loudness, of pitch, and of various combinations of these. In
common usage, however, it is used to describe some aspect of em-
phasis, as opposed to duration or QUANTITY. The distinction Is some-
times made between accent as the emphasis upon a syllable and
STRESS as the emphasis upon a word, although the two terms are
often used interchangeably.
In versification accent usually implies contrast; that is, a pat-
terned succession of opposites, in this case, stressed and unstressed
syllables. In traditional terminology ICTUS is the name applied to
the STRESS itself, ARSIS the name applied to the stressed syllable, and
THESIS the name applied to the unstressed syllable. It should be
noted, however, that the earlier Greek usage, predating this Latin
usage, reversed these meanings, with THESIS applying to the stressed
and ARSIS to the unstressed syllables.
There are three basic types of accent in English: WORD ACCENT, or
the accepted placement of stress upon the syllable of a word; RHE-
TORICAL ACCENT, in which the placement of stress is determined by
the meaning or intention of the sentence; and METRICAL ACCENT, in
which the placement of stress is determined by the metrical pattern
of the line. If the metrical accent does violence to the word accent,
the resulting alteration in pronunciation is called WRENCHED ACCENT,
a phenomenon not uncommon in the folk BALLAD. See QUANTITY,
METRICS, SCANSION.
Acrostic: Usually verse, though sometimes a piece of prose composi-
tion, arranged in such a way as to present names or phrases or sen-
tences when certain letters selected according to an orderly se-
quence are brought together. The form is very old, having been
used by early Greek and Latin writers as well as by the monks of
the Middle Ages. Though some creditable verse has appeared in
this form, acrostics are likely to be little more than tricks of versify-
ing. An example of a true acrostic-telestich (see below) presented
through a conundrum follows: 1. By Apollo was my first made. 2.
A shoemaker's tool. 3. An Italian patriot. 4. A tropical fruit An-
swer: Lamb and Elia as shown in the wording:
1. L yr E
2. A w L
3. M azzin I
4. B anan A
Act *
An acrostic in which the initial letters form the word is called a true
acrostic; one in which the final letters form the word is called a
telestich; one in which the middle letters form the word is called
a mesostich; one in which the first letter of the first line, the second
letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, etc., form
the word is called a cross acrostic, of which Poe's "A Valentine" is
an example. An acrostic in which the initial letters form the alpha-
bet is called an abecedarius. Perhaps the best known of all acrostics
is the word cabal, formed from the first letters of the names of the
unpopular ministry of Charles II, composed of Clifford, Ashley,
Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale.
Act: A major division of the action of a DRAMA. The major parts of
the Greek plays were distinguished by the appearance of the CHORUS,
and they generally fell, as Aristotle implies, into five parts. The
Latin tragedies of Seneca were divided into five acts, and when, in
the ELIZABETHAN AGE, English dramatists began using act divisions
they followed their Roman models, as did other modern European
dramatists. In varying degrees the five-0cf structure corresponded
to the five main divisions of dramatic action: EXPOSITION, COMPLICA-
TION, CLIMAX, FALLING ACTION, and CATASTROPHE. Freytag wrote
of the "act of introduction," the "act of the ascent," the "act of the
climax," the "act of the descent," and the "act of the catastrophe";
but such a correspondence, especially in Elizabethan plays, is by
no means always apparent. The five-acf structure was followed until
the late nineteenth century when, under the influence of Ibsen, the
fourth and fifth acts were combined. In the twentieth century, the
standard form for serious drama has been three acts, with MUSICAL
COMEDY and COMIC OPERA usually in two; but great variation is used
today, with serious plays frequently appearing divided into EPISODES
or SCENES, without act-division. Late in the nineteenth century a
shorter form, the ONE-ACT PLAY, developed and is recognized today
as a separate genre. See DRAMATIC STRUCTXTRE.
Adage: A proverb or wise saying made familiar by long use, Ex-
ample: "No bees, no honey" (Erasmus, Adagio). See PROVERB.
Adaptation: The re-writing of a work from its original form to fit
it for another; also the new form of such a re-written work. A novel
may be "adapted" for the stage or motion pictures or television; a
play may be re-written as a novel or a radio sketch; the new form.
5 Age of Johnson
of any such modifications is called an "adaptation." The term is not
customarily used when the author of the original work is himself its
modifier to a new form. It also implies an attempt to retain the
characters, actions, and as much as possible of the language and
tone of the original, and thus it differs significantly from the re-
working of a SOURCE.
Adonic Verse: A verse form associated with Greek and Latin PROSODY
and denoting that METER which consists of a DACTYL and a SPONDEE,
as _ ^ | , or TROCHEE, as ^ ^ | ^ 9 probably so
called after the Adonia, the festival of Adonis.
Aesthetic Distance: A term applied by critics to describe the effect
produced when an emotion or an experience, whether autobio-
graphical or not, is so objectified by the proper use of FORM that
at can be understood as being objectively realized and independent
of the immediate personal experience of its maker. It is closely re-
lated to Keats' NEGATIVE CAPABILITY and T. S. Eliot's OBJECTIVE
CORRELATIVE. See OBJECTIVITY.
Affective Fallacy: A term used in contemporary criticism to de-
scribe the error of judging a work of art in terms of its results,
especially its emotional effect. It was introduced by W. K. Wimsatt,
Jr., and M. C. Beardsley (see The Verbal Icon, by Wimsatt) to
describe the "confusion between the poem and its result (what it
is and what it does). 99 It is a converse error to the INTENTIONAL
FALLACY. Notable examples of the affective fallacy are Aristotle's
CATHARSIS and Longinus' "transport."
Age of Johnson in English Literature: The interval between 1750
and 1798 was a transitional age in English literature. The NEO-
CLASSICISM which dominated the first half of the century was giving
way in many different ways to the impulse toward ROMANTICISM,
although the period was still predominantly neo-classical. The
NOVEL which had come into being in the decade before 1750 con-
tinued to flourish, with sentimental attitudes and GOTHIC horrors
becoming a significant part of its content. Little was accomplished
in DRAMA except for the creation of "laughing" COMEDY by Sheridan
and Goldsmith, in reaction against SENTIMENTAL COMEDY. The chief
poets were Burns, Gray, Cowper, Johnson, and Crabbe a list which
indicates how thoroughly the pendulum was swinging away from
Pope and Dryden. Yet it was Dr. Samuel Johnson, poet, lexicogra-
Age of the Romantic Triumph in England 6
pher, essayist, novelist, journalist, and neo-classic critic who was
the major literary figure, as his friend BoswelTs biography of him
(1791) was the greatest work of the age, challenged for such an
honor, perhaps, only by Gibbon's monumental history, The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776). An interest in the past,
particularly in the middle ages, in the primitive, and the literature
of the folk was developing and was feeding with increasing strength
the growing tide of ROMANTICISM. See Outline of Literary History*
NEO-CLASSIC PERIOD.
Age of the Romantic Triumph in England, 1798-1832: Although
a major Romantic poet, Robert Burns, had died in 1796 and adum-
brations of ROMANTICISM had been apparent in English writing
throughout much of the eighteenth century, the publication of
Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 is generally-
recognized as marking the beginning of a period of more than three
decades in which ROMANTICISM triumphed in British letters, a pe-
riod that is often said to have ended in 1832, with the death of Sir
Walter Scott. During these thirty-four years, the poetic careers of
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats flowered; Scott
created the historical NOVEL and made it a force in international
literature; Wordsworth and Coleridge articulated a revolutionary-
theory of Romantic poetry; Jane Austen wrote her NOVELS OF'
MANNERS; and Lamb, DeQuincey, and Hazlitt raised the PERSONAL
ESSAY to a high level of accomplishment. ROMANTICISM did not die-
with Sir Walter Scott, but the decade of the thirties saw it begin a.
process of modification as a result of the varied forces of the Vic-
torian world which played upon it. See ROMANTICISM, ROMANTIC
PERIOD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, and Outline of Literary History.
Agrarians: A term applied to a group of Southern American writers
who published in Nashville, Tennessee, between 1922 and 1925,,
The Fugitive, a LITTLE MAGAZINE of poetry and some criticism
championing agrarian REGIONALISM but attacking "the old high*
caste Brahmins of the Old South." Most of its contributors were as-
sociated with Vanderbilt University; among them were John
Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, Robert Penn Warren >
and Merrill Moore. In the 1930's they championed an agrarian
economy as opposed to that of industrial capitalism and issued a
collective manifesto, fU Take My Stand. They were active in the
publication between 1933 and 1937 of The American Review, a
7 Allegory
socio-economic magazine that also analyzed contemporary litera-
ture. They found an effective literary organ in The Southern Review
(1935-1942), under the editorship of Cleanth Brooks and Robert
Penn Warren. In addition to their poetry and novels, the Agrarians
have been prominent among the founders of the NEW CRITICISM.
Alba: A Provengal lament over the parting of lovers at the break
of day, the name coining from the Provencal word for "dawn," with
which the refrain ends. The medieval albas were inspired in large
part by Ovid. With the TROUBADOURS the albas grew to a distinct
literary form. On occasion they were religious, being addressed to
the Virgin. See AXTBADE.
Alcaics: Verses written according to the manner of the ODES of Al-
caeus, usually a four-sTANZA poem, each STANZA composed of four
lines, each line having four stresses. Since the pattern is a clas-
sical one based on quantitative measures, the type can only be
imitated in English; exact English Alcaics are practically impossible.
The most notable English attempt is in Tennyson's "Milton," which
begins: "O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies,"
Alexandrine: A verse line with six IAMBIC feet (IAMBIC HEXAM-
ETER) . The form, that of HEROIC VERSE in France, received its name
possibly from the fact that it was much used in Old French
romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries describing the ad-
ventures of Alexander the Great, possibly from the name of
Alexandre Paris, a French poet who used this meter. Its appearance
in English verse has been credited to Wyatt and Surrey. Perhaps-,
the most conspicuous instance of its successful use in English is by
Spenser, who, in his SPENSERIAN STANZA, after eight PENTAMETER
lines employed a HEXAMETER (Alexandrine) in the ninth line. Both
the line and its occasional bad effect are described in Pope's couplet:
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Allegory: A form of extended METAPHOR in which objects and
persons in a narrative, either in prose or verse, are equated with
meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. Thus it represents one
thing in the guise of another an abstraction in that of a concrete
IMAGE. The characters are usually PERSONIFICATIONS of abstract
qualities, the action and the setting representative of the relation-
Alliteration 8
ships among these abstractions. Allegory attempts to evoke a dual
interest, one in the events, characters, and setting presented, and
the other in the ideas they are intended to convey or the significance
they bear. The characters, events, and setting may be historical,
fictitious, or fabulous; the test is that these materials be so employed
in a logical organization or pattern that they represent meanings
independent of the action described in the surface story. Such
meaning may be religious, moral, political, personal, or satiric. Thus
Spenser's The Faerie Queene is on one level a chivalric KOMANCE,
but it embodies moral, religious, social, and political meanings.
Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress describes the efforts of a Christian man
to achieve a godly life by triumphing over inner obstacles to his
faith, these obstacles being represented by such outward objects as
the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair. In Swift's Gulliver's
Travels many of man's contemptible attributes are given satiric
objective expression through the adventures of a ship's surgeon.
It is important that one distinguish -clearly between allegory and
SYMBOLISM, which attempts to suggest other levels of meaning
without making a structure of ideas a formative influence on the
work as it is in allegory.
Among the kinds of allegory, in addition to those suggested
above, are PARABLE, FABLE, APOLOGUE, EXEMPLUM, and BEAST EPIC.
See also ANAGOGE.
Alliteration: The repetition of initial identical consonant sounds
or any vowel sounds in successive or closely associated words or
syllables. A good example of consonantal alliteration is Coleridge's
lines:
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free.
Vowel alliteration is shown in the sentence: "Apt alliteration's
artful aid is often an occasional ornament in prose." Alliteration of
syllables within words appears in Tennyson's lines:
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees,
OLD ENGWSH VERSIFICATION rested in large measure on alliteration,
as did much Middle English poetry. In modern times alliteration
has usually been a secondary ornament in both verse and prose,
.although poets as unlike as Whitman, Swinburne, and W. H.
9 Almanac
Auden have made extensive and skillful use of it. In our time it has
become the stock in trade of the sports writer and the advertising
copy writer, in whose hands it often produces the ludicrous effects
that Shakespeare mocked in Quince's "Prologue" in A Midsummer
Night's Dream:
Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,
He bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast.
Alliterative Romance: A METRICAL ROMANCE written in ALLITERA-
TIVE VERSE, especially one produced during the revival of interest in
alliterative poetry in the fourteenth century, e.g., William of Palerne
(unrimed long lines similar to the alliterative verse of the Old
English period), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (in stanzas made
up of varying numbers of long lines followed by five short rimed
lines), and the "alliterative" Morte Arthur e. See MEDIEVAL RO-
MANCE.
Alliterative Verse: A term used to characterize those old verse-
forms, usually Germanic in origin, in which the division of the
lines and, in fact, metrical structure generally were based on
periodic and regular repetition of certain initial letters or sounds
within the lines. See OLD ENGLISH VERSIFICATION.
Allusion: A rhetorical term applied to that figure of speech making
casual reference to a famous historical or literary figure or event.
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume.
Shakespeare
Biblical allusions are common in English literature, such as Shake-
speare's "A Daniel come to judgment," in The Merchant of Venice.
Complex literary allusion is characteristic of much modern poetry;
a good example is T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and the author's
notes to the poem.
Almanac; In medieval times an almanac was? a permanent table
showing the movements of the heavenly bodies, from which calcula-
tions for any year could be made. Almanacs date from as early as
the twelfth century. Later, almanacs or calendars for short spans
of years and, finally, for single years were prepared. A further step
in the evolution of. the form came with the inclusion of useful in-
formation, especially for farmers. This use of the almanac as a
Ambiguity 10
storehouse of general information led ultimately to such modern
works as the World Almanac, a compendium of historical and
statistical data not limited to the single year. As early as the six-
teenth century, forecasts, first of the weather and later of such
human fortunes as plagues and wars, were important features of
almanacs. Other names for almanacs in the sixteenth century were
"prognostications," "calendars," and "ephemerides" At this time
almanacs took on some features drawn from the ecclesiastical
calendars and martyrologies, such as the noting of saints' days and
church anniversaries.
The almanac figures but slightly in literature. Spenser's Shep-
heardes Calender (1579) takes its title from a French "Kalendar of
Shepards* and consists of twelve poems, under the titles of the
twelve months, with some attention paid to the seasonal implica-
tions. By the latter part of the seventeenth century almanacs con-
tained efforts at humor, consisting usually of coarse jokes. This
feature was elaborated somewhat later, with some refinements, as
in Franklin's Poor Richards Almanac (1732-1758), itself partly
inspired by the English comic almanac, Poor Robin, In Germany in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries almanacs included printed
poetry of a high order. The Davy Crockett almanacs, issued in
America between 1835 and 1856, recorded many frontier TALL
TALES based mainly on oral tradition and helped to preserve a
significant aspect of American culture.
Ambiguity: The expression of an idea in language of such a nature
as to give more than one meaning and to leave uncertainty as to
the true significance of the statement. Ambiguity may be intentional,
as when one wishes to evade a direct reply (see Juliet's replies to
her mother in Act III, Scene 5, of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet).
The chief causes of ambiguity are undue brevity and compression
of statement, "cloudy" reference of pronoun, faulty or inverted
(poetical) sequence, and the use of a word with two or more mean-
ings.
However, in literature of the highest order may be found an-
other aspect of ambiguity which results from the fact that language
functions in art on other levels than that of communication, where
ambiguity is a cardinal sin. In literature words demonstrate an
astounding capacity for suggesting two or more equally suitable
senses in a given context, for conveying a core meaning and ac-
companying it with overtones of great richness and complexity,
11 American Academy
and for operating with two or more meanings at the same time.
One of the attributes of the finest poets is their ability to tap what
I. A. Richards has called the "resourcefulness of language" and to
supercharge words with great pressures of meaning. The kind of
ambiguity which results from this capacity of words to stimulate
simultaneously several different streams of thought all of which
make sense is a genuine characteristic of the richness and concen-
tration that makes great poetry.
William Empson, in The Seven Types of Ambiguity, in 1931 ex-
tended and enriched the meaning of the term to include these
aspects of language. Although there have been those who feel that
another word than ambiguity should be used for these character-
istics of language functioning with artistic complexity (among those
suggested have been MULTIPLE MEANINGS and PLXXRISIGNAHON) ,
Empson's "seven types" of linguistic complexity "which adds some
nuance to the direct statement of prose" have proved to be effective
tools for the examination of literature. These "types of ambiguity 99
are (1) details of language which are effective in several ways at
once; (2) alternative meanings that are ultimately resolved into
the one meaning of the author; (3) two seemingly unconnected
meanings that are given in one word; (4) alternative meanings that
act together to clarify a complicated state of mind in the author;
(5) a simile that refers imperfectly to two incompatible things and
by this "fortunate confusion" shows the author discovering his idea
as he writes; (6) a statement that is so contradictory or irrelevant
that the reader is made to invent his own interpretation; and (7)
a statement so fundamentally contradictory that it reveals a basic
division in the author's mind.
American Academy of Arts and Letters: An organization parallel
in purpose to certain European societies was brought into being in
1904 to recognize distinguished accomplishment in literature, art,
or music. Historically, the American Academy owes its origin to the
activity of the American Social Science Association, which, in 1898,
realized the need for a society devoted entirely to the interests of
letters and the fine arts, and organized the National Institute of
Arts and Letters with a membership limited to 250. Six years later
it was deemed necessary to create a smaller society composed of the
most distinguished members of the Institute; accordingly, in 1904,
was organized the American Academy of Arts and Letters with a
membership limited to fifty. Though both men and women are
American Indian Literature 12
eligible, only members of the Institute may be elected to the
Academy. The society was incorporated by act of the American
Congress, April 17, 1916. The seven men first elected to member-
ship were: William Dean Howells, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Ed-
mund Clarence Stedman, John LaFarge, Samuel Langhorne
Clemens, John Hay, and Edward MacDowell. "The actual work of
the Academy is to promote American literature and art by giving
the stamp of its approval of the best that both the past and the
present have to offer." This is done through public addresses and
by bringing to the United States representatives of other academies.
Annually the National Institute awards its gold medal for distin-
guished work in literature and the arts; every five years is conferred
the William Dean Howells medal for the best American fiction; and
annually another gold medal is awarded for good diction on the
stage.
In May of each year the Academy holds a ceremonial at which
new members are elected, the medals awarded, and fifteen $1,500
arts and letters grants given. An exhibition of the works of newly
elected members and recipients of honors is held in the art gallery
and the museum at that time. The Academy occupies its own build-
ings at 633 West 155th and 632 West 156th Streets, New York
City.
American Indian Literature: See AMERIND LITERATURE.
American Language: A term used to designate certain idioms and
forms peculiar to English speech in America. As is pointed out in
the Encyclopedia Americana, these differences usually arise in one
of three ways: some forms originate in America independent of
English speech ("gerrymander" is an example); some expressions
which were once native to England have been brought here and
have lived after they had died out in England ("fall" for "autumn") ;
and certain English forms have taken on modified meanings in
America (as we use "store" for "shop"). Besides these matters of
vocabulary, H. L. Mencken points out six other respects in which
American expression differs from English: syntax, intonation, slang,
idiom, grammar, and pronunciation.
Although for many years the sensitiveness of Americans made
them deny the existence of anything like an American language^ its
existence has been recognized and its nature applauded for over a
quarter of a century. It is a unique language of American literary
13 Amerind Literature
art, impressively present in the work of writers like Mark Twain,
Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, and J. D. Salinger. Scholars
have given it serious attention; it is the subject of two major dic-
tionaries, A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles,
edited by Sir William Craigie and J. R. Hurlbert, and A Dictionary
of Americanisms, edited by M. M. Mathews; and a group of scholars,
led by Hans Kurath, is compiling a mammoth Linguistic Atlas of
the United States. Significant earlier studies were G. P. Krapp's
The English Language in America and H. L. Mencken's The
American Language and its Supplements.
American Literature, Periods of: Any division of the literary history
of a nation is an arbitrary over-simplification. In the case of
America, where the national record long predates the development
of a self-sufficient literature, the problem is complicated further
by the fact that most divisions into early periods are based upon
political and social history and most divisions into later periods
upon the dominance of literary types or movements. Almost all
historians of American literature have made their own systems of
period division. In this handbook American literature is treated in a
chronological pattern set against the dominant English movements
in the Outline of Literary History, and the characteristics of its own
periods are treated in the following articles:
COLONIAL PERIOD IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1607-1765
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD IN AMERICAN
LITERATURE, 1765-1830
ROMANTIC PERIOD IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1830-1865
REALISTIC PERIOD IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1865-1900
NATURALISTIC AND SYMBOLISTIC PERIOD IN AMERICAN LITERATURE,
1900-1930
PERIOD OF CRITICISM AND CONFORMITY IN AMERICAN LITERA-
TURE, 1930
If read in this sequence, these articles will give a brief history
of American writing by periods.
Amerind Literature: That body of writing and oral tradition de-
veloped by the various aboriginal tribes of America. The term is a
combination of syllables from American and Indian. Originally
transmitted almost entirely by word of mouth, the literature was
at first such as could easily be memorized: the rituals of annual
Amphibrach * 4
festivals, tribal traditions, narrative accounts of gods and heroes.
Since much of this literature grew up about the rhythmic accents
of the ceremonial drum, it took on a regularity of metric pattern
which gave it the quality of poetry; another part, perhaps less as-
sociated with ceremonials, was more simply natural in its re-
counting of events and took the form of prose. A characteristic
quality of this Amerind language is its building of many ideas into
one term. ("Hither-whiteness-comes-walking" being, according to
Mary Austin, the Algonquin parallel for "dawn.") Most of this
literature known to us today is confined to a few types: the EPIC, the
folk-tale, the DHAMA, ritualistic and ceremonial exercises, and nar-
ratives of adventure. A useful collection is The Winged Serpent: An
Anthology of American Indian Prose and Poetry, edited by Margot
Astrov.
The PORTMANTEAU WORD Amerind is today less widely used than
the longer term, American Indian.
Amphibrach: A metrical FOOT in verse consisting of three syllables,
the first and last unaccented, the second accented,
.Example: ar range ment.
Amphigory or Amphigouri: Verse that sounds well but contains
little or no sense or meaning; either NONSENSE VERSE, like Edward
Lear's, or nonsensical PARODY, like Swinburne's self-mockery in
^Nephelidia," which begins: "From the depth of the dreamy decline
of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous moonshine."
Amphimacher: A metrical FOOT in verse, consisting of three syl-
lables, the first and last accented, the second unaccented. Example:
attitude.
Amplification: A figure of speech by which bare expressions, likely
to be ignored or misunderstood by a hearer or reader because of
their bluntness, are emphasized through restatement with additional
detail. The device is used in music, oratory, and poetry quite com-
monly. The chief danger accompanying the use of amplification is
that prolix writers wiU so elaborate a statement as to rob it even of
its original meaning. Holofernes, in Shakespeare's Love's Labours
Lost, affords a perfect example of the evils of over-amplification:
He drawedi out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his
argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-
15 Anacoluthon
devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak doubt, fine,
when he should say doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt,
d,e,b,t, not d,e,t; he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour
vocatur nebour, neigh, abbreviated ne. This is abhominable, which he
would call abominable, it insinuateth me of insanie: anne intettigis,
domine? To make frantic, lunatic.
Ana: Miscellaneous sayings, anecdotes, gossip, and scraps of
information about a particular person, place, or event; or a book
which records such sayings and anecdotes. Englishmen in the
seventeenth century were much devoted to this type of writing and
to the collecting of anecdotes. The Table Talk of John Selden
(1689) is a typical collection of such curiosities of literature. The
term also exists as a suffix, as in Goldsmithiflna, where it denotes a
collection of miscellaneous information about Goldsmith.
Anachronism: False assignment of an event, a person, a scene,
language in fact anything to a time when that event or thing
or person was not in existence. Shakespeare is guilty of sundry
anachronisms such as his placing cannon in King John, a play
dealing with a time many years before cannon came into use in
England, The anachronism, however, is a greater sin to the realist
than to the romanticist, and may or may not be important according
to its effect on the literary structure as a whole. Humorists some-
times use anachronisms as comic or satiric devices. Mark Twain's
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court rests on a sustained,
satirically humorous anachronism.
Anacoluthon: The failure, accidental or deliberate, to complete a
sentence according to the structural plan on which it was started.
Used accidentally, anacoluthic writing is, of course, a vice; used
deliberately for emotional or rhetorical effect it is a recognized
figure of speech, effective especially in oratory. The term is also
applied to units of composition larger than the sentence when there
is within the unit an obvious incoherency among the parts. Browning
is very much given to this sort of construction; the following stanza
from A Toccata of Galuppis will serve as an illustration:
Ay, because the sea's the street there; and
'tis arched by ... what you call
. . . Shylock's bridge with houses on it,
where they kept the carnival:
I was never out of England it's as if I
saw it all.
Anacreontic Poetry 16
Anacreontic Poetry: Verse in the mood and manner of the lyrics
of the Greek poet Anacreon; that is, poems characterized by an
erotic, amatory, or Bacchanalian spirit. The characteristic Anac-
reontic STANZA consists of four lines rhyming abab, each line com-
posed of three trochaic feet with one long syllable added at the end
of the line: ^ \ _ | ^ |
Anacrusis: A term denoting one or more extra unaccented syllables
at the beginning of a VERSE before the regular RHYTHM of the line
makes its appearance. Literally an upward or back beat. R, M.
Alden in his English Verse cites the third verse of the following
stanza from Shelley as an example:
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Anagnorisis: In drama, the DISCOVERY or RECOGNITION that leads
to the PERIPETEIA or reversal.
Anagoge (or Anagogy) : In Biblical and allegorical interpretation,
the mystical or spiritual meaning of words or passages. For ex*
ample, when certain passages in Virgil were interpreted in the
Middle Ages as foretelling the coming of Christ they were being
given anagogical interpretations. It is the highest of the FOUR SENSES
OF INTERPRETATION, the others being the literal, the allegorical, and
the moral. Thus, Jerusalem is literally a city in Palestine, allegorically
the Church, morally the believing soul, and anagogically the
heavenly City of God. These levels of meaning are regularly ap-
plied to Dante's Divine Comedy.
Anagram: A word or phrase made by transposing the letters of
another word or phrase, as "cask*' is an anagram of "sack," Ana-
grams have usually been employed simply as an exercise of one's
ingenuity, but deserve mention here since writers have sometimes
used them in verses and other work to conceal proper names or
veiled messages. It is said, too, that some of the astronomers of the
seventeenth century used anagrams to conceal certain of their dis-
coveries until such time as it was convenient to announce their
findings. Anagrams have been used rather frequently as a means of
coining pseudonyms, as "Calvinus" became "Alcuinus", "Byran
!7 Analytical Criticism
Waller Procter" became "Barry Cornwall, poet", and "Arouet, l.j."
(le jeune) is said to have given the name "Voltaire" to the world.
Erewhon is an instance of an anagram as a book title. A variety of
the anagram, the PALINDROME, is an arrangement of letters which
gives the same meaning whether read forward or backward and is
illustrated in the remark by which Adam is alleged to have intro-
duced himself to his wife upon her first appearance before him:
"Madam, I'm Adam/'
Analecta (Analects): Literary gleanings, fragments, or selected
passages from the writings of an author or different authors; also
the title for a collection of choice extracts, e.g., Analects -from
Confucius.
Analogue: This word, meaning something that is analogous to or
like another given thing, has two special uses of interest to the
student of literature: (1) philologically, an analogue may mean a
cognate or word in one language coresponding with one in another,
as the English word "mother" is an analogue of the Latin word
mater kinship or common origin is usually implied; (2) in literary
history two versions of the same story may be called analogues,
especially if no direct relationship can be established though a re-
mote one is probable. Thus the story of the pound of flesh in Gesta
Romanorum may be called an analogue of the similar plot in The
Merchant of Venice.
Analogy: A comparison of two things, alike in certain respects;
particularly a method of EXPOSITION by which one unfamiliar object
or idea is explained by comparing it in certain of its similarities with
other objects or ideas more familiar. In ARGUMENTATION and logic
analogy is also frequently used to establish contentions, it being
argued, for instance, that since A works certain results, B, which
is like A in vital respects, will also accomplish the same results.
Analogy, however, is often a treacherous weapon since few different
objects or ideas are essentially the same to more than a superficial
observer or thinker.
Analytical Criticism: A term applied to criticism which views the
work of art as an autonomous whole and believes that its meaning,
nature, and significance can be discovered by applying rigorous and
logical systems of analysis to its several parts and their organization.
Anapest 18
The work of the NEW CRITICS is often called analytical criticism.
See NEW CRITICS; CRITICISM, TYPES OF.
Anapest: A metrical FOOT in verse, consisting of three syllables,
with two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one
(^^ ). The following lines from Shelley's Cloud are anapestic:
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
Anaphora: One of the devices of REPETITION, in which the same
expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two or
more lines, clauses, or sentences. It is one of the most obvious of
the devices used in the poetry of Walt Whitman.
Anastrophe: A rhetorical term signifying inversion of the usual,
normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence. Anastrophe is
deliberate rather than accidental and is used, as in verse, to secure
BHYIHM or to gain EMPHASIS or EUPHONY.
Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain
Roar'd for the handkerchief that caus'd his pain.
Pope
Anathema: A formal and solemn denunciation or imprecation,
particularly as pronounced by the Greek or Roman Catholic Church
against an individual, an institution, or a doctrine. The form con-
ventionally reads: Si quis dixerit, etc., anathema sit, "If any one
should say (so and so) let him be anathema." One of its most
notable appearances in English literature is in Sterne's Tristram
Shandy (Vol. Ill, Ch. XI, pp. 171-177 in the Odyssey edition) .
Anatomy: Used even as early as Aristotle in the figurative sense of
logical dissection or analysis > this term, which originally meant
"dissection'* in a medical sense, came into common use in England
late in the sixteenth century in the meaning thus explained by
Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): "What it is,
with all the lands, causes, symptoms, prognostickes, and severall
cures of it." There are several pieces in English literature preceding
Burton in which the medical sense of anatomy is still less evident,
such as Thomas Nash's Anatomy of Absurdity, and John Lyly's
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit. The anatomies anticipated to some
degree the characteristics of the essay and philosophical and
19 Ancients and Moderns
scientific treatises of the seventeenth century. The term is also used
by Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism, to designate the
kind of narrative prose work organized around ideas and dealing
with intellectual themes and attitudes by piling up masses of
erudition around the theme, after the manner of Menippean satire.
Sterne's Tristram Shandy is an example, as are the whaling chapters
in Melville's Moby Dick.
Ancients and Moderns, Quarrel of the: In a broad sense, every age
has its battle of the "ancients" and the "moderns" in the conflict
between old ideas and standards of taste and new ones. Specifically,
the phrase is used in literary history to designate the complicated
controversy which took place in France and England in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries over the relative merits
of classical and contemporary thinkers, writers, and artists. Some
of the forces which stimulated the dispute were the RENAISSANCE in
Western Europe, which produced both a reverence for classical
authority and a desire to emulate classical writers; the growth of
the new science in the seventeenth century; and the interest in such
philosophical ideas as the doctrine of progress.
The dispute in France centered about the vigorous advocacy of
the cause of the moderns by Charles Perrault, whose position re-
ceived support from Fontenelle, Thomas Corneille, P. Perrault, and
others. These moderns were opposed by Boileau, Racine, La
Fontaine, La Bruyere, and others. Perrault in his poem (1687)
lauding the age of Louis XIV and in his famous Paralleles des
anciens et des modernes (168&-1697) and Fontenelle in his
Digression $ur les anciens et des modernes (1688) held that in art
and poetry the efforts of the moderns showed superior taste and
greater polish of form as compared with those of the ancients. The
moderns were said to profit from improved methods of reasoning,
scientific inventions, and Christianity. The philosophical doctrines
of Descartes (1596-1650), who had rejected Aristotle, lent support
to the moderns. The long-established assumption of the superiority
of classical thought and art was thus vigorously challenged (see
HUMANISM, CLASSICISM) .
In England, the "battle of the books" began with the publication
of Sir William Temple's An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern
Learning (1690). Temple, who rejected the doctrine of progress
and criticized the "pretensions" and "visions" of the members of the
Royal Society, upheld the claims of the ancients in many fields and
Anecdote 20
could not see that they were inferior to the moderns in knowledge or
genius. The new inventions had not led to practical improvements.
Modern students are not agreed as to whether Temple's work was
an outgrowth of the French quarrel or was a natural result of the
opposition which had existed in England for some forty years to the
"advanced" thinkers who, under the inspiration of Bacon's writings
and the ardent leadership of the Royal Society, had broken with
the past and were espousing the new philosophy and the new
science (Richard Boyle, Joseph Glanvil, Thomas Sprat, and others).
Temple was answered in 1694 by William Wotton in an ambitious
treatise, Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, in which
he gave the palm to the moderns in most, though not all, branches
of learning. The scientific as opposed to the literary aspects of the
quarrel were particularly stressed in England, the English moderns
generally being willing to admit the superiority of the ancients in
such fields as poetry, oratory, and art.
An episode which aroused much interest arose over the Letters
of Phalaris, which Temple listed as a praiseworthy ancient work.
Charles Boyle, an Oxford man, presently republished these letters
and attacked Dr. Richard Bentley, Keeper of the King's Libraries
and later Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, for an alleged
slight. When Wotton published a second edition of his essay (1697),
Bentley included in it an appendix which not only criticized Boyle's
edition, but presented evidence, later elaborated in his famous
Dissertation (1699), for believing that the Phalaris letters were
spurious. Thus a classical scholar appeared as a champion of the
moderns; in fact, Bentley employed the methods of the new science
in the field of classical literature itself, and his study went far
toward initiating modern historical scholarship. Jonathan Swift, in
the "digressions" of the Tale of a Tub (written ca.1696) and in his
famous Battle of the Books (written or.1697, pub. 1704) the most
important literary document produced by the controversy in
England undertook the defense of his patron Temple, though
Swift's satire is not altogether one-sided. Perhaps the most significant
result of the whole dispute lies in the impetus it gave to the
liberalizing forces which were attempting to stimulate progress
through the emancipation of the human spirit from the depressing
effect of a too unyielding devotion to established tradition.
Anecdote: A short narrative detailing particulars of an interesting
EPISODE or event. In careful usage the term most frequently refers
21 Anglo-Latin
to a narrated incident in the life of an important person and should
lay claim to an element of truth. Though anecdotes are often used
by writers as the basis for short stories, an anecdote definitely
differs from a SHORT STORY in that it lacks complicated PLOT and is
unified in its presentation of time and place elements and in its
relation of a single EPISODE. At one time the term connoted secret
and private details of a man's career given forth in the spirit of
gossip, though now it is used generally to cover any brief narrative
of particulars. Anecdotic literature has a long heritage extending
from ancient through modern times and comprising books as dif-
ferent as the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus, the Lives of Plutarch,
the Anecdotes of Percy, and the Anecdota of Procopius. The term
still retains something of its original sense of an unpublished item.
Anglicism: A peculiarity of expression or IDIOM characteristic of
the English language and distinguishing it from other languages.
The term is also given to foreign expressions when taken over into
English and forced to conform to English usage and syntax. Any
form of expression peculiar to the English. In the United States it
is used also to refer to a word or expression used particularly in
England but not in common use in the United States.
Anglo-Catholic Revival: See OXFORD MOVEMENT.
Anglo-French: See ANGLO-NORMAN (LANGUAGE).
Anglo-Irish Literature: Literature produced in English by Irish
writers, especially those living in Ireland and actuated by a
conscious purpose to utilize Celtic materials, often employing an
English style flavored by Irish idioms, called "Hibernian English"
or "Anglo-Irish." See CELTIC RENAISSANCE.
Anglo-Latin: A term applied to the learned literature produced
in Latin by Englishmen or others dwelling in England during the
MIDDLE ENGLISH period. It is largely in prose and includes
CHRONICLES, serious treatises on theology, philosophy, law, history,
and science, though SATIRE (like Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium)
and LIGHT VERSE (like the GOLIARDIC SONGS) were also written,
as well as hymns and prayers and religious plays. See ANGLO-
NORMAN PERIOD and MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD.
Anglo-Norman (Language) 22
Anglo-Norman (Language). The term Anglo-Norman (also Anglo-
French) is applied to the French language as it was used in England
in the period following the Norman Conquest (ca. 1100-1350)
and also to the literature written in Anglo-Norman. The relations
of France and England were so close during this period that it is
difficult to be certain in all cases whether a given writer or work is
to be classed as Anglo-Norman or merely as French. Although the
terms Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French are commonly used inter-
changeably, some writers make distinctions that have given each
term special meanings. Thus Anglo-French is sometimes used to
designate French that shows the definite influence of English
idioms. Anglo-Norman is often restricted to the early period of
Norman times (1066 and immediately following) and is sometimes
used to denote pieces written in England by persons of Norman
descent using the Norman dialect of French. A third term Franco-
Norman is also used in this ktter sense* See ANGLO-NORMAN
PERIOD,
Anglo-Norman Period: The period in English literature between
1100 and 1350, so-called because of the dominance of Norman-
French culture, art, and language. The period is also often called
the Early Middle English Period and is frequently dated from the
triumph of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in
1066, although it was early in the twelfth century before the impact
of Norman culture was marked on the English or before the Norman
conquerors began to think of themselves as inhabitants of the
British Isles.
In Europe this was the age of the great crusades and the period
of the dominance of French literature. In England, under Henry I,
Stephen, and the Plantagenet Kings Henry II, Richard the Lion-
Hearted, and John, the conquered Saxon natives and the Norman
lords were establishing the working pattern of government that
reached its epitomizing statement in the Magna Charta of 1215.
Throughout the period the characteristics that are usually as-
sociated with Engknd were developing. Feudalism was established.
Parliament came into being, with a movement toward definite
limits on the power of the monarchy. Oxford and Cambridge rose
as strong universities. The Old English language, for a period after
the Conquest the tongue of conquered slaves, not only survived in
the period but blended with the French dialect of the Norman
victors. Gradually it emerged as the language of England, a fact
23 Anglo-Norman Period
that King John's successor, Henry III, recognized when in 1258 he
used English as well as French in a proclamation. By 1300 English
was becoming again the language of the upper classes and was be-
ginning to displace French in schools and legal pleadings. Henry
III was succeeded in 1272 by the first of the three Edwards, who
ruled England for over a hundred years (until 1377).
Latin was the language used for learned works, French for
courtly literature, and English chiefly for popular works religious
plays, METRICAL ROMANCES, and popular BALLADS. On the continent
Dante, the Chanson de Roland, and Boccaccio flourished. In Eng-
land and France the body of legend and artful invention that gave
England its national hero, Arthur, was coming into being in French,
Latin, and English through the work of writers like Chretien de
Troyes, Wace, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Walter Map, and Layamon.
(See ARTHURIAN LEGEND.)
Writings in native English were few. The last entry in the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicles was made at Peterborough in 1154. About 1170
a long didactic poem in FOURTEENERS, the Poema Morale, appeared.
Early in the twelfth century English METRICAL ROMANCES using
English themes began to appear, the first being King Horn. Such
ROMANCES flourished throughout the period. The DRAMA made its
first major forward leaps in this period. The first recorded MIRACLE
PLAY in England, The Play of St. Catherine, was performed at
Dunstable about 1100. By 1300 the MYSTERY PLAYS were moving
outside the churches and into the hands of the town guilds. The
establishment of the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1311 led to the
great extension of the CYCLIC DRAMAS and to the use of movable
stages or PAGEANTS. The Chester CYCLE was composed around 1328.
Native English poetry, both in the older alliterative tradition and
in the newer French forms, continued to develop. About 1250 came
"The Owl and the Nightingale," the most famous English DEBAT
poem; about the same time lyric verse was getting under way with
"Sumer is Icumen in." About 1300 came the heavily didactic
Cursor Mundi, and around 1340 the popular The Pricke of Con-
science, describing the misery of earth and glory of heaven
and often ascribed to Richard Rolle of Hampole.
But significant as these works are in the developing strength of
native English writing > the period between 1100 and 1350 is pre-
dominantly the age of the Latin CHRONICLE and of the glories of
French and Anglo-Norman writings. Throughout the period, but
particularly in the twelfth century, a veritable cultural renaissance
Anglo-Saxon 24
was occurring which expressed itself in England primarily through
imaginative literature written in ANGLO-NORMAN. In general it
follows the lines of the contemporary literature of France itself
and embraces (to follow Professor Schofield's list) ROMANCES, tales,
historical works, political poems and SATIRES, LEGENDS and SAINTS'
LIVES, didactic works, LYRICS and DEBATS, as well as religious
DRAMA. The rich culture of the court of Henry II proved a fertile
field for these works, and the problem of deciding which shall be
classed as ANGLO-NORMAN and which French today defies solution.
By 1350, however, the French qualities of grace, harmony, humor,
and chivalric idealism together with its many lyric forms, worldly
subjects, and accentual meters had been absorbed into the main-
stream of English writing; and in folk BALLAD, in CYCLE PLAY, in
both alliterative verse and accentual poem, England was ready for
a new flowering of native literary art. See The Outline of Literary
History, under "Anglo-Norman Period."
Anglo-Saxon: A Teutonic tribal group resident in England in post-
Roman times. In the fifth and sixth centuries the Angles and Saxons
from the neighborhood of what is now known as Schleswig-Holstein,
together with the Jutes, invaded and conquered Britain. From the
Angles came the name England (Angle-land). After Alfred (ninth
century) , king of the West Saxons, conquered the Danish-English
people of the Anglian territory, the official name for his subjects
was, in Latin, AngB et Saxones (the English themselves were in-
clined to use the term Engle and call their language Englisc). In
later times the term Anglo-Saxons came to be used to distinguish the
residents of England from the Saxons still resident in Europe
proper. The term is now broadly used to distinguish the English
peoples whether resident in England, America, or the various
possessions. See OLD ENGLISH PERIOD, ENGLISH LANGUAGE,
Anglo-Saxon Versification: See OLD ENGLISH VERSIFICATION.
Animal Epic: See BEAST EPIC.
Annals: Narratives of historical events recorded year by year. Such
records in Rome in Cicero's time were known as annales maximi
because they were kept by the pontifex maximus. Anglo-Saxon
monks in the seventh century developed another sort of annals by
25 Antagonist
recording in ecclesiastical calendars after given dates important
events of the year. This practice developed into such records as the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Both annals (as in Ireland) and CHRON-
ICLES (as in England) were frequently written long after the events
recorded had taken place, the dating being sometimes more or less
speculative, especially when efforts were being made to "syn-
chronize" events in secular and in Biblical or ecclesiastical history.
The term annals in modern times is sometimes used rather loosely
for historical narrative not recorded by years and for digests and
records of deliberative bodies and of scientific and artistic organiza-
tions, like Annals of Congress, Annals of Music, Annals of Mathe-
matics. Although annals and CHRONICLES are often used inter-
changeably, the term annals technically implies a greater emphasis
upon the progress or succession of events from year to year. When
used in a figurative sense, the term implies events of great mo-
ment, as in Gray's reference to "The short and simple annals of
the poor," and Carlyle's statement that "happy are the people
whose annals are blank." See CHRONICLE.
Annuals: Books appearing in successive numbers at intervals of
one year and usually reviewing the events of the year within
specified fields of interest, as college annuals. The term is sometimes
applied also to such compendiums as the World Almanac, embrac-
ing historical data and miscellaneous statistics covering a long range
of years. In nineteenth century England and America the term was
used to designate yearly compilations of tales, poems, and essays,
illustrated with plates and handsomely bound, issued in the fall of
the year for sale around Christmas as GIFT-BOOKS. They were
popular in England between 1822 and 1856, and they were equally
successful in America. They are significant in literary history in
America because they were the best American market in the first
half of the nineteenth century for short fiction, and a number of the
distinguished works of writers like Hawthorne, Poe, and Simms
first appeared in them. They bore descriptive and sentimental
titles, such as The Gift, Friendship's Offering, The Odd-Fellow's
Offering, and The Token.
Antagonist: The character in FICTION or DRAMA who stands directly
opposed to the PROTAGONIST. A rival or opponent of the PROTAGO-
NIST. See PROTAGONIST.
Anthem 26
Anthem: In its popular use refers to any song of praise, rejoicing,
or reverence. These emotions when related to one's country find
expression in national anthems; when in praise of one's deity, in
religious anthems. More restrictedly, an anthem is an arrangement
of words from the Bible, usually from the Psalms, planned for
church worship. Formerly it was essential that the music for an
anthem be arranged for responsive singing, either by two choirs, a
priest and a choir, or in another of various similar combinations.
Anthology: Literally "a gathering of flowers," the term is used to
designate a collection of writing, either poetry or prose, usually by
various authors. Although anthologies are made by many different
principles of selection and to serve a wide variety of purposes, one
of the most important of their uses is the introduction of contempor-
ary, unknown writers to the public. The Anthology, perhaps the
most famous of all such collections, is a gathering of some 4,500
short Greek poems composed between 490 B.C. and A.D. 1000. The
Bible is sometimes considered an anthology, as is also The Koran.
A number of anthologies have been important in English literary
history, among them Tottel's Miscellany (1559), which published
the chief works of Wyart and Surrey; England's Helicon (1602),
which published works of Sidney and Spenser; Percy's Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry (1765); and Palgrave's Golden Treasury
(1861), a collection of standard works of English poets,
Anticlimax: The arrangement of descriptive or narrative details in
such an order than the lesser, the trivial, or the ludricrous confronts
the reader at the point where he expects something greater and more
serious. When unintentionally done in plotting, the effect is badly
destructive. The term is customarily used to describe a stylistic ef-
fect resulting from a sudden or gradual decrease in interest or im-
portance in the items of a series of two or more statements. The op-
posite of climactic order. Anticlimax is both a weakness and a
strength in writing; when effectively and intentionally used it
greatly increases emphasis through its humorous effect; when un-
intentionally employed its result is bathetic (see BATHOS). An ex-
ample of its deliberate use is found in Pope's Rape of the Lock:
Not youthful kings in battle seiz'd alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive
Not ardent lovers robb'd of all their bliss,
27 Antiquarianism
Not ancient ladies when refus'd a lass,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteaus pinn'd awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravish'd hair.
Unintentional anticlimax may be illustrated by this sentence (if it
is unintentional) : "The duty of a sailor in the navy is to protect his
country and to peel potatoes."
Antimasque: A grotesque, usually humorous dance interspersed
among the beautiful and serious actions and dances of a MASQUE. It
was often performed by professional actors and dancers and served
as a foil to the MASQUE proper, performed by courtly amateurs. The
development and possibly the origin of the antimasque are due to
Ben Jonson. See MASQUE.
Antiphrasis: IRONY, the satirical or humorous use of a word or
phrase to convey an idea exactly opposite to its real significance.
Thus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar Antony ironically refers to
Caesar's murderers as "honorable men."
Antiquarianism: The study of old times through any available relics,
especially literary and artistic. The antiquarian impulse is associated
with history, folklore, social customs, patriotism, religion, and other
interests. It is widespread in its manifestations and has existed
among all nations, even in their primitive periods. The medieval
CHRONICLES and SAINTS' LIVES reflect it, as does such a specific move-
ment as the revival of the native English ALLITERATIVE VERSE in the
fourteenth century. Antiquarianism as an organized effort in Eng-
land, however, is associated with the sixteenth century. In 1533
Henry VIII appointed John Leland the "King's Antiquary" and sent
him throughout England to examine and collect old documents
from libraries, cathedrals, colleges, abbeys, and monasteries. Le-
land's notes were of much use to later writers like Holinshed, and
his work formed the basis for the Society of Antiquaries (1572-
1605), of which Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne, and other literary
men were members. Much of the literature of the RENAISSANCE,
such as the CHRONICLES, HISTORY-PLAYS, topographical poems (like
Drayton's Polyolbion), and patriotic EPICS (like Spenser's Faerie
Queene), reflects the antiquarian movement. William Camden was
one of die greatest of Elizabethan antiquarians.
Antistrophe 28
In the seventeenth century Fuller's Worthies, John Aubrey's
Lives, Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors, and the books of An-
thony a Wood (historian of Oxford University) are antiquarian in
spirit. In the eighteenth century antiqitarianism was largely moti-
vated by the philosophical interest in primitive man, and explains
in part Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (a col-
lection of old ballads), the CELTIC REVIVAL, and the LITERARY
FORGERIES of Chatterton and Macpherson. Indeed, the antiquarian
interest formed an important phase of the ROMANTIC MOVEMENT.
The GOTHIC ROMANCES and the HISTORICAL NOVELS and METRICAL
ROMANCES of Scott reflect it, and even Wordsworth's famous theories
about the relation of poetry to the emotions and language of simple
men are sometimes traced partly to the effect of the antiquarian
impulse.
Antistrophe: One of the three stanzaic forms of the Greek choral
ODE, the others being STROPHE and EPODE. It is identical with the
STROPHE, which precedes it, in METER. As the chorus sang the
STROPHE they moved from right to left; in singing the antistrophe
they exactly retraced these steps, moving back to the original posi-
tion. In rhetoric, the term describes the reciprocal conversion of the
same words in succeeding phrases or clauses, as, "the master of the
servant, the servant of the master." See ODE.
Antithesis: A figure of speech characterized by strongly contrast-
ing words, clauses, sentences, or ideas. A balancing of one term
against another for impressiveness and emphasis. An attractive de-
vice when used within reason, antithetical expression with some
authors becomes a vice. Certain writers make a mannerism of it.
Pope, in the Rape of the Lock for example, relies on this figure so
frequently that its significance, which lies in the quality of surprise
afforded by the sudden contrast, is likely to be lost in the regularity
of its recurrence. "Man proposes, God disposes" is an example of
antithesis, as is the second line of the following characteristic Pope
couplet:
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jury-men may dine.
True antithetical structure demands that there be not only an op-
position of idea, but that the opposition in different parts be mani-
fested through similar grammatical structure, the noun "wretches"
29 Apocryphal
being opposed by the noun "jury-men" and the verb "hang" by the
verb "dine" in the above example.
Aphorism: A concise statement of a principle or precept given in
pointed words. The term was first used by Hippocrates, whose
Aphorisms were tersely worded medical precepts, synthesized from
experience. It was later applied to statements of general principle
briefly given in a variety of practical fields, such as law, politics,
and art. Aphorism implies specific authorship and compact, telling
expression. The opening sentence of Hippocrates' Aphorisms is a
justly famous example: "Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleet-
ing, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult."
Apocryphal: Now commonly means "spurious," because "apocry-
pha," which originally meant hidden or secret things, became the
term used to denote Biblical books not regarded as inspired, and
hence excluded from the sacred CANON. Saint Jerome (A.D. 331-
420) is said to be the first writer to apply the term to the un-
canonical books now known as the Apocrypha. Apocryphal books
connected with both the Old and the New Testament circulated in
great numbers in the early Middle Ages. Almost all literary types
found in the Bible are represented by apocryphal compositions.
Examples of Old Testament apocrypha include: The Book of Enoch
(vision), Life of Adam and Eve (legend), The Wisdom of Solo-
mon (wisdom book), The Testament of Abraham (testament), and
the Psalter of Solomon (hymns). New Testament types include:
Acts of Matthew (apostolic "acts") , Third Epistle to the Corinthians
(epistle), Apocalypse of Peter (vision), and Gospel of Peter (gos-
pel) . These books abound in miracles, accounts of the boyhood of
Jesus, reported wise sayings of sacred character, and martyrdoms.
Influence of apocryphal literature, blended with authentic Biblical
influence, was exerted on such medieval literary types as saints' leg-
ends, visions, sermons, and even ROMANCES. Certain books accepted
by the medieval church but rejected by Protestants became apocry-
phal in the sixteenth century, such as Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and
Maccabees, though they were usually printed in Protestant Bibles as
useful for edification but not authoritative in determining doctrine.
Writings that have been attributed to authors but have not been
generally accepted in the CANON of their works are also called
apocryphal. Thus there are Shakespeare apocrypha and Chaucer
apocrypha. See CANON.
Apologue 30
Apologue: A fictitious narrative about animals or inanimate objects,
which, by acting like human beings, reflect the weaknesses and fol-
lies of mankind. A more bookish term for FABLE. See FABLE.
Apology: Two special uses of the word may be noted. It often ap-
pears in literature, especially in literary titles, in its older sense of
"defense," as in Stevenson's Apology for Idlers and Sidney's Apolo-
gie for Poetrie. The Latin form apologia is also used in this sense, as
in Cardinal Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua. No admission of
wrong-doing or expression of regret is involved. Apology is also an
old spelling for APOLOGUE, a fable.
Apophasis: A rhetorical figure denoting that convention in speech
or writing wherein one makes an assertion even while he seems or
pretends to suppress or deny it. "Were I not aware of your high
reputation for honesty, I should say that I believe you connived at
the fraud yourself/ 7
Aposiopesis: The deliberate failure to complete a sentence. As a
figure of speech the form is frequently used to convey an impres-
sion of extreme exasperation or to imply a threat, as, "If you do
that, why, 111 ." Aposiopesis differs from ANACOLUTHON in that
the latter completes a sentence in irregular structural arrangement;
the former leaves the sentence incomplete.
Apostrophe: A figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not
always absent), some abstract quality, or a non-existent personage is
directly addressed as though present. Characteristic instances of
apostrophe are found in the invocations to the muses in poetry
And chiefly Thou, Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st;
Or, to quote Milton again:
Hail, Holy Light, offspring of Heaven firstborn!
The form is frequently used in patriotic oratory, the speaker ad-
dressing some glorious leader of the past and invoking his aid in the
present. Since apostrophe is chiefly associated with deep emotional
expression, the form is readily adopted by humorists for purposes of
PARODY and SATIRE.
31 Archetype
Apothegm: A sharply pointed and often startling maxim, more par-
ticularly centered and practical than an APHORISM, although like it
in other respects. A famous example is Johnson's "Patriotism is the
last refuge of a scoundrel." See APHORISM.
Apprenticeship Novel: A NOVEL which recounts the youth and
young manhood of a sensitive PEOTAGONIST who is attempting to
learn the nature of the world, discover its meaning and pattern, and
acquire a philosophy of life and "the art of living." Goethe's Wilhelm
Meister is the archetypal apprenticeship novel; noted examples in
English are Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh, James Joyce's
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Somerset Maugham's Of
Human Bondage, and Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. The
apprenticeship novel is sometimes called a bildungsroman. (For a
detailed statement of its characteristics, see Susanne Howe, Wilhelm
Meister and His English Kinsmen,, Ch. I.)
Arcadian: Arcadia, a picturesque plateau region in Greece, the re-
puted home of PASTORAL poetry, was pictured by PASTORAL poets
as a land of ideal rural peace and contentment. Arcadian suggests
an idealized rural simplicity and contentment such as shepherds in
conventional PASTORAL poetry exhibited. It is sometimes used as
synonymous with BUCOLIC or PASTORAL. Sir Philip Sidney, following
Italian precedent, uses Arcadia as the title of his PASTORAL RO-
MANCE. See ECLOGUE, PASTORAL, IDYL.
Archaism: Obsolete DICTION, phrasing, IDIOM, or syntax. Used in-
tentionally and effectively an archaic STYLE is valuable in recreating
the atmosphere and spirit of the past, as in Spenser's The Faerie
Queene; unless carefully controlled, however, archaisms result in
an artificial and affected STYLE so absurd as to defeat the purpose
of the writer.
Archetype: A term brought into literary criticism from the depth
psychology of Carl Jung, who holds that behind each individual's
"unconscious" the blocked-off residue of his past lies the "col-
lective unconscious" of the human race the blocked-off memory
of our racial past, even of our prehuman experiences. This uncon-
scious racial memory makes powerfully effective for us a group of
, "primordial images" shaped by the repeated experience of our an-
cestors and expressed in MYTHS, religions, dreams, fantasies, and
Architectonics 32
powerfully in literature. T. S. Eliot says, "The pre-logical mentality
persists in civilized man, but becomes available only to or through
the poet." The "primordial image" which taps this "pre-logical men-
tality" is called the archetype.
ITie literary critic applies the term to an IMAGE, a descriptive de-
tail, a PLOT pattern, or a character type that occurs frequently in
literature, MYTH, religion, or folklore and is, therefore, believed to
evoke profound emotions in the reader because it awakens a primor-
dial image in his unconscious memory and thus calls into play il-
logical but strong responses. The archetypal critic studies the poem,
play, or novel in terms of the images or patterns it has in common
with other poems, plays, or novels, and thus by extension as a por-
tion of the total human experience. In this sense the archetype is,
as Northrop Frye defines it, "a symbol, usually an image, which
recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element
of one's literary experience as a whole/' (For an extensive treatment,
see Maud Bodkin's Archetypal Patterns in Poetry.)
Architectonics: A critical term which expresses collectively those
structural qualities of proportion, UNITY, EMPHASIS, and scale which
make a piece of writing proceed logically and smoothly from be-
ginning to end with no waste effort, no faulty omissions. The re-
quirements of architectonics, a term borrowed from architecture, are
felt to have been fulfilled when a piece of literature impresses a
reader as a building, carefully planned and constructed, impresses
the spectator. Currently the term is used to describe the successful
achieving of organic unity, of "the companionship of the whole," in
which the parts are not only perfectly articulated but are combined
into an integrated whole, so that the work has meaning not through
its parts but through its total organism.
Areopagus: The "hill of Ares (Mars)," the seat of the highest judi-
cial court in ancient Athens. By association the name has come to
represent any court of final authority. In this sense Milton used the
term in his Areopagitica, addressed to the British parliament on the
question of censorship and the licensing of books.
"The Areopagus" is the name used for what some literary histo-
rians believe was a sort of literary club existing in London shortly
before 1580, supposed to be analogous with the Pteiade group in
France. Whether there was a formal club or not is doubtful, but it
is true that certain writers and critics, including Gabriel Harvey,
33 Arminianism
Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and Sir Edward Dyer were en-
gaged in a "movement" to reform English versification on the prin-
ciples of classical prosody. In their best work, however, Sidney and
Spenser abandoned these experiments in classical measures in favor
of Italian, French, and native English forms.
Argument: A prose statement summarizing the plot or stating the
meaning of a long poem or occasionally of a play. The best known
English examples are Milton's Arguments to each of the books of
Paradise Lost and Coleridge's MARGINALIA to The Rime of the An-
dent Mariner. The term is sometimes used by the NEW CRITICS to
describe the paraphrasable idea of a poem.
Argumentation: One of the four chief "forms of discourse," the
others being EXPOSITION, NARRATION, and DESCRIPTION. Its purpose
is to convince a reader or hearer by establishing the truth or falsity
of a proposition. It is often combined with EXPOSITION. It differs
from EXPOSITION technically in its aim, EXPOSITION being content
with simply making an explanation.
Aristotelian Criticism: Literally, criticism by Aristotle, as in the
Poetics, or criticism which follows the method of analysis used by
Aristotle in the Poetics y although the exact nature of the Aristotelian
method has been a subject of much debate (see CRITICISM, HISTORI-
CAL SKETCH). In present day critical parlance, however, the term
Aristotelian criticism is frequently used as a contrast to the term
PLATONIC CRITICISM, particularly by the NEW CRITICS. In this sense,
the term implies a judicial, logical, formal criticism that is centered
in the work rather than in its historical, moral, or religious context,
and finds its values either within the work itself or inseparably
linked to the work; the term is roughly synonymous with intrinsic.
See CRITICISM, TYPES OF; PLATONIC CRITICISM; AUTOTELIC.
Arminianism: An anti-Calvinistic theology, founded by Jacobus Ar-
minius in Holland in the early seventeenth century. It opposes the
Calvinistic doctrines of election, reprobation, and absolute predesti-
nation, asserting that the human will can forfeit divine grace after
receiving it and denying that predestination is absolute. It was a
strong element in the theological arguments in England and America
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In America Jonathan
Edwards was its most powerful attacker. See CALVINISM.
Arsis 34
Arsis: In METRICS, the term is usually applied today to a stressed
syllable. In Greek usage, however, arsis was the name of the un-
stressed syllable. See ACCENT.
Art Ballad: A term occasionally used to distinguish the modern or
literary BALLAD of known authorship from the early BALLADS of un-
known authorship. Some successful art ballads are La Belle Dame
sans Merci by Keats, Rosabelle by Scott, and Sister Helen by Ros-
setti. Possibly the most famous poem imitating the BALLAD manner
is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge.
Art Epic: A term sometimes employed to distinguish such an EPIC as
Milton's Paradise Lost or Virgil's Aeneid from so-called FOLK EPICS
such as Beowulf, Nibelungenlied, and the Iliad and Odyssey. The
FOLK EPIC is so named because it deals with tradition closely asso-
ciated with the people or "folk" for whom it was written and whose
credulity it commanded. The art epic is supposed to be more so-
phisticated, more highly idealized, and more consciously moral in
purpose than is the FOLK EPIC, which it imitates. The author takes
greater liberties with the popular materials he is treating and ex-
hibits and expects less credulity, The events he narrates are in the
more remote past. The present-day tendency to discredit the theories
of epic origins advanced by the romantic critics of the eighteenth
century is resulting in a breaking down of the assumed distinction
between the two kinds, as the FOLK EPICS are now viewed as the
work of single poets who worked according to traditional artistic
technique. See EPIC.
Article: A type of ESSAY that is impersonal and largely factual. In
an article the author writes as an authority on a subject and presents
his argument and information in a systematic fashion. The term is
applied to informative pieces for such widely varying places of pub-
lication as newspapers, magazines, learned and scholarly journals,
and encyclopedias. The longer entries in this volume are articles.
See ESSAY.
Art Lyric: This is not so much an individual LYBIC type or form
as it is a particular manner. The art lyric is characterized by a mi-
nuteness of subject, great delicacy of touch, careful perfection in
phrasing, artificiality of sentiment, and formality. For its subject
kind of LYRIC avoids the passionate outbursts of a Burns, hark-
35 Arthurian Legend
ing back, rather, to the sort of thing Horace and Petrarch wrote
about, the tilt of a lady's eyebrow, the glow of a cheek. With Her-
rick and Lovelace and Jonson and Herbert, Elizabethan and
seventeenth-century English writers made much of the manner,
polishing and perfecting their songs to gem-like brightness; with
Shelley and Keats the art lyric began to carry ABSTRACT ideas. In
brief, it may be said that the art lyric differs from the ordinary LYRIC
in the degree to which the poet's self-conscious struggle for perfec-
tion of FORM dominates the spontaneity of his emotion. Certain
French lyric forms, the TRIOLET, BALLADE, RONDEAU, and RONDEL,
are instances of this highly polished manner of the ART LYRIC.
Art Theatre: See LITTLE THEATRE MOVEMENT.
Arthurian Legend: The question often asked, "Is King Arthur a
historical person?" cannot be answered by a plain yes or no. It is
probable that the LEGEND of Arthur grew up out of the deeds of
some historical person. He was probably not a king and it is more
than doubtful whether his name was Arthur. He was presumably a
Welsh or Roman military leader of the Celts in Wales against the
Germanic invaders who overran Britain in the fifth century. Just as
stories in later time grew up about Robin Hood or George Wash-
ington, the stories of the great deeds of this Welsh hero gradually
grew into a great body of romantic story. He provided a glorious past
for the Britons to look back upon, and there is some evidence that
his glorification in twelfth-century writings was due to the desire
of the Norman kings to strengthen the national background by
treating Arthur as an illustrious predecessor on the throne of Britain.
When Arthur had developed into a great king, he yielded his posi-
tion as a personal hero to a great group of knights who surrounded
him. These knights of the Round Table came to be representative of
all that was best in the age of chivalry, and thg^aWttss of their
deeds make up the most popular group ("Matter of Brit&H^') of
the great CYCLES of MEDIEVAL ROMANCE.
There is no mention of Arthur in contemporary accounts of the
Germanic invasion, but a Roman citizen named Gildas who lived in
Wales mentions in his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (written
between 500 and 550) the Battle of Mt. Badon, with which later
accounts connect Arthur, and a valiant Roman leader of a Welsh
rally, named Ambrosius Aurelianus. About 800, Nennius, a Welsh
chronicler, in his Historia Britonum uses the name Arthur in refer-
Arthurian Legend 36
ring to a leader (dux bellorum) against the Saxons. About a century
later an addition to Nennius' history called Mirdbilia gives further
evidences of Arthur's development as a hero, including an allusion
to a boar-hunt of Arthur's which is told in detail in the later Welsh
story of Kulwch and Olwen (in the Mabinogion). There are other
references to Arthur in the annals of the tenth and eleventh cen-
turies, and William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum Anglorum
(1125) who treats Arthur as an historical figure, identifies him with
the Arthur whom the Welsh "rave wildly about" in their "idle tales."
A typical British Celt at this time was ready to fight for his belief
that Arthur was not really dead but would return.
About 1136 Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his Historia Regum
Britanniae, professedly based upon an old Welsh book. Geoffrey
adds a wealth of matter to the Arthurian legend how much of it he
invented can not now be determined such as the stories of Arthur's
supernatural birth, his weird "Passing" to Avalon to be healed of
his wounds, and the abduction of Guinevere by Modred. Arthur
figures as a world-conqueror who exacts tribute of even the Romans.
It is probable that Geoffrey was attempting to create for the Norman
kings in England a glorious historical background. He traces the his-
tory of the Britons from Brut, a descendant of Aeneas, to the great
Arthur. Soon after Geoffrey's time additions to the story were made
by the French poet Wace in his Roman de Brut, and a little later
appear the famous KOMANCES of Chretien de Troyes, in Old French,
in which Arthurian themes are given their first known highly literary
treatment. About 1205 the English poet Layamon added some de-
tails in his Brut . By this time Arthurian legend had taken its place
as one of the great themes of MEDIEVAL ROMANCE.
The great popularity of Arthurian tradition continued through the
Middle Ages, reaching its climax in medieval English literature in
Malory's Le Morte Darthur (printed 1485), a book destined to
transmit Arthurian stories to many later English writers, notably
Tennyson. Spenser professedly used an Arthurian background for
his great romantic EPIC The Faerie Queene (1590), and in the next
century Milton contemplated a national EPIC on Arthur. Interest in
Arthur decreased in the eighteenth century, but Arthurian topics
were particularly popular in the nineteenth century, the best known
treatment appearing in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Tennyson's
version, as well as E. A. Robinson's Tristram, shows how different
generations have modified the Arthurian stories to make them ex-
37 Assonance
press contemporary modes of thought and individual artistic ends.
Arthurian themes received powerful and sympathetic musical treat-
ment in an opera by Dryden with music by Purcell, King Arthur, and
in Richard Wagner's operas, Lohengrin, Tristan, and Parsifal. The
burlesquing treatment of chivalry in Mark Twain's A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthurs Court is in contrast to the usual romantic
idealization, as is T. W, White's trilogy of novels published under
the collective title, The Once and Future King, which is a powerful
tribute to the continuing strength of the Arthurian legend. See
MEDIEVAL ROMANCE, CHRONICLE.
Artificial Comedy: A term sometimes used (as by Lamb) for com-
edy reflecting an artificial society, like the COMEDY OF MANNERS.
Artificiality: In CRITICISM a term used to characterize a work that
is consciously and deliberately mannered, elaborate, or conven-
tional. Artificiality describes a quality which the critic senses as
being studied and self-conscious; what is specifically meant by the
term varies greatly from critic to critic. There is little question,
however, that the style of John Lyly is artificial and that die style
of Burns is not; about writers like Donne and Hemingway, how-
ever, debate can and does rage.
Assonance: Resemblance or similarity in sound between vowels fol-
lowed by different consonants in two or more stressed syllables. As-
sonance differs from RIME in that RIME is a similarity of vowel and
consonant. "Lake" and "fake" demonstrate RIME; 'lake" and "fate"
assonance.
Assonance is a common substitution for end-rime in the popular
BALLAD, as in these lines from "The Twa Corbies":
In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new-slain Knight.
Such substitution of assonance for END-RIME is also characteristic of
Emily Dickinson's verse, and is used extensively by many con-
temporary poets,
As an enriching ornament within the line, assonance is of great
use to the poet. Poe and Swinburne used it extensively for musical
effect, Gerard Manley Hopkins introduced modern poets to its wide
use. The skill with which Dylan Thomas manipulates assonance is
Autotelic 40
MEMOIRS deal at least in part with public events and noted per-
sonages other than the author himself, an autobiography is a con-
nected narrative of the author's life, with some stress laid upon in-
trospection. Notable great autobiographies and works which tend
to clarify the distinction made above are St. Augustine's Confes-
sions, Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography, Franklin's Autobiography,
and The Education of Henry Adams. Simulated autobiography is a
device often used in the NOVEL, as in Defoe's Moll Flanders, and
the NOVEL can on occasion be autobiography in the guise of FICTION,
as in those of Thomas Wolfe and in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man. See BIOGRAPHY.
Autotelic: A term applied to a work that is non-didactic; that is,
one whose end-purpose or intention is within itself and not de-
pendent upon the achievement of objectives outside the work. The
term is used by the NEW CRITICS to indicate a poem that speaks its
own truth in its own terms rather than referring for its value to
some external truth. See BELIEF, THE PROBLEM OF.
Awakening, The Great: A phrase applied to a great revival of emo-
tional religion in America which took place about 1735-1750, the
movement being at its height about 1740-1745 under the leader-
ship of Jonathan Edwards. It arose as an effort to reform religion
and morals. Religion, under the *TURITAN hierarchy" led by the
Mathers, had become rather formal and cold, and the clergy some-
what arrogant. The low morals and the lack of religious zeal which
prevailed were traceable in part to the general anti-PuiUTAN reac-
tion in England after 1660, the increasingly diverse character of the
population in the colonies, the hard conditions of pioneer life, and
the general reaction against the horror of the Salem Witchcraft.
The revival meetings began as early as 1720 in New Jersey. In 1734
Edwards held his first great revival at Northampton, Mass. In 1738
the famous English evangelist George Whitefield began his meet-
ings in Georgia and in 1739-1740 made a spectacular evangelistic
tour of the colonies, reaching New England in 1740. Whitefield's
meetings were marked by great emotional manifestations, such as
trances, shoutings, tearing of garments, faintings. In 1740-1742
Edwards conducted a long "revival" at Northampton, preached in
other cities, published many sermons, including Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God (1741). The conservatives or "Old Lights/*
41 Balance
representing the stricter Calvinists, led by the faculties of Harvard
and Yale, protested against the emotional excesses of the movement;
they were answered by Edwards in his Treatise on the Religious
Affections (1746). Yet Edwards himself opposed the more extreme
exhibitions of emotionalism and by 1750 a reaction against the
movement was under way. See CALVINISM, DEISM, PURITANISM.
Bacchius: In METRICS, a three-syllable FOOT, with the first syllable
unaccented and the last two accented but with the ICTUS on the
first accented syllable. Examples: a bove board, a* bout face.
Background: A term, like many others used in literary discussion,
borrowed from the kindred art of painting, where it signifies those
parts of the painting against which the principal objects are por-
trayed. In literature the term is rather loosely used to specify either
the SETTING of a piece of writing or the TRADITION and point of
view from which an author presents his ideas. Thus one might speak
either (1) of the Russian background (SETTING) of Anna Karenina
or (2) of the background of education, philosophy, and convictions
from which Tolstoy wrote the novel.
Baconian Theory: The theory, now generally discredited, that the
plays of William Shakespeare were written by Francis Bacon. The
theory grew out of an eighteenth century English suggestion that
Shakespeare, an unschooled countryman, could not have written
the plays attributed to him. In the nineteenth century the idea that
the plays were by Bacon developed both in England and in America,
with the American Delia Bacon being a particularly influential ad-
vocate of Baconian authorship. Other authors for the plays than
Bacon have been suggested, among them the Earl of Oxford, Sir
Walter Raleigh, and Christopher Marlowe (who, according to this
theory, was not murdered in 1593). The evidence offered in sup-
port of any or all of these theories is fragmentary and inconclusive
at best, at its worst it is absurd; and our steadily growing scholarly
knowledge of Shakespeare and his world increasingly discredits
these theories without silencing their advocates.
Balance: In rhetoric refers to that structure in which parts of a
sentence as words, phrases, or clauses are set off against each
other in position so as to emphasize a contrast in meaning.
Ballad 42
The memory of other authors is kept alive by their works; but the
memory of Johnson keeps many of his works alive.
Macaulay
As a critical term balance is often used to characterize nicety of
proportion among the various elements of a given piece of writing.
A story, for example, wherein SETTING, CHARACTERIZATION, and ac-
tion are carefully planned, with no element securing undue em-
phasis, might be said to have fine balance.
Ballad: A form of verse adapted for singing or recitation and pri-
marily characterized by its presentation in simple narrative form of
a dramatic or exciting EPISODE. A famous definition is that of F. B.
Gummere who describes the ballad as "a poem meant for singing,
quite impersonal in material, probably connected in its origins with
the communal dance, but submitted to a process of oral tradition
among people who are free from literary influences and fairly ho-
mogeneous in character." Though the ballad is a form still much
written, the so-called "popular ballad" in most literatures properly
belongs to the early periods before written literature was highly de-
veloped. They still develop, however, in isolated sections and among
illiterate and semi-literate peoples. In America the folk of the south-
ern Appalachian mountains have maintained a ballad tradition, as
have tibe cowboys of the western plains, and people associated with
labor movements, particularly when they were marked by violence.
In Australia the "bush" ballad is still vigorous and popular. In the
West Indies the "Calypso" singers produce something close to the
ballad with their impromptu songs. Debate still rages as to whether
the ballad originates with an individual composer or as a group or
communal activity. Whatever the origin, it is true that the folk
ballad is, in almost every country, one of the earliest forms of litera-
ture. Certain common characteristics of these early ballads should
be noted: the supernatural is likely to play an important part in
events, physical courage and love are frequent themes, the incidents
are usually such as happen to common people (as opposed to the
nobility) and often have to do with domestic episodes; slight atten-
tion is paid to CHARACTERIZATION or DESCRIPTION, transitions are
abrupt, action is largely developed through DIALOGUE, tragic situa-
tions are presented with the utmost simplicity, INCREMENTAL REPE-
TITION is common, IMAGINATION though not so common as in the
ART BALLAD nevertheless appears in brief flashes, a single EPISODE
of highly dramatic nature is presented, and, often enough, the bal-
43 Ballade
lad is brought to a close with some sort of summary STANZA. The
greatest impetus to the study of ballad literature was given by the
publication in 1765 of Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry. The standard modern collection is The English and Scottish
Popular Ballads edited by Francis James Child. See ART BALLAD,
BALLAD STANZA.
Ballad-Opera: A name given to a sort of burlesque OPERA which
flourished on the English stage for several years following the ap-
pearance of John Gay's The Beggars Opera (1728), the best known
example of the type. Modeled on Italian OPERA, which it burlesqued,
it told its story in songs set to old tunes and appropriated various
elements from FARCE and COMEDY. See OPERA, COMIC OPERA.
Ballad Stanza: The STANZAIC form of the folk or popular BALLAD.
Usually it consists of four lines, riming abcb, with the first and
third lines carrying four accented syllables and the second and
fourth carrying three. There is great variation in the number of
unaccented syllables. The RIME is often approximate, with ASSO-
NANCE and CONSONANCE frequently appearing. A REFRAIN is not
uncommon. This stanza from "Willy Drowned in Yarrow" is typical:
Yestreen I made my bed fu' braid,
The night I'll mak' it narrow,
For a* the live-lang winter night
I lie twined o' my marrow.
Ballade: One of the most popular of the artificial French verse forms.
The ballade should not, however, be confused with the BALLAD,
which is commonly folk-poetry, since the ballade is essentially so-
phisticated.
For a fixed conventional verse-type the ballade form has been
rather liberally interpreted. Perhaps early usage most frequently
demanded three STANZAS and an ENVOY, though the number of lines
to the STANZA and of syllables to the line seems to have varied.
Typical earmarks of the ballade have been: (1) the REFRAIN (uni-
form as to wording) carrying the MOTIF of the poem and recurring
regularly at the end of each STANZA and of the ENVOY; (2) the
ENVOY, by nature a peroration of climactic importance and likely to
be addressed to a high member of the court or to the poet's patron;
and (3) the use of only three (or at the most four) RIMES in the
entire poem, occurring at the same position in each STANZA and
Barbarism 44
with no rime-word repeated except in the REFRAIN. STANZAS of
varied length have been used in the ballade, but the most common
one is an eight-line STANZA riming ababbcbc with bcbc for the
ENVOY. A good example of early use of English ballade form is Chau-
cer's "Balade de bon conseyl," while one of the best known modern
ballades is Rossetti's rendering of Frangois Villon's "Ballade of
Dead Ladies."
Barbarism: A mistake in the form of a word, or a word which re-
sults from such a mistake. Strictly speaking, a barbarism results
from the violation of an accepted rule of derivation or inflection,
as hern for hers, goodest for best, shooted for shot. Originally it
referred to the mixing of foreign words and phrases in Latin or
Greek. See SOLECISM.
Bard: Commonly, in modern use, simply a "poet." Historically,
however, the term refers to those poets who recited verses usually
glorifying the deeds of heroes and leaders, to the accompaniment
of a musical instrument such as the harp. Bard technically refers
to the early poets of the Celts, as TROUVERE refers to those of Nor-
mandy, SKALD to those of Scandinavia, and TROUBADOUR to those of
Provence. See WELSH LITERATURE.
Baroque: A term of uncertain origin applied first to the architec-
tural style which succeeded the classic style of the RENAISSANCE
and flourished, in varied forms in different parts of Europe, from
the late sixteenth century until well into the eighteenth century. One
writer (Geoffrey Scott) has explained the baroque style as a blend-
ing of the "picturesque" elements (the unexpected, the wild, the
fantastic, the accidental) with the more ordered, formal, idealistic,
and logical style of the "high Renaissance." The baroque stressed
movement, energy, and realistic treatment. Scott points out that al-
though the baroque is bold and startling, even fantastic, it is not
truly wild or accidental, since its "discords and suspensions" are
consciously and logically employed. Another writer (Croll) de-
scribes the change to the baroque as "a radical effort to adapt the
traditional modes and forms of expression to the uses of a self-
conscious modernism." In its considered efforts to avoid the effects
of repose, tranquillity, and complacency, it sought to startle by the
use of the unusual and unexpected. This led sometimes to gro-
tesqueness, obscurity, and contortion. Indeed, the student will often
45 Bathos
come upon the term in its older or "popular" sense of the highly
fantastic, the whimsical, the bizarre, the DECADENT.
The realization that the baroque arose naturally from existing
conditions and is a serious and sincere STYLE, resting upon a sober
intellectual basis and designed to express the newer attitudes of its
period, has had the effect not only of causing the baroque to be
regarded with more sympathy and seriousness than formerly, but
also of extending the use of the term to literature as well as to
painting and sculpture. The student of literature may encounter the
term (in its older English sense) applied unfavorably to a writer's
literary STYLE; or he may read of the baroque period or "age of
baroque" (late sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth cen-
turies); or he may find it applied descriptively and respectfully to
certain stylistic features of the baroque period. Thus the broken
rhythms of Donne's verse and the verbal subtleties of the English
METAPHYSICAL poets have been called baroque elements. Richard
Crashaw is said to have expressed the baroque spirit supremely in
verse. Perhaps the most influential recent student of the baroque
style is the German art critic Heinrich Wolfflin, some of whose fol-
lowers have made ambitious efforts to explain literature on the basis
of his theories. Wolfflin's works and those of Sacheverell Sitwell
may be consulted, as well as Geoffrey Scott's The Architecture of
Humanism. An example of the use of the term in literary criticism
may be found in M. W. CrolTs essay on "The Baroque Style in
Prose," in Studies in English Philology in Honor of Frederick
Klaeber. See ROCOCO, CONCEIT, METAPHYSICAL VERSE.
Basic English: A simplified form of English for non-English speak-
ing peoples, consisting of a vocabulary of 850 words, of which 600
are nouns, 150 adjectives, and 100 "operators" (verbs, adverbs,
prepositions, and conjunctions). It was set up by C. K. Ogden,
acting on a suggestion in the works of Jeremy Bentham. In
America its strongest advocate has been I. A. Richards, The New
Testament and certain of Plato's works have been "translated" into
Basic English.
Bathos: The effect resulting from an unsuccessful effort to achieve
dignity or pathos or elevation of style; an unintentional ANTICLIMAX,
dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous; the depth of stupidity.
The term gained currency from Pope's treatment of it in one of the
"Martinus Scriblerus" papers in which he ironically defended the
Battle of the Books 46
commonplace effects of the English "poetasters" on the ground that
depth (bathos) was a literary virtue of the moderns, as contrasted
with the height (hypsos) of the ancients. Two examples of bathos
given by Pope may be quoted:
Advance the fringed curtains of thy eyes,
And tell me who comes yonder.
Here the author (Temple) is felt to fail because of the (uninten-
tional) ANTICLIMAX resulting from the effort to treat poetically a
commonplace, prosaic idea. Richard Blackmore, in his Job, thus
describes a great crowd gathering about Job:
A waving sea of heads was round me spread,
And still fresh streams the gazing deluge fed.
Here again the extravagant or inept IMAGERY, though seriously in-
tended, defeats its own purpose, and bathos results. The PATHETIC
FALLACY is sometimes responsible for a "bathetic" effect. If a NOVEL
or a play or a cinema tries to make the reader or spectator weep
and succeeds only in making him laugh, the result is bathos. The
term is sometimes, though not accurately, applied to the deliberate
use of ANTICLIMAX for satiric or humorous effect.
Battle of the Books, The: See ANCIENTS AND MODERNS, QUARREL
OF THE,
Beast Epic: A favorite medieval literary form consisting of a series
of linked stories grouped about animal characters and often present-
ing satirical comment on contemporary life of church or court by
means of human qualities attributed to beast characters. Scholars
still find a nice quarrel in trying to decide the exact origin of the
beast epic, some holding that the stories developed from popular
tradition and were later given literary form by monastic scholars and
TROUVERES who molded the material at hand, others finding the
origin in the writing of Latin scholastics. The oldest example
known seems to be that of Paulus Diaconus, a cleric at the court
of Charlemagne, who wrote about 782-786. Whether the form first
developed in Germany or France is still question for scholarly
combat, though there is no doubt that in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries the beast epics were very popular in North France, West
Germany, and Flanders. The various forms of the beast epic agreed
in having one EPISODE generally treated as the nucleus for the story:
the healing of the sick lion by the fox's prescription that he wrap
47 Belief, The Problem of
himself in the wolfs skin. Some of the other animals common to
the form, besides Reynard the Fox, the lion, and the wolf, are the
cock (Chanticler), the cat, the hare, the camel, the ant, the bear,
the badger, and the stag. The best known of the beast epics and
the most influential is the Roman de Renard, a poem of 30,000
lines comprising twenty-seven sets or branches" of stories growing
up in France between 1130 and 1250, the composition of which is
probably to be credited to the influence of the Latin beast epic,
modified in turn by the ecclesiastics and the French TROUVERES. Two
other important forms of the beast epic are: the German Reinhart
Fuchs, the work of Heinrich der Glichezare about 1180, a poem of
2,266 lines, and the Flemish form, Van den vos Reinaerde, the
work of two men, Arnout and Willem, a poem of 3,476 lines. This
last version, which contained rather more than the usual amount
of SATIRE, was published in translation by Caxton in 1481, a fact
which made the Flemish form of the beast epic perhaps the most
significant in England. For evidences of the influence in English
literature, see Spenser's Mother Hubberds Tale and Chaucer's
Nun's Priest's Tale. A full discussion of the beast epic and its
probable history is given in Lucien Foulet's Le Roman de Renard.
Beast Fable: A short TALE in which the principal actors are animals.
See FABLE.
Beat Generation: A term applied to a group of contemporary poets
and novelists who are in romantic rebellion against the culture and
the value systems of present-day America, and express their revolt
through literary works of loose STRUCTURE and slang DICTION assert-
ing the essentially valueless nature of existence. Their leaders are
the poet Allen Ginsberg and the novelist Jack Kerouac. The term is
also used to describe the coterie groups into which these writers
tend to form.
Beginning Rime: RIME that occurs in the first syllable or syllables
of a VERSE.
Belief, The Problem of: The critical question of the degree to which
the aesthetic value of a literary work for a given reader is neces-
sarily or properly affected by the acceptability to that reader of its
doctrine or philosophic or religious assumptions. Although the
question is certainly as old as Plato, it has assumed an unusual
Belles-Lettres 48
relevance in present-day criticism because the traditional answer
that doctrinal acceptability is one of the necessary conditions for
aesthetic value has been brought into serious question by a group
of critics, notably those usually designated NEW CRITICS. See
AUTOTELIC.
Belles-Lettres: Literature, more especially that body of writing,
comprising DRAMA, POETRY, FICTION, CRITICISM, and ESSAYS which
lives because of inherent imaginative and artistic rather than
scientific or intellectual qualities. Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonder-
land, for example, belongs definitely to the province of belles-
lettres, while the mathematical works of the same man, Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson, do not. Now sometimes used to characterize
light or artificial writing.
Bestiary: A type of literature, particularly popular during the
medieval centuries, in which the habits of beasts, birds, and
reptiles were made the text for allegorical and mystical Christian
teachings. These bestiaries often ascribed human attributes to
animals and were designed to moralize and to expound church
doctrine. The natural history employed is fabulous rather than
scientific and has helped to make popular in literature such ab-
normalities as the phoenix, the siren, and the unicorn. Many of
the qualities literature familiarly attributes to animals owe their
origin to the bestiaries. The development of the type is first at-
tributed to Physiologus, a Greek sermonizer of about A.D. 150, but
the form was rapidly taken over by Christian preachers and hom-
ilists throughout Europe. The bestiary in one form or another has
been current in various world literatures: Anglo-Saxon, Arabic,
Armenian, English, Ethiopic, French, German, Icelandic, Provengal,
Spanish.
Bible: Derived from a Greek term meaning 'little books," Bible is
now applied to the collection of writings known as the Holy Scrip-
tures, the sacred writings of the Christian religion. Of the two chief
parts, the Old Testament consists of the sacred writings of the
ancient Hebrews, and the New Testament of writings of the early
Christian period. The Jewish Scriptures include three collections
The Law, The Prophets, and Writings written in ancient Hebrew
at various dates in the pre-Christian era. The New Testament books
49 Bible, English Translations
were written in the Greek DIALECT employed in Mediterranean
countries about the time of Christ. An important Greek form of the
Hebrew Bible is the Septuagint, dating from the Alexandrian period
(third century B,C.). Latin versions were made in very early times,
both of the Old and New Testament books, including many of the
"Apocrypha" (see APOCHRYPHAL), the most important being that
made by St. Jerome about A.D. 400, known as the Vulgate the
Bible of the Middle Ages. See next three topics.
Bible as Literature: The high literary value of many parts of the
Bible has been almost universally recognized. Such English authors
as Milton, Wordsworth, Scott, Carlyle, and many others have paid
tribute to Biblical literature, Coleridge even rating the style of
Isaiah and the Epistle to the Hebrews as far superior to that of
Homer or Virgil or Milton. The literary qualities of the Bible are
accounted for partly by the themes treated, partly by the poetic
character of the Hebrew tongue, and partly by the literary skill
exhibited by Biblical writers. Professor Cook calls the themes of
Biblical literature "the greatest that literature can treat": God, man,
the physical universe, and their interrelations. Such problems as
human morality, man's relation to the unseen world, and ultimate
human destinies are treated with a simplicity, sincerity, intensity,
and vigor seldom matched in world literature. The character of the
Hebrew language, abounding in words and phrases of CONCRETE
sensuous appeal and lacking the store of ABSTRACT words character-
istic of the Greek, imparted an emotional and imaginative richness
to Hebrew writings of a sort which lends itself readily to translation
(the idea of pride, for example, is expressed by "puffed up"). The
Bible is partly in prose and partly in verse, the principles of Hebrew
verse being ACCENT and PARALLELISM rather than meter. The
literary types found in the Bible have been variously classified. A
few examples may be given: the short story, Ruth, Jonah, Esther;
biographical narrative, the story of Abraham in Genesis; love
LYRIC, Song of Solomon; the battle ODE, the song of Deborah
(Judges, v); EPIGRAM, in Proverbs and elsewhere; devotional LYRIC,
Psalms; dramatic philosophical poem, Job; ELEGY, lament of David
for Saul and Jonathan (II Samuel, i, 19-27); LETTERS, the epistles
of Paul; etc.
Bible, English Translations of: From Caedmon (seventh century)
Bible, English Translations 50
to Wycliffe (fourteenth century) there were from time to time
TRANSLATIONS and PARAPHRASES in OLD ENGLISH and in MIDDLE
ENGLISH of various parts of the BIBLE. They were all based upon
the Latin Vulgate edition. Some were in prose and some in verse.
The parts most frequently translated were the Gospels, the Psalms,
and the Pentateuch. The Caedmonian paraphrases (seventh cen-
tury) are extant, but Bede's prose translation of a portion of the
gospel of St. John (seventh century) is not preserved. From the
ninth century come some GLOSSES of the Book of Psalms and prose
translations by King Alfred. The West Saxon Gospels and the
GLOSSES in the Lindisfarne Gospels date from the tenth century,
while Aelfric's incomplete translations of the Old Testament date
from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The subordinate
position occupied by the English language for some time after the
eleventh century perhaps accounts for die lack of translations in
MIDDLE ENGLISH times until the fourteenth century, when there
was some renewed activity in preparing English versions and com-
mentaries, notably by Richard Rolle of Hampole. In 1382 came the
first edition of the Wycliffe Bible, largely the work of Wycliffe him-
self. A revision of this work, chiefly the work of John Purvey, 1388,
though interdicted by the Church from 1408 to 1534, circulated
freely in manuscript form for the next 150 years.
Printed English Bibles first appeared in the sixteenth century,
products of the new learning of the HUMANISTS and the zeal of the
Protestant Reformation. They were mainly based upon Greek and
Hebrew manuscripts, or recent translations of such manuscripts. A
list of important English translations follows: (1) William Tyndale
the New Testament (1525-26), the Pentateuch (1530), Jonah
(1531). Tyndale is credited with the creation of much of the
picturesque phraseology which characterizes his and later English
translations. (2) Miles Coverdale, first complete printed English
Bible (1535), based upon Tyndale and a Swiss-German translation.
(3) "Matthew's" Bible (1537), probably done by John Rogers,
based upon Tyndale and Coverdale, is important as a source for
later translations. (4) Taverner's Bible (1539), based on
"Matthew's" Bible, but revealing a tendency to greater use of
native English words. Not influential. (5) The Great Bible (1539),
sometimes called Cranmer's Bible, because Cranmer sponsored it
and wrote a preface for the second edition (1540) a very large
volume designed to be chained to its position in the churches for
the use of die public. Coverdale superintended its preparation. It
51 Bible, English Translations
is based largely on "Matthew's" Bible. (6) The Geneva Bible
(1560), the joint work of English Protestant exiles in Geneva, in-
cluding Coverdale and William Whittington, who had published in
1557 in Geneva an English New Testament which was the first
version in English divided into the familiar chapters and verses. The
Geneva Bible was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth and included
woodcuts, maps, tables, and marginal notes. It became the great
Bible of the Puritans and ran through sixty editions between 1560
and 1611. The phraseology was colored by Calvinistic tendencies.
(7) Bishops' Bible (1568), prepared by eight bishops and others
and issued to combat the Calvinistic, anti-episcopal tendencies of
the Geneva Bible. (8) The Rheims-Douai Bible (1582), a Catholic
translation based upon the Vulgate, issued to counteract the Puritan
Geneva Bible and the Episcopal Bishops' Bible. The Old Testament
section was not actually printed till 1609.
By far the most important and influential of English Bibles is
the "Authorized" or King James Version (1611), It is a revision
of the Bishops' Bible and was sponsored by King James I. The
translators, about fifty of the leading Biblical scholars of the time,
including PUBITANS, made use of Greek and Hebrew texts. This
version is still the most widely read English Bible and it exerted a
most profound influence upon the language and literature of the
English and American peoples through the seventeenth, eighteenth,
and nineteenth centuries.
The Revised Version (1885) and the standard American edition
of the Revised Version (1901), the joint work of English and
American scholars, were modern versions which aimed chiefly at
scholarly accuracy.
A group of American Biblical scholars produced in 1946 an
extensive revision of the King James Version of the New Testament,
bringing to bear upon it the wealth of textual discovery and
scholarship which we now have, and in 1952 they added the Old
Testament. This translation, known as the Revised Standard Version,
although generally considered inferior to the King James Version
from a literary point of view, has already attained wide usage be-
cause of its greater accuracy and clarity. A number of renderings
into contemporary and idiomatic English have been made in this
century of the whole or parts of the Bible. Notable among them are
the translations into American idiom by James Moffatt and by
Edgar Goodspeed and the translations into British idiom by J. B.
Phillips and by Father Ronald Knox.
Bible, Influence on Literature 52
Bible, Influence on Literature: The unparalleled influence of the?
BIBLE upon English literature, though widely recognized, is so
subtly pervasive that it can merely be suggested, not closely
traced. Much of its influence has been indirect through its effect
upon language and upon the mental and moral interests of the
English and American people. J. R, Green (Short History of the
English People, Ch. viii) notes the fact that the first English Bibles
of the sixteenth century brought to the common people a new world
by the revival of ancient Hebrew literature: "Legend and annal,
war-song and psalm, state-roll and biography, the mighty voices of
the prophets, the parables of the evangelists, stories of mission
journeys, of perils by the sea and among the heathen, philosophic
arguments, apocalyptic visions, all were flung broadcast over minds
unoccupied for the most part by any rival learning." The picturesque
imagery and phraseology were an enriching element in the lives of
the people, and profoundly affected not only their conduct but
their language and literary tastes. "As a mere literary monument,
the English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the
English tongue, while its perpetual use made it from the instant
of its appearance the standard of our language/'
Great authors commonly show a familiarity with the Bible, and
few great English and American writers of the seventeenth,
eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries can be read with
satisfaction by one ignorant of Biblical literature. Professor Cook
suggests the various ways in which the Authorized Version of the
Bible has affected subsequent English literature: use of Scriptural
themes (Milton's Paradise Lost, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Byron's
Cain); use of Scriptural phraseology; allusions or modified quota-
tions (as "selling birthright" for a "mess of pottage"); incorpora-
tion, conscious or unconscious, of Biblical phraseology into common
speech ("highways and hedges," "thorn in the flesh," "a soft
answer," etc., etc.). The Bible is thought to have been highly in-
fluential in substituting pure English words for Latin words
(Tyndale's vocabulary is 97 per cent English, that of the Authorized
Version, 93 per cent) . The style of many writers has been directly
affected by study of the Bible, as has Bunyan's, Lincoln's, and
Hemingway's. Whitman's prosodic methods as well as his vocab-
ulary demonstrate a great debt to the Hebrew poets and prophets.
Novelists of twentieth-century America are increasingly turning to
the Bible for themes and plots; among the many examples are
Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Faulkner's Light in August and
A Fable, and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.
53 Bibliography
Bibliography: Used in several senses. The term may be applied
to a SUBJECT BIBLIOGRAPHY; this is a list of books or other printed
(or manuscript) material on any chosen subject. A SUBJECT
BIBLIOGRAPHY may aim at comprehensiveness, even completeness;
or it may be selective, intended to list only such works as are most
important, or most easily available, or most closely related with a
book or article to which it may be attached. Bibliographies
following a serious essay, for example, may be merely a list of
sources used by the writer of the essay, or they may be meant to
point out to the reader sources of additional information on the
subject. In a related use, the word designates a list of works of a
particular country, author, or printer ("national" and "trade"
bibliography). Bibliographies of these kinds are sometimes called
ENUMERATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHIES, The process of making such lists
either by students or by professional bibliographers is also referred
to as bibliography.
In the historical sense, as used by book collectors, bibliophiles,
and scholars, bibliography means the history of book production,
history of writing, printing, binding, illustrating, and publishing.
It involves a consideration of the details of book-making. Bibliog-
raphy in this sense is sometimes used by scholars in textual criticism
the employing of bibliographical evidence to help "settle such
questions as that of the order and relative value of different editions
of a book; whether certain sections of a book were originally in-
tended to form part of it or were added afterwards; whether a later
edition was printed from an earlier one, and from which . . . and
a number of other problems of a similar kind, which may often have
a highly important literary bearing." 1 This sort of bibliographical
work has been much stressed in the twentieth century, especially by
members of the London Bibliographical Society, one striking result
being the discovery of the forged dates on certain QUARTOS of
Shakespeare's plays, actually printed in 1619 but assigned earlier
dates on the title pages.
Another use of the term bibliography is to denote the methods
of work of student and author: reading, research, taking of notes,
compilation of bibliography, preparation of manuscript for the
press, publication, etc. These last two uses of the word are of
especial interest to advanced students who take university courses
in bibliography.
"A bibliography of bibliographies" means a list of lists of works
Donald B. McKerrow, "Notes on Bibliographical Evidence," etc.,
Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Vol. XII, 1914.
Billingsgate 54
dealing with a given subject or subjects. An "annotated bibli-
ography" is one in which some or all of the items listed are fol-
lowed by brief descriptive or critical comment.
R. B. McKerrow's An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary
Students and Fredson Bowers* The Principles of Bibliographical
Description deal extensively and authoritatively with the entire
subject.
Billingsgate: Coarse, vulgar, violent, abusive language. The term
is derived from the fact that the fish-wives in Billingsgate fish
market in London achieved a certain distinction from the scurrility
of their language.
Biography: For over a thousand years biography has held a place of
varying importance in the ANNALS of English literature. It is natural
that this should be, since biography, as a literary form, satisfies
three inherent promptings of man: the commemorative instinct,
the didactic or moralizing instinct, and, perhaps most important of
all, the instinct of curiosity. From these three motives biography
derives its impetus.
Biography Distinguished from Allied Forms. With biography
have come several related forms LETTERS, MEMOIRS, DIARIES and
JOURNALS, AUTOBIOGRAPHY which, though they spring from these
same desires of men, must be distinguished from biography proper.
MEMOIRS, DIARIES, JOURNALS, and AUTOBIOGRAPHY are closely re-
lated to each other in that each is recollection written down by the
subject himself. The writer tells those items of his career which he
is willing to share with others and recalls those enthusiasms which
seem to him to have dictated his activity. LETTERS afford a different
angle to the subject's life. Usually collected by a literary executor
after the decease of the subject, they are likely to be colored by
various prejudices and purposes. The subject himself may or may
not have been spontaneous in his correspondence. The editor may
or may not be completely honest in his printing of the letters. De-
lightful as this kind of thing often is, it falls short of biography in
that the reader sees the subject only at certain times and under
special conditions. Nearer the biography than any of these forms
and yet not an exact parallel is ihe "life and times" book. In
this kind of writing the author is concerned with two points; the
life of his central figure and the period in which this figure lived.
The writer may do a very fascinating book, one both interesting
55 Biography
and instructive, but pure biography, in the more modern sense, does
not look two ways; it centers its whole attention on the character
and career of its subject.
What 1$ Biography? Since biography, then, is not to be con-
fused with these other forms, it is well to see exactly what it is.
In England the word biography, as a term denoting a form of
writing, first came into use with Dryden, who, in 1683, defined it
as "the history of particular men's lives." But the matter is hardly
so simple as this. Since its earliest appearance as a written form
and it existed long before Dryden biography has meant different
things to different people. A definition of biography in the
eighteenth century would not fit the conception held in, say, the
sixteenth. And during the first quarter of the twentieth century very
different qualities have been insisted upon. A "history of particular
men's lives" may serve, perhaps, as a unifying principle for the
numerous theories of biography, but it falls short of a definition of
the term in the twentieth century.
Today the term carries with it certain definite demands. It must
be a HISTORY, but an accurate HISTORY; one which paints not only
one aspect of the man but all important aspects. It must be the
life of a "particular" man focused clearly on that man with more
casual reference to the background of the social and political institu-
tions of his time. It must present the facts accurately and must make
some effort to interpret these facts in such a way as to present
character and habits of mind. It must avoid panegyric and the
didactic as the man himself might have avoided the plague. But,
on the other hand, it must emphasize personality. And this person-
ality must be the central thesis of the book. If the biographer looks
at die times, it must be only with the purpose of presenting a well-
constructed and unified impression of the personality of his subject;
if he introduces LETTERS and ANECDOTES (as he surely will) it will
be only such anecdotes and letters as reflect this central conception of
personality. Biography today, then, may be defined as the accurate
presentation of the life history from birth to death of an individual,
this presentation being secured through an honest effort to interpret
the facts of the life in such a way as to offer a unified impression of
the character, mind, and personality of the subject.
The Development of English Biography: The Commemorative
Purpose. Just how this modern attitude differs from past concep-
tions may best be appreciated after a brief survey of the history
of the biography as a literary type. Harold Nicolson, in his De-
Biography 56
velopment of English Biography, states that "we can trace the
ancestry of English biography to the ancient runic inscriptions
which celebrated the lives of heroes and recorded the exploits of
deceased and legendary warriors." He reports it again as an ele-
ment in such early Anglo-Saxon verse as Beowulf and the Wid-
sith fragment. And in these early manifestations we find what
was, probably, the first conception of biography the commemo-
rative instinct, the "cenotaph-urge." These accounts were writ-
ten to glorify, and glorification, in far too many biographies, has
remained as a prominent intent of the biographer. It has taken
years to shake that conception off; indeed even now it is often
present.
The Didactic "Purpose. This desire to commemorate greatness
was, later on, united with a second purpose the encouragement
of morality. This purpose accounts for HAGIOGRAPHY, records of
saints. The church took a hand. Great men and women were
commemorated for their virtue, their vices being conveniently
overlooked. The lives of the saints occupied the attention of
scholars in the monasteries. One list of early English historical
material reports 1,277 writings, almost all of which were devoted
to the glorification of one or another Irish or British saint.
Even Bede (who died in 735) was little more than a hagiogra-
pher. It was not until Bishop Asser (893) wrote his Life of A/-
fred the Great that anything appears which very closely resembles
biography. Here was the life narrative of a layman told in
Latin; but here, too, were the two early purposes of the biographer
commemoration and didactic moralizing.
The Beginnings of Pure Biography. With Monk Eadmer of the
twelfth century English biography reached another milestone.
Eadmer, in his Vita Anselmi, somehow managed to humanize his
subject beyond the capacity of former biographers. He intro-
duced LETTERS into his narrative to make his points; he reported
ANECDOTES and conversation in a way which definitely brightened
his pages. He wrote, in short, what Nicolson considers the first
pure biography in England. This same century, the twelfth, saw
the dying out though not the disappearance of the hagiog-
rapher and moralizing motive. Romance was coming to the
front. Living began to take on some joy. And with this lighter
mood of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries biography gradu-
ally became somewhat less serious, less commemorative, less
didactic.
57 Biography
Biography Definitely "Arrives." For the purposes of this brief
survey, however, this summary need not pause again until the
middle of the sixteenth century when William Roper (1496-
1578), More's son-in-law, wrote what is now most often referred
to as the first English biography, his Life of Sir Thomas More,
and George Cavendish (1500-1561) wrote his Life of Wolsey.
With these two books, English biography had most certainly ar-
rived as a recognized form of literature. The didactic purpose
was still obvious, the commemorative spirit was still present.
But both books make a greater effort to avoid prejudice than
had before manifested itself in English biography. Both books
resorted to EPISODE and ANECDOTE and fairly vivid DIALOGUE.
Both books devoted their space to the life of one man, the Wolsey
beginning with the birth of the subject and ending with the
death. But most important of all, both books made an avowed
declaration to follow the truth. HAGIOGRAPHY and commemora-
tion are present, but no writer before these two had made such
general efforts to strike a fair balance, to write adversely of their
subjects when adverse comment was necessary. And with this
gesture toward the truth biography came more definitely into its
own as a field of literature.
The Seventeenth Century: Biographic Brevities. The next cen-
tury, the seventeenth, did little to advance biography. It was,
in general, a time of brevities. The character sketch, the ANA,
flourished. People were interested in ethical motives of one sort
or another. The CHARACTER was the contemporary enthusiasm.
John Aubrey wrote his frank, gossipy Minutes of Lives as brief
estimates of his contemporaries. Thomas Fuller wrote his Worthies.
DIARIES, LETTERS, and MEMOIRS were plentiful; the Memoirs of
Lady Fanshawe and the Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson serve
as examples. The first worth-while AUTOBIOGRAPHY, perhaps, is that
of Lord Herbert. But were it not for Izaak Walton's Lives the
century would be almost a complete loss so far as biography is con-
cerned. Walton, who wrote his Lives from 1640 to 1678, has been
considered by some the first English professional biographer since
he attempted the form deliberately and sustained it over a long
period. Walton, too, contributed breeziness to the form, reverting
to the manner of Monk Eadmer in his use of LETTERS and adding for
himself supposititious conversations between his subject and others.
Opposed to Walton and his biographical manner there was Thomas
Sprat, whose Life of Cowley appeared in 1668. Sprat is important
Biography 58
to our purpose for his manner. To him it is that the Victorian
demand for "decency" in biography seems largely due, for Sprat
wrote a life that was a cold and dignified thing, formal and
proper, emasculated and virtuous. "The tradition of 'discreet*
biography," writes one critic, "owes its wretched origin to him."
The Eighteenth Century: Biography at Its Best. If biography
almost stood still during the seventeenth century, the eighteenth
saw it march forward to the greatest accomplishment it has en-
joyed. BoswelTs Life of Johnson stands, probably for all time,
at the head of any list of biographies. Two lesser luminaries
were Roger North and William Mason North (Lives of the
Norths) , who insisted that panegyric be avoided and wrote
brightly and colloquially, and Mason (Life and Writings of Gray),
who carried further the use of letters and pretty largely left his
reader to deduce the sort of man his subject was by a simple
placing before the reader of a wide range of illustrative material.
Dr. Johnson himself dignified biography by developing a philoso-
phy for the writing of the form and by his insistence that to a
real biographer truth was much more important than respect
for a dead man or his relatives. To Dr. Johnson probably more
than to any other critic of the form goes the credit of having
raised biography to the rank of literature and art. In his Lives
of the Poets he himself practiced his doctrines. The writing of
the supreme English biography was, however, reserved for John-
son's biographer James Boswell. This is no place to estimate
anew that frequently praised book. What is important is the new
twist which Boswell gave to biographic method. He used most
of the methods developed by earlier writers, but he wrought of
them a new combination. Humor of a sort was here; here was
introduced a great wealth of petty detail from which the reader
might make for himself his deductive analysis; here, too, were the
ANECDOTE and ANA elements of the seventeenth century; and,
greatest of all, here were intimacy and personal comment. To
Boswell was given the privilege of making biography actual, real,
convincing. Here at last were the commemorative elements sub-
ordinated; the didactic qualities minimized. In the work of James
Boswell biography painted a living, breathing human being.
Victorian Biography Becomes Discreet. The Boswell tradition
was in a fair way of being accepted when Victorianism, with its
tedious studiousness, its two-volume 'life and letters" biography,
its "authorized" biographers more or less controlled by the family
59 Blank Verse
and relatives of the hero, blurred the picture. True enough, in the
nineteenth century before Victorianism stultified biography, there
had been Tom Moore's Life of Sheridan and Letters and Journals
of Lord Byron; as well as Lockhart's Life of Scott. But on the whole
the freedom which Boswell had brought to this writing was re-
stricted and confined by the Victorians. Religious orthodoxy, piety,
and moral judgments again were in the saddle. Tennyson spoke for
the epoch when he thundered, "What business has the public to
know about Byron's wildnesses? He has given them fine work and
they ought to be satisfied." HAGIOGRAPHY had returned.
The Twentieth Century Becomes Objective and Psychological.
The growing scientific attitude had become operative on biography
by the early years of the twentieth century, and it brought with it
not only a rejection of the polite reticence of the Victorian
biographer but also a direct attack upon the admiration of famous
men. Lytton Strachey, in Eminent Victorians (1918) and Queen
Victoria (1921), wrote lives that were brief, ironic, artistically
shaped and (his critics declare) too often inaccurate. Coupled with
Strachey's method have been the assumptions of the depth
psychologists, particularly of Freud, and our century has seen a
host of biographical studies which are virtually attempts to read
the hidden emotional life and even the unconscious experiences and
motives of the subject. Van Wyck Brooks' studies of Mark Twain
and of Henry James as the products of frustration are particularly
significant for the American literary student, although Gamaliel
Bradford's "psychographs" may have more enduring value as
biography. Philip Guedalla in England and Carl Sandburg and
Douglas Southall Freeman in America have made the twentieth
century not only a period in which biography has been popular
and widely read and written but also one in which at its best it
has achieved high distinction. (See Donald A. Stauffer, English
Biography Before 1700 and The Art of Biography in Eighteenth
Century England; Harold Nicholson, Development of English
Biography; and John A. Garraty, The Nature of Biography.)
Blank Verse: Blank verse may be said to consist of unrimed lines
of ten syllables each, the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth
syllables bearing the ACCENTS (IAMBIC PENTAMETER). This form
has generally been accepted as that best adapted to dramatic verse
in English and is commonly used for long poems whether dramatic,
philosophic, or narrative. Because of its freedom it appears easy
Blues' 60
to write, but good blank verse probably demands more artistry and
genius than any other verse form. The freedom gained through lack
of RIME is offset by the demands for richness to be secured through
its privileges. This richness may be obtained by the skillful poet
through a variety of means: the shifting of the CAESURA, or pause,
from place to place within the line; the shifting of the STRESS among
syllables; the use of the run-on line, which permits of thought-
grouping in large or small blocks (these thought-groups being
variously termed verse "paragraphs" or verse STANZAS) ; variation in
tonal qualities by changing DICTION from passage to passage; and,
finally, the adaptation of the form to reproduction of differences
in the speech of characters in dramatic and narrative verse and
to differences of emotional expression.
Alden attributes the development of blank verse as an English
form to the influence of classical HUMANISM "the representatives of
which grew skeptical as to the use of rime, on the ground that
it was not found in classical poetry." It appears to have first
found general favor in England as a medium for dramatic expres-
sion, but with Milton it was turned to EPIC use and since then has
been employed in the writing of IDYLLS and LYRICS. The distinction
of the first use of blank verse in English, though the claims are not
quite clear, is generally given to Surrey, who used the form in his
translation of parts of the Aeneid (made prior to 1547). The
earliest dramatic use of blank verse in English was in Sackville and
Norton's Gorboduc, 1565; the earliest use in didactic verse was in
Gascoigne's Steel Glass, 1576; but it was only with Marlowe (prior
to 1593) that the form first reached the hands of a master capable
of using its range of possibilities and passing it on for Shakespeare
and Milton to develop to its ultimate perfection. In more recent
times some critics have manifested a willingness to extend the
meaning of the term to include almost any metrical unrimed form,
and not to restrict its use to verses of ten syllables and five accents.
Blues: An Afro-American folk-song of recent development among
the Negroes of the southern United States. A blues is character*
istically short (three-line STANZA), melancholy in tone, and marked
by frequent REPETITION. Probably each blues was originally the
composition of one person, but so readily are blues appropriated
and changed that in practice they are a branch of folk literature.
The following is an example:
61 Bombast
Gwine lay my head right on de railroad track,
Gwine lay my head right on de railroad track,
'Cause my baby, she won't take me back.
For a full discussion of the subject, see Blues, by W. C. Handy,
himself the author of the most famous of blues songs, "The St.
Louis Blues."
Bluestockings: A term which suggests women of the intellectual
type. It gained currency after 1750 as a result of its application (for
reasons not now easy to establish beyond dispute) to a group of
women of literary and intellectual tastes who held in London as-
semblies or "conversations" to which "literary and ingenious men"
were invited. It was the English equivalent of the French salon.
There was no formal organization and the personnel of the group
changed from time to time, so that no "membership" list can be
given with assurance or completeness. Among the women blue-
stockings were Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu (the "Queen of the Blues"),
Hannah More, Fanny Burney, and Mrs. Hester Chapone. Horace
Walpole was one of the male "members," and Dr. Samuel Johnson,
Edmund Burke, and David Garrick were at times frequent visitors.
The activities of the group were directed toward encouraging an
interest in literature and fostering the recognition of literary genius
(see PRJMITTVTSM), and hence helped remove the odium which
had attached to earlier "learned ladies." It is used today as a term
of opprobrium to describe pretentiously intellectual and pedantic
females.
Blurb: A term applied in the American book trade to the descriptive
matter printed on the jackets of new books, usually extravagant in
its claims. The term was invented by Gelett Burgess in 1914.
Bombast: Ranting, insincere, extravagant language. Grandilo-
quence. Elizabethan TRAGEDY, especially early SENECAN plays,
contains much bombastic style, marked by extravagant IMAGERY.
An example may be quoted from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act II, Sc.
2):
Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.
Bon mot 6%
Bon mot: A witty REPARTEE or statement. A clever saying.
Book Sizes: To understand the terms, QUARTO, OCTAVO, and the
rest, used in describing book sizes, it is first of all necessary to know
the principle determining these sizes. This principle is best under-
stood by imagining before one a sheet of paper, "foolscap" size, 17
inches by 13% inches.
647
When this paper is folded along 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6, the resulting
folds mark off lie sizes of book pages cut from the large foolscap
sheet. Thus 1-2-7-8 represents one of two leaves cut from the
original foolscap and is, therefore, a FOLIO (Latin for leaf) sheet or
page; 2-3-4-7 represents one fourth of the original sheet and,
therefore, gives us a QUARTO page; 2-3-5-6 constitutes one eighth
of the original and gives us an OCTAVO page. A book size, then, is
determined by the number of book leaves cut from a single large
sheet. To determine the number of pages cut from the original
sheet count the number of pages to a SIGNATURE; this may often be
done by noting the occurrence of the SIGNATURE marks (themselves
sometimes called SIGNATURES) which appear at regular intervals at
the foot of a page. These symbols are usually numerals or letters and
may be found regularly in early printed books and sometimes in
recently printed ones. They indicate the beginning of new signa-
tures. The number of leaves (not pages) in a single SIGNATURE
63 Bourgeois Literature
shows the number of leaves cut from the original sheet and is, there-
fore, the indication of the book size. When there are two leaves to
the SIGNATURE, the book is a FOLIO; when there are four leaves, it
is a QUARTO; and so on. The table below shows in convenient out-
line form the principle explained above as it manifests itself in
the more frequently used book sizes.
No. OF LEAVES PAGES TO SIGNATURE NAME
2 4 Folio
4 8 Quarto (4to)
8 16 Octavo (8vo)
12 24 duodecimo (12mo)
16 32 sixteenmo (16mo)
32 64 thirty-twomo ( 32mo )
64 128 sixty-f ourmo ( 64mo )
This would all be very simple but for the fact that in modern print-
ing there is a variety of sizes of original stock. In addition to the
"foolscap 8vo" in our example, we may have Post 8vo, Demy 8vo,
Crown 8vo, Royal 8vo, etc., the terms Demy, Crown, and the others
referring to varying sizes of original sheets which, in turn, give vary-
ing sizes of book pages even when the number of leaves cut from
the sheets is the same. So complicated has the whole question of
took sizes become that expert bibliographers urge more attention
to the position of the watermark on the page (a guide to book
measurements too complicated to discuss here) and even then
frequently give up the question in despair. Publishers arbitrarily
use 12mo., OCTAVO, etc., for books of certain sizes regardless of the
number of pages to the signature. For a full discussion of the sub-
ject see An Introduction to Bibliography, Ronald B. McKerrow,
p. 164.
Bourgeois Drama: A loose term applied to plays in which the life
of the common folk rather than that of the courtly or the rich is
depicted. Such widely differing kinds of plays as Heywood's Inter-
ludes, Gammer Gurtons Needle, Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday
(REALISTIC COMEDY), and Lillo's The London Merchant (DOMESTIC
TRAGEDY) are embraced in the term.
Bourgeois Literature: Literature produced primarily to appeal to the
.middle-class reader. Compare BOURGEOIS DRAMA, where bourgeois
Bowdlerize 64
does not denote the class of readers but the social sphere of the ac-
tion of the play.
Bowdlerize: To expurgate a book or piece of writing by omitting
all offensive, indecorous passages. Bowdlerize derives its signifi-
cance from the fact that Thomas Bowdler, an English physician,
published (in 1818) an expurgated edition of Shakespeare.
Brahmins: Members of the highest caste among the Hindus; by
ironic extension applied to the literary figures of New England in
the last half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the
twentieth, because they were considered to be clinging to the mid-
century attitudes of Lowell, Holmes, and Longfellow long after their
vitality was gone; the major supporters of the GENTEEL TRADITION.
Breve: The name of the symbol (^) used to indicate a short syllable
in the SCANSION of QUANTITATIVE VERSE.
Brief: A condensed statement, a resum6, of the main arguments or
ideas presented in a speech or piece of writing. In legal practice, a
formal summary of laws and authorities bearing on the main points
of a case; in church history, a papal letter less formal than a bull.
British Museum: Of importance to students of literature since it
houses probably the most important library in the world. The col-
lection, founded in 1753 through a bequest from Sir Hans Sloane,
now embraces over 5,000,000 items. It is located in Great Russell
Street, in Bloomsbury, London. The British Museum is particularly
wealthy in its collection of valuable manuscripts including, besides
the famous Harleian and Cottonian MSS., a series of documents
from the third century to the present. Particularly noteworthy are
its collections comprising English historical chronicles, Anglo-Saxon
materials, charters, Arthurian romances, the Burney Collection of
classical MSS., Greek papyri, Irish, French, and Italian MSS., and
the genealogical records of English families. From time to time it
has been given by bequest special libraries such as Archbishop Cran-
mer's Collection, the Thomas Collection, the C. M. Cracherode
Collection, and the Sir Joseph Banks Collection. Other important fea-
tures are its assortment of items from American, Chinese and Ori-
ental, Hebrew, and Slavonic literatures. Some four thousand news-
papers are filed and bound. According to the British copyright law
the Museum was to secure copies of every publication seeking copy-
65 Brook Farm
right protection. The result of all this is an astonishing grouping to-
gether in one place of the learning and literatures of the world, so
important a grouping that every advanced student of English and
world literatures hopes for an opportunity to work in its archives.
Broadside Ballad: Soon after the development of printing in Eng-
land BALLADS were prepared for circulation on FOLIO sheets, printed
on one side only, two pages to the sheet, and two columns to the
page. Because of their manner of publication these were termed
broadsides. In quality these BALLADS ranged from reproductions of
old popular BALLADS of real literary distinction to semi-illiterate
screeds with little poetic quality. The subjects of these broadsides
were of wide variety: accidents, dying speeches of criminals, miracu-
lous events of one sort or another, religious and political harangues.
They were often satirical in nature and frequently personal in their
invective. In the sixteenth century, the heyday of their popularity,
they served, as one critic states, as a "people's yellow journal." A
few of the many modern collections of broadside ballads may be
cited: Roxburghe Ballads, 9 vols.; A Pepysian Garland and The
Pack of Antolycus, both edited by H. E. Rollins.
Broken Rime: A term describing the breaking of a word at the end
of a verse in order to produce a RIME. Although the effect is apt to
be comic, it is also used by serious poets, notably Gerard Manley
Hopkins. The opening lines of his "The Windhover" illustrate broken
rime:
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in
his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing.
Brook Farm: A UTOPIAN experiment in communal living, sponsored
by the Transcendental Club of Boston. The farm, located at West
Roxbury, Massachusetts, nine miles from Boston, was taken over in
1841 by a joint stock company, headed by George Ripley. The full
name of the organization was "The Brook Farm Institute of Agri-
culture and Education." The basic reasons for the scheme were ef-
forts to provide for the residents opportunity for cultural pursuits
and leisure at little cost, the farm being supposed, through the rota-
tion of labor of the members, to support the residents who, in most
of their time, were to be free to attend lectures, read, write, and dis-
Bucolic 66
cuss intellectual problems. No doubt the project was much influ-
enced by the doctrines of Frangois Fourier and Robert Owen. It
should be noted that while many transcendentalists manifested an
active interest in the enterprise, the movement was in no proper
sense the outgrowth of a general activity on the part of all trans-
cendentalists. Hawthorne (see the Blithedale Romance) was there
for a period as were other prominent leaders, but such people as
Emerson, Alcott, and Margaret Fuller never actively took part. Dis-
sension among the members, the discovery that the soil was not
fertile enough to bring the necessary return from the labor ex-
pended, and the burning of a new and uninsured "phalanstery,"
were some of the reasons which in 1846 brought about the failure
of the project. See TRANSCENDENTALISM.
Bucolic: A term used to characterize PASTOBAL writing, particu-
larly poetry, concerned with shepherds and rural life. The treatment
is usually rather formal and fanciful. In the plural, bucolics, the
term refers collectively to the PASTORAL literature of such writers as
Theocritus and Virgil. In the present loose usage the expression con-
notes simply poetry of rustic background and is not necessarily re-
stricted to verse with the conventional PASTORAL elements. See PAS-
TORAL.
Burlesque: A form of comic art characterized by ridiculous exag-
geration. This distortion is secured in a variety of ways: the sublime
may be made absurd, honest emotions may be turned to SENTIMEN-
TALITY, a serious subject may be treated frivolously or a frivolous
subject seriously. Perhaps the essential quality which makes for
burlesque is the discrepancy between subject-matter and STYLE.
That is, a STYLE ordinarily dignified may be used for nonsensical
matter, or a STYLE very nonsensical may be used to ridicule a
weighty subject. Burlesque, as a form of art, manifests itself in sculp-
ture, painting, and even architecture, as well as in literature. This
type of writing has an ancient lineage in world literature: an author
of uncertain identity used it in the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, to
TRAVESTY Homer. Aristophanes made burlesque popular, and in
France, under Louis XIV, nothing was sacred to the satirist. Chau-
cer in Sir Thopas burlesqued MEDIEVAL ROMANCE as did Cervantes
in Don Quixote. One of the best known uses of burlesque in DRAMA
is Gay's The Beggars Opera. In recent use the term already broad
has been broadened to include musical plays light in nature
67 Caesura
though not essentially burlesque in tone or manner. A distinction be-
tween burlesque and PARODY is commonly made, in which burlesque
is a TRAVESTY of a literary form and PARODY a TRAVESTY of a partic-
ular work. See TRAVESTY, PARODY.
Burletta: A term used in the late eighteenth century for a variety of
musical dramatic forms, somewhat like the BALLAD-OPERA, the EX-
TRAVAGANZA, and the PANTOMIME. One of its sponsors (George Col-
man, the younger) asserted that the proper use of the word was for
"a drama in rhyme, entirely musical a short comick piece con*
sisting of recitative and singing, wholly accompanied, more or less,
by the orchestra."
Buskin: A boot, thick-soled and reaching halfway to the knee, worn
by Greek tragedians with the purpose of increasing their stature,
even as comedians wore socks for the opposite purpose. By associa-
tion buskin has come to mean TRAGEDY. Milton used "the buskin'd
stage" and "J onson ' s learned SOCK" to characterize TRAGEDY and
COMEDY respectively.
Cabal: See ACROSTIC.
Cacophony: The opposite of EUPHONY; a term used to characterize
a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones. Though most
specifically a term used in the CRITICISM of POETRY, the word is
also employed to indicate any disagreeable sound effect in other
forms of writing. Cacophony may be an unconscious flaw in the
poet's music, resulting in harshness of sound or difficulty of articula-
tion, or it may be used consciously for effect, as Browning and Eliot
often use it. See EUPHONY.
Cadence: Measured, rhythmical movement either in prose or verse.
The recurrence of EMPHASIS or ACCENT often accompanied by rising
and falling modulations of the voice. Cadence is related to RHYTHM,
but exists usually in larger and looser units of syllables than the
formal, metrical movement of regular verses. Properly used, cadence
can be made one of the most subtle and pleasing of stylistic qualities.
See FREE VERSE.
Caesura: A pause or break in the metrical or rhythmical progress
of a line of VERSE. Originally, in classical literature, the caesura char-
Calendar 68
acteristically divided a FOOT between two words. Usually the csesura
has been placed near the middle of a VERSE. Some poets, however,
have sought diversity of rhythmical effect by placing the caesura
anywhere from near the beginning of a line to near the end. Exam-
ples of variously placed caesuras follow:
Sleepst thou, Companion dear, || what sleep can close
Thy eye-lids? II and remembrest what Decree
Of yesterday, [[ so late hath past the lips
Of Heav'ns Almightie. || Thou to me thy thoughts
Wast wont, etc.
Milton
Viewed in another sense, the csesura is an instrument of prose
rhythm which cuts across and by varying, enriches the regularity
of accentual verse. The interplay of prose sense and VERSE demand
can be observed in the selection given above. Metricists who follow
closely the classical distinctions use csesura to indicate a pause
within a FOOT and DIERESIS to indicate a pause that coincides with
the end of the FOOT. This distinction is seldom made in English
METRICS, where csesura is employed as the generic term.
Calendar: See ALMANAC.
Calligraphy: The art of beautiful writing. In literature the signifi-
cance of the term springs from the development of the art during
the Middle Ages when the monks so generally gave their attention
to the copying of ancient manuscripts. Much literature was pre-
served through their skillful penmanship.
Calvinism: Throughout the whole course of Western European
Christian culture (and American culture as well), religious ideas
and systems have profoundly affected, both directly and indirectly,
literature and literary history. The great conflict of medieval times
was between AUGUSTINIANISM, which would exalt the glory of God
at the expense of the dignity of man (stressing original sin and the
necessity of divine grace), and PELAGIANISM, which asserted man's
original innocence and his ability to develop moral and spiritual
power through his own efforts. ARMINIANISM was somewhat of a
compromise between these positions, insisting upon the part both
God and man must play in human redemption. Calvinism was a
RENAISSANCE representative of the Augustinian point of view. At
no time in the last four hundred years has the literature of England
69 Calvinism
or America been free from reflections of Calvinistic thought and
conduct.
Some understanding of the teachings of Calvinism the charter of
which is John Calvin's famous Institutes of the Christian Religion
(1536) is therefore important to the student of literature. Cal-
vinistic doctrines have been summarized as follows (not all "Cal-
vinists," of course, accepted unequivocally all of them) : 1. God is
a God of power, conceived as a king or ruler. 2. Hence the chief
duty of man is to aid in making the will of God prevail. 3. This will
of God can be discovered through the study of the Bible. 4. But
this involves much mental work hence the emphasis upon logical
processes. The Bible furnishes the premises: man must reason from
them. 5. Human nature was corrupted by Adam's sin and man there-
fore inherits a totally depraved nature, even infants being wholly
sinful and subject to damnation. 6. Man can be saved only through
God's grace by means of the Atonement. But this salvation is ef-
fective only for certain chosen ones. 7. Hence the famous doctrine
of election or predestination. God must determine beforehand which
individuals are to be saved, which condemned. The "elect" discover
their good fortune through the inner voice or witness of the spirit.
Those not chosen develop their evil natures through the agency
of Satan and thus merit their hard fate. 8. Though the church and
state are theoretically separate, the Church might advise the state
(in New England this came to mean that only the elect might enjoy
the rights of citizenship). The essential doctrines of the system are
frequently summed up in the famous FIVE POINTS: (1) total de-
pravity, man's natural inability to exercise free will, since he in-
herited corruption from Adam's fall; (2) unconditional election,
which manifests itself through God's election of those to be saved,
despite their inability to perform saving works; (3) prevenient and
irresistible grace, made available in advance but only to the elect;
(4) the perseverance of saints, the predetermined elect inevitably
persevering in the path of holiness; and (5) limited atonement,
man's corruption being partially atoned for by Christ, this atone-
ment being provided the elect through the Holy Spirit, giving them
the power to attempt to obey God's will as it is revealed in the
Bible.
This system developed both zeal and intolerance on the part of
the elect. It fostered education, however, which in early New Eng-
land was regarded as a religious duty, and thereby profoundly af-
fected the development of American culture. To this attitude of the
Canon 70
Calvinistic PURITANS may be traced much of the inspiration for such
things as: the founding of many colleges and universities, the crea-
tion of a system of public schools, and the great activity of early
printing presses in America as well as the development of religious
sects. Historically, especially in Europe, it is probably true that the
political effects of Calvinism have been in the main calculated to
encourage freedom and popular government.
In New England the COVENANT THEOLOGY early softened and
modified Calvinism, but the term PUBTTAN in America usually refers,
at least in a philosophical sense, to a belief in the doctrines of Cal-
vinism. See AuGUSTiNiANisM, ARMINIANISM, COVENANT THEOLOGY,.
PELAGIANISM.
Canon: (1) A standard of judgment; a criterion; (2) the authorized
or accepted list of books belonging in the Christian Bible. APOCRY-
PHAL books are uncanonical. The term is often extended to mean
the accepted list of books of any author, such as Shakespeare. Thus
Macbeth belongs without doubt in the canon of Shakespeare's work,
while Sir John Oldcastle, though printed as Shakespeare's soon after
his death, is not canonical, because the evidence of Shakespeare's
authorship is unconvincing. A similar use of the word is illustrated
in the phrase "the Saints' Canon," the list of Saints actually author-
ized or "canonized" by the Church. See APOCRYPHA.
Cant: Insincere, specious language calculated to give the impres-
sion of piety and religious fervor. In critical writing the term is also
used to signify the special language and phraseology characteristic
of a profession or art, as "the pedagogue's cant," "the artist's cant."
In this sense of a special language, the term indicates any technical
or special vocabulary or dialect, as "thieves' cant," "beggars' cant,"
etc. More loosely still, the word signifies any insincere, superficial
display of language, planned to convey an impression of conviction,
but devoid of genuine emotion or feeling; that is, language used
chiefly for display or effect.
Canto: A section or division of a long POEM. Derived from the Latin
cantus (song) the word originally signified a section of a narrative
POEM of such length as to be sung by a minstrel in one singing. By-
ron's Childe Harolds Pilgrimage is divided into cantos.
Canzo: A love song of the TROUVERES.
71 Carol
Canzone: A lyrical POEM, a song or BALLAD. In several ways the
canzone is similar to the MADRIGAL. The canzone is a short poem
consisting of equal STANZAS and an ENVOY of fewer lines than the
STANZA. It is impossible to be specific as to the mechanics of the
verse form since different writers have wrought rather wide varia-
tions in structure. The number of lines to the STANZA ranges from
seven to twenty, and the ENVOY from three to ten. Petrarch's canzoni
usually consisted of five or six STANZAS and the ENVOY. In general it
may be said that the canzone form is not unlike the CHANT ROYAL
though its conventions are less fixed. The canzone is generally con-
ceded to have first developed in Provence during the Middle Ages
and Giraud de Borneil is credited with having first evolved the
pattern which has proved very popular in Italy. Others than Petrarch
who have written canzoni are Dante, Tasso, Leopardi, Chiabrera,
and Marchetti. Frequent subjects used were love, nature, and the
wide range of emotional reactions to life, particularly if sad, which
poets commonly present. The term and the aspects of the medieval
form it designates are used by contemporary poets on occasion for
poems of considerable complexity of structure.
Caricature: Descriptive writing which seizes upon certain individual
qualities of a person and through exaggeration or distortion pro-
duces a BURLESQUE, ridiculous effect. Caricature more frequently
is associated with drawing (cartoons) than with writing, since for
writing the related types SATIRE, BURLESQUE, and PARODY are
more generally used. Caricature, unlike the highest SATIRE, is likely
to treat personal qualities, though, like SATIRE, it lends itself to the
ridicule of political, religious, and social foibles.
Carmen Figuratum: A poem so written that the form of the printed
words suggests the subject matter; the device is not common in
English poetry, and is usually considered a form of false wrr. Ex-
amples are Herbert's "Easter Wings," the humorous "long and sad
tail of the Mouse," in Alice in Wonderland, and several poems of
Dylan Thomas, notably "Vision and Prayer."
Carol (Carole) : In medieval times in France a cardie was a dance,
the term later being applied to the song which accompanied the
dance. The leader sang the STANZAS, the other dancers singing the
REFRAIN. The carole became very popular, and in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries spread through other European countries and
Caroline 72
was instrumental in extending the influence of the French LYRIC.
Later, carol was used to mean any joyous song, then a HYMN of re-
ligious joy, and finally was used to designate Christmas HYMNS in
particular. Some carols, such as "Joseph was an old man/' were defi-
nitely popular, belonging to the culture of the folk, while later ones,
such as Charles Wesley's "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," are the
product of more conscious and sophisticated literary effort. The
Christmas HYMN is called a noel in France.
Caroline: Applied to whatever belonged to or was typical of the
age of Charles I of England (1625-1642), but more particularly to
tfhe spirit of the court of Charles. Thus Caroline literature might
jmean all the literature of the time, both Cavalier and PURITAN, or it
.might be used more specifically to suggest that of the royalist group,
such as the CAVALIER LYRISTS. Caroline literature was in some
senses a decadent carry-over from the ELIZABETHAN and JACOBEAN
periods. Melancholy not only characterized the work of the META-
PHYSICAL POETS but permeated the writings of both the conflicting
groups, PURITAN and Cavalier. DRAMA was decadent; ROMANTICISM
was in decline; CLASSICISM was advancing; the scientific spirit was
growing in spite of the absorption of the people in violent religious
controversies. It was in Caroline times that die PURITAN migration
to America was heaviest. The last segment of the RENAISSANCE in
England, if the COMMONWEALTH is considered an interregnum be-
tween the RENAISSANCE and the NEO-CLASSIC PERIOD. See RENAIS-
SANCE for a sketch of the literature; see BAROQUE, JACOBEAN,
CAVALIER LYRISTS; see also "The Caroline Age" in The Out-
line of Literary History.
Carpe diem: "Seize the day." The phrase was used by Horace and
has come to be applied generally to literature, especially to lyric
POEMS, which exemplify the spirit of "Let us eat and drink, for
tomorrow we shall die." The theme was a very common one in
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English love poetry; lover-poets
continually were exhorting their mistresses to yield to love while
they still had their youth and beauty, as in Robert Herrick's famous
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flymg;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
73 Catharsis
Catalexis (adj. Catalectic) : Incompleteness of the kst FOOT at the
end of a verse; TRUNCATION at the close of a line of poetry by omis-
sion of one or two final syllables; the opposite of ANACRUSIS. Cata-
lexis is one of the many ways in which the poet secures variety of
metrical effects. The term ACATALECTIC is used to designate particu-
lar lines where catalexis is not employed. In the following lines writ-
ten in DACTYLIC DIMETER, the second and fourth are catalectic be-
cause the second FOOT of each lacks the two unaccented syllables
which would normally complete the DACTYL. The first and third
lines, in which the unaccented syllables are not cut off and which
therefore are metrically complete, are ACATALECTIC.
One more unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!
Thomas Hood
Catalexis is also applied to the TRUNCATION of an initial unstressed
syllable; the resulting line is called HEADLESS.
Catastasis: In DRAMA, the heightening; the third of the four parts
into which the ancients divided a play. See DRAMATIC STRUCTURE.
Catastrophe: The conclusion of a play, particularly a TRAGEDY; the
last of the four parts into which the ancients divided a play. It is
the final stage in the FALLING ACTION, ending the dramatic CON-
FLICT, winding up the PLOT and consisting of the actions that re-
sult from the CLIMAX. Since it usually is used in connection with a
TRAGEDY and involves the death of the hero, it is sometimes used
by extension to designate an unhappy ending (or event) in non-
dramatic FICTION and even in life. In the strict sense of DRAMATIC
STRUCTURE, however, every DRAMA has a catastrophe; see the line
in King Lear which reads: "Pat, he comes, like the catastrophe of
the old comedy/' Today, however, DENOUEMENT is more commonly
used than catastrophe in this sense. See DRAMATIC STRUCTURE,
DENOUEMENT.
Catharsis (or Katharsis): In the Poetics Aristotle, in defining
TRAGEDY, speaks of its "through pity and fear effecting the proper
purgation [catharsis] of these emotions," but he fails to explain what
he means by "proper purgation." That a physiological METAPHOR
Cavalier Lyric 74
has been used to describe the effect produced upon the emotions
of the spectator by the witnessing of the tragic action is clear, but
the implications of that METAPHOR and indeed its accurate trans-
lation into concept have been much debated in the history of
CRITICISM. Two widely differing interpretations are customary to-
day: one is that the spectator, by vicariously participating in the
actions of the hero, learns through the effects upon him of fear
and pity that the evil emotions of the hero are destructive and
thereby has learned to avoid them in his own life (this is a didactic
interpretation) ; the other is that the spectator's emotional conflicts
are temporarily resolved and his inner agitations stilled by having
an opportunity vicariously to expend fear and pity upon the tragic
hero. This latter is a psychological interpretation that has under-
gone great subtlety of elaboration and qualification in recent years.
R. B. Sharpe, in Irony in the Drama, suggests that the hero of a
TRAGEDY comes before its conclusion to represent to the spectator
"what Jung calls a symbol and Fraser a scapegoat that is, a
human figure upon whom we are able to load our emotions, from
our loftiest to our lowest, our hopes, and our sins, through such a
deep and complete emotional identification that he can carry them
away with him into heaven or the wilderness and so free us of
the burden and the tension of keeping them for ourselves. This
empathic identification is ... catharsis." See TRAGEDY.
Cavalier Lyric: The sort of light-hearted poem characteristic of the
CAVALIER LYRISTS; gay in tone; graceful, melodious, and polished
in manner; artfully showing Latin classical influences; sometimes
licentious and cynical or epigrammatic and witty. At times it
breathed the careless braggadocia of the military swashbuckler, at
times the aristocratic ease of the peaceful courtier. Many of the
poems were OCCASIONAL in character, as Suckling's charming if dog-
gerel-like "Ballad upon a Wedding" or Lovelace's pensive "To Al-
thea from Prison." The themes were love and war and chivalry and
loyalty to the king. The term Cavalier Lyric is also applied to a
poem of a later age but intended to illustrate the spirit or the times
of the CAVALIER LYRISTS, such as Browning's "Boot, Saddle, to
Horse and Away."
Cavalier Lyrists: The followers of Charles I (1625-1649) were
called Cavaliers, as opposed to the supporters of Parliament, who
were called ROUNDHEADS. The Cavalier Lyrists were a group of
75 Celtic Renaissance
these Cavaliers who composed gay and light-hearted poems, espe-
cially Thomas Carew, Richard Lovekce, and Sir John Suckling.
These men were soldiers and courtiers first and the authors of
CAVALIER LYRICS only incidentally. Robert Herrick, although he was
a country parson and not a courtier, is often classed with the Cava-
lier Lyrists, because many of his poems included in Hesperides are
in the vein of the Cavaliers. See CAVALIER LYRIC.
Celtic Literature: Literature produced by a people speaking any
one of the Celtic DIALECTS. Linguistically, the Celts are divided into
two main groups. The "Brythonic" Celts include the Ancient
Britons, the Welsh, the Cornish (Cornwall), and the Bretons
(Brittany); while the Goidelic (Gaelic) Celts include the Irish, the
Manx (Isle of Man), and the Scottish Gaels. At one time the Celts,
an important branch of the Jndo-European family, dominated
Central and Western Europe. The Continental Celts (including the
Bretons, who came from Britain) have left no literatures. The Celts
of Great Britain and Ireland, however, have produced much litera-
ture of interest to students of English and American literature. See
IRISH LITERATURE, WELSH LITERATURE, SCOTTISH LITERATURE,
CELTIC RENAISSANCE.
Celtic Renaissance (or Irish Renaissance): A general term for the
great movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
which in its various phases and sometimes conflicting "movements"
aimed at the preservation of the Gaelic language (the GAELIC
MOVEMENT) , the reconstruction of early Celtic history and litera-
ture, and the stimulation of a new literature authentically Celtic
(esp. Irish) in spirit. From before the middle of the nineteenth
century there had been a growing interest in Celtic, especially
Irish, antiquities, and much work was done in the collection and
study, and later in printing and translation, of early Irish manu-
scripts embodying the history and literature of ancient Ireland.
Along with this was developed the practice of collecting and
printing folk-tales still preserved in oral tradition. In the 1890's
came the GAELIC MOVEMENT, which stressed the use of the Gaelic
language itself. More fruitful was the contemporaneous Anglo-Irish
movement, which stimulated the production of a new literature in
English (or "Anglo-Irish") by Irish writers on Irish themes and in
the Irish spirit. Standish Hayes O'Grady's imaginative treatment of
Irish history (1880) provided much impetus to the movement, and
Celtic Revival 76
themes drawn from ancient Irish tradition were exploited in verse
and drama. Fortunately, some genuine poetic geniuses were at
hand to further the project, such as W. B. Yeats, George W. Russell
("A.E."), George Moore, J. M. Synge, and (later) James Stephens,
Lord Dunsany, and Padraic Colum. From the beginning Lady
Gregory was an enthusiastic worker as collector, popularizer,
essayist, and playwright. A striking phase of the renaissance was
its dramatic manifestation. In 1899 under the leadership of Yeats,
Moore, Edward Martyn, Lady Gregory, and others the Irish
Literary Theatre was founded in Dublin. Though this theatre
was inspired by the more or less cosmopolitan LITTLE THEATRE
MOVEMENT, Yeats and Martyn did write for it some plays employ-
ing Irish folk-materials. Later Yeats joined another group more
devoted to the exploitation of native elements, The Irish National
Theatre Society, to which he attracted J. M. Synge, the most gifted
playwright of the movement, whose Playboy of the Western World
(1907) and Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910) attracted wide recogni-
tion. Later exemplars of dramatic activity were Lord Dunsany and
Sean O'Casey. The Celtic Renaissance produced little of importance
in Wales. In Scotland it is perhaps best represented by the work
of "Fiona Macleod" (William Sharp).
Celtic Revival: A term sometimes used for the GAELIC MOVEMENT,
the CELTIC RENAISSANCE, or the IRISH LITERARY MOVEMENT, as
well as for the eighteenth-century movement described below.
Celtic Revival, The (Eighteenth Century): A literary movement of
the last half of the eighteenth century which stressed the use of the
historical, literary, and mythological traditions of the ancient
Celts, particularly the Welsh. Through confusion Norse mythology
was included in "Celtic." The movement was a part of the
ROMANTIC MOVEMENT, since it stressed the primitive, the remote,
the strange and mysterious, and since it aided the revolt against
pseudo-classicism by supplying a new mythology for the over-
worked classical myths and figures. Specifically it was characterized
by an intense interest in the druids and early Welsh bards, numer-
ous translations and imitations of early Celtic poetry appearing in
the wake of the discovery of some genuine examples of early Welsh
verse. The most influential and gifted poet in the group was Thomas
Gray, whose "The Bard" (1757) and The Progress of Poesy"
(1757) reflect early phases of the movement. The most spectacular
77 Chant
figure in the group of "Celticists" was James Macpherson, whose
long poems, Fingal (1762) and Temora (1763) chiefly his own
invention but partly English renderings of genuine Gaelic pieces
preserved in the Scottish Highlands he published as TRANSLATIONS
of the poems of a great Celtic poet of primitive times, Ossian. Both
Gray's and Macpherson's work influenced a host of minor poets,
who were especially numerous and active in the last two decades
of the century. There was also a considerable reflection of the
movement in the DRAMA, e.g., Home's The Fatal Discovery (acted
1769) and Brooke's Cymbeline (1778). Late in the century the
gloomy SENTIMENTALISM of Macpherson was less influential. (See
E. D. Snyder, The Celtic Revival in English Literature.)
Cento: A literary patchwork, usually in verse, made up of scraps
from one or many authors. An example is a fifth-century life of
Christ by the Empress Eudoxia, which is in verse with every line
drawn from Homer.
Chanson: A song. Originally composed of two-line STANZAS of
equal length (couplets), each STANZA ending in a REFRAIN, the
chanson is now more broadly interpreted to include almost any
poem intended to be sung, and written in a simple style.
Chanson de geste: A "song of great deeds/ 7 A term applied to the
early French EPIC. There is some uncertainty as to the ultimate
origin of the form. The earliest and best existing example, the
Chanson de Roland, dates probably from ca.llOO. The early
chansons de geste are written in ten-syllable lines marked by AS-
SONANCE and grouped in STANZAS of varying length. CYCLES de-
veloped, such as that of Charlemagne (geste du roi); that of Wil-
liam of Orange, which reflects the efforts of Christian heroes against
the invading Saracens; and that dealing with the strife among the
rebellious Northern barons. The stories generally reflect chivalric
ideals with little use of love as a theme. The form flourished for
several centuries, a total of about eighty examples being extant.
These epic tales supplied material ("Matter of France") for
MEDIEVAL ROMANCE, including English ROMANCES. See MEDIEVAL
ROMANCE.
Chant: Loosely used to mean a SONG, but more particularly the
term signifies the intoning of words to a monotonous musical
Chant royal 78
measure of few notes. The words of the chants in the English
Church are drawn from such Biblical sources as the Psalms.
CADENCE is an important element, and usually one note (the "re-
citing note") is used for a series of successive words or syllables.
DIRGES are often chanted. Repetition of a few varying musical
phrases is a characteristic, and the intonation of the voice plays
an important role. Chants are generally considered less melodious
than SONGS.
Chant royal: One of the more complex, and therefore less used,
French verse forms. The tradition for this verse form demands a
dignified, heroic subject such as can best be expressed in rich
DICTION and courtly formalities of speech. The chant royal consists
of sixty lines arranged in five STANZAS of eleven VERSES each and
an ENVOY of five VERSES, the ENVOY ordinarily starting with an
invocation in the manner of the BALLADE. The RIME SCHEME usually
followed is ababccddede for the stanza and ddede (as in the last
five lines of the stanza) for the ENVOY. The italicized e above
indicates the recurrence of a complete line as a REFRAIN at the end
of each STANZA and at the close of the ENVOY. All STANZAS must
be the same in all details and no rime-word may appear twice.
Chantey ( Shanty )i A sailors' SONG marked by strong RHYTHM and,
in the good old days of sail, used to accompany certain forms of
hard labor (such as weighing anchor) performed by seamen work-
ing in a group. The leader of the singing was referred to as the
"chantey man," his responsibility being to sing a line or two intro-
ductory to a REFRAIN joined in by the whole group.
Chapbook: Literally "cheap" book; a small book or pamphlet,
usually a single SIGNATURE of sixteen or thirty-two pages, poorly
printed and crudely illustrated, which was sold to the common
people in England and America through the eighteenth century
by pedlers or "chapmen." Chapbooks dealt with all sorts of topics
and incidents: travel tales, murder cases, prodigies, strange oc-
currences, witchcraft, biographies, religious legends and tracts,
stories of all sorts. They are of interest to the literary historian
because of their reflection of contemporary attitudes toward
themes and situations treated in literature. The term has been
revived in America this century as the title for miscellaneous small
books and pamphlets.
79 Characterization
Character: A literary form which flourished in England and France
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is a brief descriptive
sketch of a personage who typifies some definite quality. The
person is described not as an individualized personality but as an
example of some vice or virtue or type, such as a busybody, a
superstitious fellow, a fop, a country bumpkin, a garrulous old man,
a happy milkmaid, etc. Similar treatments of institutions and inani-
mate things, such as "the character of a coffee house," also employed
the term, and late in the seventeenth century, by a natural ex-
tension of the tradition, character was applied to longer composi-
tions, sometimes historical, as Viscount Halifax's Character of
Charles II. The vogue of character-writing followed the publication
in 1592 of a Latin translation of Theophrastus, an ancient Greek
writer of similar sketches. Though the character may have in-
fluenced Ben Jonson in his treatment of the man of HUMOURS in
comedy, the first English writer to cultivate the form as such was
Bishop Joseph Hall in his Characters of Virtues and Vices (1608).
Two of his successors were Sir Thomas Overbury (1614) and John
Earle (1628). Later, under the influence of the French writer
La Bruyere, characters became more individualized and were
combined with the ESSAY, as in the periodical essays of Addison
and Steele. Subjects of characters were given fanciful proper names,
often Latin or Greek, such as "Croesus." Good modern collections
of characters are Gwendolen Murphy's A Cabinet of Characters and
Richard Aldington's A Book of 'Characters' See ESSAY.
Characterization: In the LYRIC, the ESSAY, and the AUTOBIOGRAPHY,
the author reveals aspects of his own character; in the BIOGRAPHY
and the HISTORY, he presents the characters of actual persons other
than himself; and in FICTION (the DRAMA, the NOVEL, the SHORT
STORY, and the NARRATIVE POEM), he reveals the characters of
imaginary persons. The creation of images of these imaginary
persons so credible that they exist for the reader as real within the
limits of the FICTION is called characterization. The ability to
characterize the people of his imagination successfully is one of the
primary attributes of a good novelist, dramatist, or short-story
writer.
There are three fundamental methods of characterization in
FICTION: (1) the explicit presentation by the author of the
character through direct EXPOSITION, either in an introductory block
or more often piece-meal throughout the work, illustrated by
Characterization 80
action; (2) the presentation of the character in action, with little
or no explicit comment by the author, in the expectation that the
reader will be able to deduce the attributes of the actor from the
actions; and (3) the representation from within a character, with-
out comment on the character by the author, of the impact of
actions and emotions upon his inner self, with the expectation that
the reader will come to a clear understanding of the attributes of
the character.
It is difficult to distinguish among these methods of characteriza-
tion without discussing them in terms of narrative POINT OF VIEW.
Usually the explicit method results when the story is told by a first-
person NARRATOR, such as Dickens' David Copperfield or Sterne's
Tristram Shandy, or by an OMNISCIENT AUTHOR, such as Fielding
in Tom Jones or Thackeray in Vanity Fair. The success of the
explicit method of characterization rests at least in part upon the
personality of the NARRATOR or OMNISCIENT AUTHOR. The presenta-
tion of characters through actions is essentially the dramatic method.
It is the traditional way of establishing character in the DRAMA; so
much so, in fact, that only by changing some of the DRAMATIC
CONVENTIONS, as in the use of a CHORUS, or EXPRESSIONISM, or in
plays like O'NeuTs Strange Interlude, can other methods of
characterization than this be used in the theater. We know Hamlet
through what he says and does; the riddle of what Shakespeare in-
tended his true character to be is eternally unanswerable. The
NOVEL and the SHORT STORY in this century have frequently
adopted the dramatic technique by making objective presentations
of characters in action without authorial comment, to such an
extent that the SELF-EFFACING AUTHOR is today a fictional common-
place. Writers of the REALISTIC NOVEL, such as Bennett, Galsworthy,
and Howells, usually employ this method of character presenta-
tion. The presentation of the impact upon the PROTAGONIST'S inner
self of external events and emotions begins with the novels of
Henry James, whose The Ambassadors is an excellent example, and
continues into the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOVEL where, through
INTERIOR MONOLOGUES, the subconscious or unconscious mind of
the character is revealed, as in Joyce's Ulysses or Faulkner's The
Sound and the Fury.
But regardless of the method by which a character is presented,
the author may concentrate upon a dominant trait to the exclusion
of the other aspects of the character's personality or he may attempt
81 Characterization
to present a fully rounded personality. If the presentation of a
single dominant trait is carried to an extreme, not a believable
character but a CARICATURE will result. If this method is handled
with skill, it can produce two-dimensional characters that are
striking and interesting but lack depth. Mr. Micawber in David
Copperfield comes close to being such a two-dimensional character
through the emphasis that Dickens puts upon a very small group
of characteristics. Sometimes such characters are given descriptive
names, such as Mr. Deuceace, the gambler in Vanity Fair. On the
other hand the author may present us with so convincing a
congeries of personality traits that a complex rather than a simple
character emerges; such a character is three-dimensional or, in
E. M. Forster's term, "round." As a rule, the major characters in a
FICTION need such three-dimensional treatment, while minor
characters are often handled two-dimensionally.
Furthermore, a character may be either STATIC or DYNAMIC. A
STATIC CHARACTER is one who changes little if at all in the progress
of the narrative. Things happen to such a character without things
happening within him. The pattern of action reveals the character
rather than showing the character changing in response to the
actions. Sometimes a STATIC CHARACTER gives the appearance of
changing simply because our picture of him is revealed bit by bit;
this is true of Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy, who does not change,
although our view of him steadily changes. A DYNAIVOC CHARACTER,
on the other hand, is one who is modified by the actions through
which he passes, and one of the objectives of the work in which
he appears is to reveal the consequences of these actions upon him.
Most great DRAMAS and NOVELS have DYNAMIC CHARACTERS as
PROTAGONISTS. SHORT STORIES are more likely to reveal STATIC
CHARACTERS through action than to show changes in characters
resulting from actions.
Ultimately every successful character represents a fusion of the
universal and the particular and becomes an example of the
CONCRETE UNIVERSAL. It is in this dramatic particularization of the
typical and universal that one of the essences of the dramatic and
of characterization is to be found. Our minds may delight in
abstractions and ideas, but it is our emotions that ultimately give
the aesthetic and dramatic response, and they respond to the
personal, the particular, the CONCRETE. This is why a NOVEL speaks
to us more permanently than an ALLEGORY, why Hamlet has an
Chartism 82
authority forever lacking the "Indecisive Man" in a seventeenth-
century character. See POINT OF VIEW, NOVEL, SHORT STORY, DRAMA,
PLOT, CONCRETE UNIVERSAL.
Chartism: A definite political movement in England just before
the middle of the nineteenth century, the object of which was to
secure for the lower classes more social recognition and improved
material conditions. The Chartists advocated universal suffrage,
vote by ballot, annual parliaments, and other reforms. This plat-
form is given in the Peoples Charter (1838). Carlyle's Chartism
(1839) is an attack upon the movement. The chartist agitation is
favorably reflected in some of Kingsley's novels. See INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION.
Chiasmus: A type of rhetorical BALANCE in which the second part
is syntactically balanced against the first but with the parts
reversed, as in Coleridge's line, "Flowers are lovely, love is flower-
like," or Pope's "Works without show, and without pomp presides."
Chivalric Romance: MEDIEVAL ROMANCE reflecting the customs
and ideals of CHIVALRY. See MEDIEVAL ROMANCE, ARTHURIAN
LEGEND, COURTLY LOVE, CHIVALRY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Chivalry in English Literature: The system of manners and morals
known as chivalry, chiefly a fruit of the feudal system of the
Middle Ages, because it had been presented in MEDIEVAL
ROMANCE in a highly idealized form amounting almost to a religious
system for the upper classes, has furnished so much color and
atmosphere and inspiration for later literature that some knowledge
of Its characteristics is essential to the student. The medieval knight,
seen in the more brilliant light of literary idealization (as a matter
of fact the typical medieval knight had many unlovely character-
istics), has been portrayed not only by the many writers, known
and unknown, of MEDIEVAL ROMANCE, but by later poets like
Chaucer, with his "parfit, gentle knight" and Spenser, who fills the
forests and plains of his The Faerie Queene with a brilliant proces-
sion of courteous and heroic Guyons and Scudamores and Calidores.
Knights whose high oaths bind them to fidelity to God and king,
truth to their lady-loves, and ready service for all ladies in distress
or other victims of unjust tyrants, cruel giants, or fiendish monsters,
have become commonplaces of romantic literature.
83 Choriambus
Their sketchily drawn but noble personalities impart a vigor
and glow to the action of such HISTORICAL NOVELS as Scott's Ivarihoe
and find a somewhat unreal but earnestly sympathetic treatment
in the Idylls of the King of Tennyson. Tennyson's poem Guinevere,
indeed, includes the following poetic statement of the ideals of
knighthood (King Arthur is speaking) :
I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
To reverence the King, as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To honor his own word as if his God's,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until they won her.
A more fairJhful picture may perhaps be found in the pages of
Malory's Le Morte Darthur, where the romantic glamour of
knighthood, with all the effort to idealize Lancelot and Arthur
and find in the "good old days" a perfect pattern for later times,
is not allowed to obscure some of the less pleasing realities of
medieval knighthood. So glorious a thing as chivalry has not, of
course, gone unnoticed by the satirists. The early seventeenth
century not only produced the immortal Don Quixote in Spain
but Beaumont and Fletcher's dramatic BURLESQUE The Knight of
the Burning Pestle in England, while modern America has brought
forth not only its broadly comic A Connecticut Yankee in King Ar-
thurs Court (Mark Twain) but its more subtly mocking Galahad
(John Erskine) . Some pieces of English literature which make use
of chivalric elements are described in W. H. Schofield's Chivalry in
English Literature.
Choriambus: In METRICS a FOOT in which two accented syllables
flank two unaccented syllables: ^^ This FOOT is some-
times used in a VERSE form called choriarnbics, in which the line
begins with a TROCHEE, three choriarnbics follow, and it closes
with an IAMBUS. Swinburne used the form, as did Rupert Brooke,
whose line: "I have / tend ed and loved / year up on year, / I in
the sol / i tude" illustrates the choriambic line.
Chorus 84
Chorus; In ancient Greece, the groups of dancers and singers who
participated in religious festivals and dramatic performances.
Also the songs sung by the chorus. At first the choral songs made
up the bulk of the play, the spoken MONOLOGUE and DIALOGUE
being interpolated. Later, however, the chorus became subordinate,
offering inter-act comments. Finally, it became a mere LYRIC used
to take up the time between ACTS. In Elizabethan drama the role of
the chorus was often taken by a single actor, who recited PROLOGUE
and EPILOGUE and gave inter-act comments which linked the ACTS
and foreshadowed coming events. So in Sackville and Norton's
Gorboduc, the "first" English TRAGEDY, the chorus consists of a
few STANZAS accompanied by a DUMB SHOW, the latter foreshadow-
ing the coming action. In Kyd's Spanish Tragedy the part of the
chorus is played by a ghost and the figure Revenge, the ghost
urging Revenge to inspire the actors to hasten the vengeance de-
manded by the action. Shakespeare sometimes employed the
chorus, as in Pericles, where the old poet Gower, accompanied by
a DUMB SHOW, provides PROLOGUE and inter-act comment, and in
King Henry the Fifth, where the chorus comments on the action,
explains change of scene, and pROLOGUE-like begs for a sympathetic
attitude on the part of the spectators. Sometimes, within the play
proper, one of the characters, like the Fool in King Lear, is said
to play a "chorus-like" role when he comments on the action.
Although not commonly used, the chorus is still employed oc-
casionally by the modern playwright, notably T. S. Eliot in
Murder in the Cathedral. Sometimes a c/iorus-character one
whose role in the drama is to comment on the action is used;
such a character is Seth Beckwith in O'Neill's Mourning Becomes
Electra. Novelists, too, have used the chorus, sometimes as a group
of characters who comment on action, sometimes as a single
character. Both Scott and Hardy often used choruses of rustic
characters, and the CONFIDANTE of the Henry James novel is a
c/k>ru$-character.
Christianity, Established in England: Although evidence for
dating the introduction of Christianity into England is lacking, it
is certain that there were Christians in Roman Britain as early as
the third century, and it is probable that there was an organized
church as early as A.D. 314, when the bishops of London and York
are said to have attended a church council in Gaul. After the lapse
into barbarism which followed the Germanic invasions of the
85 Chronicle
fifth century, Christianity was reintroduced directly from Rome
by St. Augustine, who landed in Kent in A.D. 597. It flourished in
southeastern England under Ethelbert, spread northward, and
gained a foothold in Northumbria under Edwin (d. 633), who had
married a Kentish princess. Another group of missionaries soon
came into Northumbria from the celebrated Celtic monastery of
lona, an island off the west coast of Scotland. lona had been
established in A.D. 563 by St Columba, a missionary from Ireland,
where a form of Christianity reflecting the monastic ideals of Bishop
Martin of Tours (flourished c<3.371-cfl.400) had been introduced
from Gaul in the fourth or early fifth century. The Celtic and
Roman churches thus brought into contact differed in certain
doctrines and customs (such as the date for Easter, the form of
baptism, and style of tonsure for priests). The resulting disputes
were settled at the famous Synod of Whitby in 664 in favor of the
Roman party.
The establishment of Christianity in England of course had
powerful and far-reaching effects upon literature, since the Church
was for centuries the chief fosterer of learning. The pagan literature
which survived from early Germanic times passed through the
medium of Christian authors and copyists, who gave a Christian
coloring to such literature as they did not wholly reject. For
centuries most of the new writings owed both their inspiration and
direction to Christian zeal and to the learning fostered by the
Church. The Christianization in the thirteenth century of the great
body of Arthurian romances is an outstanding example of the
dominance of Christianity over medieval literary activity.
Chronicle: A name given to certain forms of historical writing.
One authority has said that chronicles differ from ANNALS in their
comprehensive or universal character their concern with world
history. Though there were prototypes in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and
French, it is the medieval chronicles in English and their RENAIS-
SANCE successors that are of chief interest to the student of English
literature. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, begun under King Alfred
late in the ninth century and carried on by various writers in a
number of monasteries in succeeding centuries, has been called the
"first great book in English prose." The record begins with 60 B.C.
and closes with 1154 ("Peterborough** version). Alfred and his
helpers revised older minor chronicles and records and wrote first-
hand accounts of their own times. The work as a whole is a sort of
Chronicle Play 86
historical miscellany, sometimes sketchy in detail and detached in
attitude, at other times spirited, partisan, and detailed. An im-
portant Old English poem preserved through its inclusion in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the spirited Battle of Brunanburh. A fa-
mous Latin prose chronicle is Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of
the Kings of Britain (ca.1136), which not only records legendary
British history but also romantic accounts of King Arthur. The
earliest important verse chronicle in Middle English is Laya-
mon's Brut (ca.1205), based upon Wace's French poetic version
of Geoffrey. Layamon's book illustrates the literary interest of
the medieval chronicle. It is a long poem composed in an imagi-
native, often dramatic, vein, and exhibits a picturesque STYLE
that is sometimes reminiscent of the best Old English poetry.
Later Middle English chronicles include those of Robert of
Gloucester (late thirteenth century), Robert Manning of Brunne
(1338), Andrew of Wyntoun (Original Chronicle of Scotland,
early fifteenth century), John Hardyng (late fifteenth century),
and John Capgrave (fifteenth century). With the rise of the
Tudor dynasty came a long-sustained wave of patriotic national-
ism, one result of which was the production in the sixteenth
century of innumerable chronicles some in Latin prose, some in
English verse; some mere abstracts, some very voluminous; some
new compositions, some retellings of older ones. Some of the more
important chronicles of Elizabeth's time, besides the famous Mirror
for Magistrates, a series of "tragedies" (for this special meaning
of "tragedy" see p. 489) embodying chronicle material, are Richard
Graftons (1563), John Stowe's (1565, 1580, 1592), and Ralph
Holinshed's (1578). Not only are portions of this mass of
c/iromcfe-writing themselves of genuine literary value, full of
lively anecdote and description, but some of them were important
as sources for Shakespeare and other dramatists. See CHRONICLE
PLAY.
Chronicle Play: A type of DRAMA flourishing in the latter part
of Elizabeth's reign which drew its English historical materials
from the sixteenth century CHRONICLES, such as Holinshed's, and
which stressed the nationalistic spirit of the times. It enjoyed in-
creasing popularity with the outburst of patriotic feeling which
resulted from the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) and served
as a medium for teaching English history to the uneducated
portions of the London populace. The structure of the earlier
chronicle plays was very loose, UNITY consisting mainly in the
87 Classic
inclusion of the events of a single king's reign. The number of
characters was large. Much use was made of pageantry (corona-
tions, funerals) and other spectacular elements, such as battles on
the stage. The serious action was often relieved by comic scenes
or sub-plots, as in Shakespeare's famous Falstaff plays (Henry IV, 1,
2; Henry V). The tendency to merge with ROMANTIC COMEDIES
appeared as early as Greene's James IV (ca.1590); in Shakespeare's
Cymbeline (ca.1610) the CHRONICLE material is completely sub-
ordinated to the demands of ROMANTIC COMEDY. The relation of
the chronicle play to TRAGEDY is still more important, Shakespeare's
Richard III (oz.1593) being an early example of the tendency of
the chronicle play to develop into TRAGEDY of character, a move-
ment which culminates in such plays as King Lear (1606) and
Macbeth (1606). The term HISTORY PLAY is sometimes applied to
a restricted group of chronicle plays like Shakespeare's Henry V,
which are unified but are neither COMEDY nor TRAGEDY. The earliest
true chronicle play is perhaps The Famous Victories of Henry V
(ca.1586). Peele's Edward I (1590-91) and Marlowe's Edward II
(1592) are among the best pre-Shakespearean chronicle plays.
Chronique scandaleuse: A type of writing presenting intrigues, love
affairs, and petty gossip, and usually associated with life at court.
As a rule these writings give the impression of having been written
by an eye-witness. The personal element is important, and scandal
is the food upon which such CHRONICLES thrive. The History of
Louis XI (1460-1483) of France, a chronique scandaleuse credited
to Jean de Troyes, is an example. This same interest in gossip about
the intimate, personal life of the great and of the near-great sur-
vives today in the tabloids and in the stories, for instance, which
are told of the lif e of moving-picture stars in Hollywood.
Chronological Primitivism: The belief that, on the whole, the
life and actions of man were more admirable and desirable at an
earlier stage of his history than at present. See PRIMHTVISM.
"Ciceronians": A group of Latin stylists in the RENAISSANCE who
would not use any Latin word that could not be found in Cicero's
writings. See PURIST.
Classic (noun) : In the singular usually used for a piece of
literature which by common consent has achieved a recognized
position in literary history for its superior qualities; also an
Classic, Classical 88
author of like standing. Thus, Paradise Lost is a classic in English
literature. The plural is used in the same sense, as in the phrase
"the study of English classics"; it is also used collectively to desig-
nate the literary productions of Greece and Rome, as in the state-
ment, "A study of the classics is an excellent preparation for the
study of modern literature/'
Classic, Classical (adjectives): Used in senses parallel with those
given under CLASSIC (noun); hence, of recognized excellence or
belonging to established tradition, as a classical piece of music or
such as bids fair to win such recognition, as "a classic pronounce-
ment"; used specifically to designate the literature or culture of
Greece and Rome or later literature which partakes of its qualities.
"Classical literature" may mean Greek and Roman literature, or it
may mean literature that has gained a lasting recognition, or it
may mean literature that exhibits the qualities of CLASSICISM. When
it is used to describe the attributes of a literary work it usually
implies objectivity in the choice and handling of the theme,
simplicity of style, clarity, restraint, and formal structure.
Classical Tragedy: This term may refer to the TRAGEDY of the
ancient Greeks and Romans, as Sophocles' Antigone; or to tragedies
based upon Greek or Roman subjects, as Shakespeare's Coriolanus;
or to modern tragedies modeled upon Greek or Roman TRAGEDY
or written under the influence of the critical doctrines of CLASSICISM.
The earliest extant English TRAGEDY, Sackville and Norton's
Gorboduc (acted 1562), is sometimes called classical because it
is written in the manner of the SENECAN TRAGEDIES. Ben Jonson's
tragedies Catiline and Sejanus not only are based upon Roman
themes but are classical in their conscious effort to apply most of
the "rules" of tragic composition derived from Aristotle and Horace.
In the Restoration period John Dryden, under the influence of the
French classical tragedies of Racine, advocated classical rules and
applied them in part to his All for Love, which contrasts with
Shakespeare's romantic treatment of the same story in Antony and
Cleopatra. In the next century Joseph Addison's Cato has been
referred to as "the triumph of classical tragedy." See CLASSICISM,
TRAGEDY, SENECAN TRAGEDY, UNITEES, ROMANTIC TRAGEDY.
Classicism: As a critical term, a body of doctrine which is thought
to be derived from or to reflect the qualities of ancient Greek and
89 Classicism
Roman culture, particularly literature, philosophy, art, or CRITICISM.
It is commonly opposed to BOMANTICISM and REALISM, although
it is important to remember that these terms overlap in their
"characteristics" and are not, strictly speaking, mutually exclusive.
It is particularly dangerous to classify writers or types as perfect
exponents of classicism. Ben Jonson, for example, was a self-pro-
claimed advocate of classicism as a critic and dramatist, yet his
CLASSICAL TRAGEDIES contain some definitely non-classical elements,
such as COMIC RELIEF and violation of one or more of the UNITIES.
Likewise some of the "romanticists" of the eighteenth century
cultivated classical qualities, just as such a "neo-classicist" as Pope
exhibited some "romantic" traits.
It is true, however, that classicism does stand for certain definite
ideas and attitudes, mainly drawn from the critical utterance of
the Greeks and Romans or developed through an imitation of
ancient art and literature. Some of them may be suggested by the
following words and phrases: restraint; restricted scope; dominance
of reason; sense of FORM; UNITY of design and aim; clarity; sim-
plicity; BALANCE; attention to structure and logical organization;
chasteness in STYLE; severity of outline; moderation; self-control;
intellectualism; DECORUM; respect for tradition; IMITATION; con-
servatism; "good sense."
A glance at certain aspects of the Greek mind will put these
terms in the proper perspective. The Greeks were notable for their
clarity of thought, an attribute that found expression in lucid,
direct, simple expression, and that placed a premium on communi-
cation among men rather than self-expression by a man. UNITY was
a dominating idea in the minds of the Greeks, and they naturally
constructed buildings and works of art around central ideas, and
expended great effort in making the structures symmetrical,
logical, balanced, harmonious., and well-proportioned. They had
a marked sense of appropriateness or DECORUM and in structure,
style, and subject worked with what was fitting and dignified.
Restraint of the passions, emphasis upon the common or generic
attributes of men and states, and a dispassionate objectivity made
them the natural foes of enthusiasm, of uniquely personal states
and emotions, and of excessive subjectivity. Although not all Greek
or Roman writers displayed all these characteristics, some complex
of these qualities is what is usually implied when in English we
use the term classicism.
Classicism in English literature has been an important force, often
Clerihew ^
an "issue/' since RENAISSANCE times. The humanists became con-
scious advocates of CLASSICAL doctrine, and even such an essen-
tially romantic artist as the poet Spenser fell strongly under its in-
fluence, not only drawing freely upon CLASSICAL materials but defi-
nitely espousing CLASSICAL doctrines and endeavouring to "imitate"
such CLASSICAL masters as Virgil and Homer. Shakespeare, though
he has left no formal statement of his critical attitude and though he
is essentially a "romantic" dramatist, undoubtedly reflects CLASSICAL
influence. Sir Philip Sidney, though he wrote PASTORAL ROMANCES,
speaks mainly as a classicist in his critical essay, The Defence of
Poesie. Ben Jonson stands as the stoutest RENAISSANCE advocate of
classicism, both in dramatic CRITICISM and in his influence upon
English poetry. Milton has been said to show a perfect balance of
ROMANTICISM and classicism. The CLASSICAL attitude, largely
under French inspiration, triumphed in the RESTORATION and
AUGUSTAN AGES, and John Dryden, Joseph Addison, and Alex-
ander Pope, together with Doctor Samuel Johnson of the next
generation, stand in English literary history as exemplars of the
CLASSICAL (or NEO-CLASSIC) spirit in literature and criticism.
Though nineteenth-century literature was largely romantic (or in
its later phases realistic), the vitality of the CLASSICAL attitude is
shown by the critical writings of such men as Francis Jeffrey,
Matthew Arnold, and Walter Pater. In the twentieth century there
has been a strong revival of CLASSICAL attitudes in the literary
practice and the critical principles of men like T. E. Hulme, T. S.
Eliot, and Ezra Pound, and much of our most distinguished and
sophisticated poetry and criticism is today redolent of classicism.
See HUMANISM, NEO-CLASSICISM, CLASSICAL, ROMANTICISM, REALISM,
NEW CRITICISM.
Clerihew: A form of LIGHT VERSE which in two COUPLETS of irregu-
lar METER touches off a well-known person whose name forms one
of the RIMES. It was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who,
while in school listening to a chemistry lecture, wrote:
Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
CttcMs From the French word for a stereotype plate; a block for
printing. Hence any expression so often used that its freshness and
91 Cloak and Sword Romance
clearness have worn off is called a cliche, a stereotyped form. Some
examples are: "bigger and better/' "loomed on the horizon," "the
light fantastic," "stood like a sentinel," "sadder but wiser."
Climax: In rhetoric a term used to indicate the arrangement of
words, phrases, and clauses in sentences in such a way as to form
a rising order of importance in the ideas expressed. Such an ar-
rangement is called climactic and the item of greatest importance
is called the climax. Originally the term meant such an arrange-
ment of succeeding clauses that the last important word in one is
repeated as the first important word in the next, each succeeding
clause rising in intensity or importance.
In larger pieces of composition the ESSAY, the SHORT STORY, the
DRAMA., or the NOVEL the climax, is the point of highest interest,
the point at which the reader makes his greatest emotional response.
The term used in this sense is an index of emotional response in
the reader or the spectator. However, in DRAMATIC STRUCTURE
climax is a term used to designate the turning point in the action,
the place at which the RISING ACTION reverses and becomes the
FALLING ACTION. In Freytag's five-part view of DRAMATIC STRUC-
TURE, the climax is the third part or third ACT. Both narrative
FICTION and DRAMA have tended to move the climax, both in the
sense of turning action and in that of highest response, nearer the
end of the work and thus have produced structures less symmetrical
than those that follow Freytag's pyramid. In speaking of DRAMATIC
STRUCTURE, the term climax is synonymous with CRISIS. However,
CRISIS is used exclusively in the sense of STRUCTURE, whereas climax
is used as a synonym for CRISIS and as a description of the intensity
of interest in the reader or spectator. In this latter sense climax
sometimes occurs at other points than at the CRISIS. See CRISIS,
DRAMATIC STRUCTURE.
Cloak and Sword Romance: The term comes from the Spanish
comedia de capa y espada, a dramatic type of which the ingredients
were gallant cavaliers, lovely ladies, elegance, adventure, and
intrigue. In English it refers to swashbuckling plays or NOVELS
characterized by much action and presenting gallant heroes in love
with fair ladies, a glamorous color thrown over all. Settings and
characters are often, though not necessarily, Spanish, Italian, or
French, the manners are courtly and gracious, the plot full of
intrigue resulting most commonly in duels.
Closed Couplet 92
Dumas' The Three Musketeers and many currently popular
television plays are good examples. Cloak and sword romances were
very popular in America in the period between 1890 and 1915.
Closed Couplet: Two successive VERSES riming aa and containing
within the two lines a complete, independent statement. It is
"closed" in the sense that its meaning is complete within the two
verses and does not depend on what goes before or follows for
its grammatical structure or thought. Example:
One prospect lost, another still we gain;
And not a vanity is giv'n in vain;
Pope
Closet Drama: A play (usually in verse) designed to be read
rather than acted. Notable examples are Milton's Samson Agonistes,
Shelley's The Cenci, Browning's Pippa Passes, and the ONE-ACT
PLAYS that W. D. Howells wrote for the Atlantic Monthly. Giving
the term a broader meaning, some writers include in it such
dramatic poems as Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon and other
products of the effort to write a literary DRAMA by imitating the
style of an earlier age, such as Greek DRAMA. T. H. Dickinson indeed
says that the closet drama "arises from the application of the
standards of one day to the art of a later day" an effort to continue
the TRADITION of Shakespeare or the TRADITION of the Greeks after
the stage itself had lost both the TRADITIONS. Such poetic DRAMAS as
Tennyson's Becket and Browning's Strafford are not infrequently
called closet dramas because, though their authors meant them to
be acted, they actually are more successful as literature than acted
DRAMA. In English literature the nineteenth century was noted for
the production of closet drama, perhaps because the actual stage
was so monopolized by BURLESQUE, MELODRAMA, OPERETTA, and
such light forms that literary men were stimulated either to attempt
to provide more worthy DRAMAS for the contemporary stage or at
least to preserve the TRADITION of literary DRAMA by imitating
earlier masterpieces. See DRAMATIC POETRY, POETIC DRAMA,
PASTICHE.
Cockney School: A derogatory title applied by BlackwoocFs Maga-
zine to a group of nineteenth-century writers including Hazlitt,
Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Shelley, because of their alleged poor taste
in such matters as DICTION and RIME. Some offending rimes were
93 Collate
name and time, vista and sister, words which, the suggestion was,
could rime only to a cockney ear. One sentence from the denounce-
ment printed in Blackwood's Magazine must serve as illustrative of
the whole spirit of his attack: "They [the writers above] are by far the
vilest vermin that ever dared to creep upon the hem of the majestic
garment of the English muse." The attack reflected the Tory view
that men of "low" or "cockney" birth and breeding would inevi-
tably have cockney politics and write cockney verse. The famous
attack on Keats (August, 1818) associates his "bad" verse with
his radical political friends and his "lowly" beginnings as an
apothecary's apprentice.
Coherence: A fundamental principle of composition demanding
that the parts of any piece of writing be so arranged and bear such
a relationship one to the other that the meaning of the whole may
be immediately clear and intelligible. Words, phrases, clauses,
within the sentence; and sentences, paragraphs, and chapters in
larger pieces of writing are the units which, by their progressive
and logical arrangement, make for coherence or, contrariwise, by an
illogical arrangement, result in incoherence.
Coined Words: Words consciously and arbitrarily manufactured
"out of whole cloth," as opposed to those which enter the language
as a result of one of the more natural processes of language develop-
ment. Many words which were originally coined words (such as
telephone, airplane, and kodak) have become accepted terms.
Constantly occurring examples of such words are those fabricated
by commercial firms for advertising purposes: "Nabisco*' (National
Biscuit Company), "Socony" (Standard Oil Company of New
York) . Frowned upon as a literary practice, word coining is never-
theless constantly affecting our language. See NEOLOGISM.
Collaboration: The association of two or more people in a given
piece of literary work. Beaumont and Fletcher afford one of the
most famous instances of collaboration in the field of English
literature.
Collate: To compare in detail two texts, versions, editions, or
printings in order to determine and record the points of agreement
and disagreement; also to verify the order of the sheets or SIGNA-
TUBES of a book before binding.
Colloquialism ^4
Colloquialism: An expression used in informal conversation but
not accepted as good usage in formal speech or writing. A
colloquialism lies between the upper speech level of dignified
formal, or "literary" language and the lower level of slang. It may
differ from more formal language in pronunciation, grammar,
vocabulary, imagery, or connotative quality. As in the case of slang,
a colloquial expression eventually may be accepted as "standard"
usage. *T11 be right over/' is a permissable colloquial expression
in an intimate telephone conversation, though formal style might
call for a more dignified and "correct" phrase. Fix may be used as
a colloquialism for "mend." See SLANG, PROVINCIALISM, DIALECTS.
Colloquy: A conversation or DIALOGUE, especially when it is in
the nature of a formal discussion or a conference; used in this sense
occasionally in literary titles, as Erasmus' Colloquies. See DIALOGUE.
Colonial Period in American Literature, 1607-1765: From the
founding of the colony at Jamestown, which began the colonial
period in America, until the Stamp Act in 1765 finally forced the
colonists into a widespread consciousness of themselves as separate
from their mother land, the writing produced in America was gen-
erally utilitarian, polemical, or religious. Three major figures
emerged in this period: Edward Taylor, whose religious METAPHYSI-
CAL POETRY, written at the close of the seventeenth and the begin-
ning of the eighteenth centuries, did not see publication until 1937;
Jonathan Edwards, whose religious and philosophical treatises have
not been surpassed by an American; and Benjamin Franklin, whose
Addisonian rephrasings of the teachings of the Enlightenment are
the stylistic epitome of the period.
That BELLES-LETTRES should not have come is hardly surprising.
Whether PURITANS of the North or ROYALISTS of the South, the
colonists were uniformly engaged throughout the period in pos-
sessing the land, cultivating it, making it safe and fruitful. Wilder-
ness, Indians, and disease were common foes that demanded the
strict attention of the early colonists. Wealth, government, progress,
political rights absorbed a major portion of the attention of the
Americans of the later colonial period.
The seventeenth century was the age of travel and personal rec-
ords, DIARIES, historical and descriptive accounts, sermons, and a
little verse largely instructive, like Wiggleworth's The Day of
Doom, or religious, like the Bay Psalm Book and the numerous
95 Comedy
funeral elegies. Only Anne Bradstreet, "The Tenth Muse Lately
Sprung Up in America," raised a thin and faltering but true poetic
voice.
In the eighteenth century, the dangers of early colonization were
over, but the colonial attitude persisted. Religious controversy was
prevalent. Newspapers and ALMANACS flourished. Jonathan Edwards
both in the pulpit and in his writing demonstrated his greatness as
a thinker and a didactic writer. Benjamin Franklin created what
was perhaps the first fully realized and widely popular American
fictional character in Richard Saunders of Poor Richartfs Almanac.
William Byrd wrote with CAVALIER grace and urbanity of his life
and neighbors in Virginia and North Carolina. But little important
verse and no native DRAMA emerged. As the period in which Ameri-
cans had thought and acted like colonials of the British crown drew
to a close in the 1760's, a vast amount of writing had been done in
America, some of it of a high quality, but very little that did not
self-consciously take English authors as models and even less that
could merit the term bdletristic. See the section on "The Colonial
Period in American Literature," in The Outline of Literary History.
Colophon: A publisher's symbol or device formerly placed at the
end of a book but now more generally used on the title page or
elsewhere near the beginning. The function of colophons is to
identify the publisher. Colophons at different times and with dif-
ferent publishers have incorporated one or more of these items: title
and author of book, the printer, the date and place of manufacture.
The earliest known use of colophons was in the fifteenth century, at
which time they were likely to be complete paragraphs wherein the
author addressed the reader in a spirit of reverence now that he
had completed his work. Sir Thomas Malory, for example, closed
his Le Morte Darthur with the statement that it "was ended in the
ix yere of the reygne of Kyng Edward the fourth," and asks that his
readers "p rave for me whyle I am on lyue that God sende me good
delyuerance, and whan I am deed I praye you all praye for my
soule." The term is also applied to any device, including the words
"The End" or "Finis," that marks the conclusion of any printed
work.
Comedy: As compared with TRAGEDY, comedy is a lighter form of
DRAMA which aims primarily to amuse and which ends happily. It
differs from FARCE and BURLESQUE by having a more sustained
Comedy 96
PLOT, more weighty and subtle DIALOGUE, more natural characters,
and less boisterous behavior. The border-line, however, between
comedy and other dramatic forms cannot be sharply defined, as
there is much overlapping of technique, and different "kinds" are
frequently combined. Even the difference between comedy and
TRAGEDY tends to disappear, as Allardyce Nicoll points out, in their
more idealistic forms. HIGH COMEDY and LOW COMEDY may be fur-
ther apart from each other in nature than are TRAGEDY and some
serious comedy. Psychologists have shown the close relation between
laughter and tears, and comedy and TRAGEDY alike sprang, both in
ancient Greece and in medieval Europe, from diverging treatments
of ceremonial performances.
Since comedy strives to provoke smiles and laughter, both WIT
and HUMOR are utilized. In general the comic effect arises from a
recognition of some incongruity of speech, action, or character
revelation. The incongruity may be merely verbal as in the case of
a play on words, exaggerated assertion, etc.; or physical, as when
stilts are used to make a man's legs seem disproportionately long;
or satirical, ap when the effect depends upon the beholder's ability
to perceive the incongruity between fact and pretense exhibited by
a braggart. The range of appeal here is wide, varying from the crud-
est effects of LOW COMEDY to the most subtle and idealistic reactions
aroused by some HIGH COMEDY. The "kinds" of comedy and, in part,
the relation between comedy and TRAGEDY are thus accounted for.
As one writer says: "We have seen that comic effects have a com-
mon basis in incongruity, contrast; that the incongruity may lie
principally in the realm of events, and we have comic intrigue, or
in the realm of appearances, and we have comic character; while
usually both these are found in conjunction, but with preponderat-
ing emphasis on one or the other, which gives us farce or intrigue
comedy on the one hand and character comedy on die other.
Comedy itself varies according to the attitude of the author or re-
cipient, tending, where it becomes judicial, toward satire; where it
becomes sympathetic, toward pathos and tragedy." 1
English comedy developed from native dramatic forms growing
out of the religious DRAMA, the MORALITY PLAYS and INTERLUDES,
and possibly folk games and plays and the performances of wander-
ing entertainers, such as dancers and jugglers. In the RENAISSANCE
the rediscovery of Latin comedy and the effort to apply the rules of
J E. Woodbridge (Morris), The Drama, Its Law and Its Technique,
Allyn and Bacon, 1898, p. 67. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
97 Comedy of Humours
classical CRITICISM to DRAMA profoundly affected the course of
English comedy. Foreign influences also have at times been im-
portant, as the French influence on Restoration comedy or the
Italian influence upon Jacobean PASTORAL DRAMA. The more ambi-
tious comedy of the earlier Elizabethans was ROMANTIC, while the
comedy of the seventeenth century, both Jacobean and Restoration,
was prevailingly REALISTIC (though the Fletcherian TRAGI-COMEDY
flourished early in the century). SENTIMENTAL COMEDY was domi-
nant in the eighteenth century, but was opposed late in the period
by a revival of the realistic COMEDY OF MANNERS. In the early nine-
teenth century such light forms as BURLESQUE and OPERETTA were
popular, serious comedy again appearing late in the century. Some
of the more prominent authors of English comedy are: John Lyly,
Robert Greene, George Peele, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,
George Chapman, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Heywood, John
Fletcher, Philip Massinger (Elizabethans and Jacobeans); Sir
George Etheredge, William Congreve, and Thomas Shadwell (Res-
toration); Richard Steele, Richard B. Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith
(eighteenth century); T. W. Robertson (mid-nineteenth century);
H. A. Jones, Oscar Wilde, A. W. Pinero, G. B. Shaw, J. M. Barrie,
Philip Barry, S. N. Behrman (late nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies).
Attention may be called to a special use of the word comedy in
medieval times, when it was applied to non-dramatic literary com-
positions marked by a happy ending and by a less exalted style than
was found in TRAGEDY. Dante's Divine Comedy, for example, was
so named by its author because of its "prosperous, pleasant, and de-
sirable" conclusion, and because it was written in the vernacular
(Italian) "in which women and children speak." The nomenclature
employed in describing different lands of comedy is somewhat con-
fused, and it is impossible in this handbook to include all the terms
employed by the many writers on the subject. An effort has been
made to include the most important ones, however. See HIGH
COMEDY, LOW COMEDY, REALISTIC COMEDY, ROMANTIC COMEDY,
COURT COMEDY, TRAGI-COMEDY, SENTIMENTAL COMEDY, COMEDY OF
MANNERS, INTERLUDE, TRAGEDY, DRAMA, WIT AND HUMOR.
Comedy of Humours: A term applied to the special type of REALIS-
TIC COMEDY which was developed in the closing years of the six-
teenth century by Ben Jonson and George Chapman and which de-
rives its comic interest largely from the exhibition of "humourous"
Comedy of Intrigue 98
characters; that is, persons whose conduct is controlled by some
one characteristic or whim or HUMOUR. Some single HUMOUR or
exaggerated trait of character gave each important figure in the ac-
tion a definite bias of disposition and supplied the chief motive for
his actions. Thus in Jonson's Every Man in His Humour (acted
1598) , which made this type of play popular, all the words and acts
of Kitely are controlled by an overpowering suspicion that his wife
was unfaithful; George Downright, a country squire, must be
"frank" above all things; the country gull in town determines his
every decision by his desire to "catch on" to the manners of the city
gallant. In his "Induction" to Every Man out of His Humour ( 1599)
Jonson explains his character-formula thus:
Some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way.
The comedy of humours owes something to earlier vernacular
COMEDY, but more to a desire to imitate the classical COMEDY of
Plautus and Terence and to combat the vogue of ROMANTIC COMEDY.
Its satiric purpose and realistic method are emphasized and lead
later into more serious character studies, as in Jonson's The Alchem-
ist. It affected Shakespeare's art to some degree the "humorous"
man appearing now and again in his plays (Leontes in Winter's
Tale is a good example) and it is perhaps worth mentioning that
most of Shakespeare's tragic heroes are such because they allow
some one trait of character (ambition, jealousy, contemplation, etc.)
to be overdeveloped and thus to destroy the balance necessary to a
poised, well-rounded, and effective personality. The comedy of
humours was closely related to the contemporary COMEDY OF MAN-
NERS and exerted an important influence upon the COMEDY of the
Restoration period. See COMEDY or MANNERS.
Comedy of Intrigue: A COMEDY in which the manipulation of the
action by one or more characters to their own ends is of more im-
portance than are the characters themselves, Another name for
COMEDY OF SITUATION.
Comedy of Manners: A term most commonly used to designate the
REAIJBTIC, often satirical, COMEDY of the Restoration period, as
practiced by Congreve and others. It is also used for the revival, in
modified form, of this COMEDY a hundred years later by Goldsmith
99 Comedy of Manners
and Sheridan, as well as for a revival late in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Likewise the REALISTIC COMEDY of Elizabethan and Jacobean
times is sometimes called comedy of manners. In the stricter sense
of the term, the type is concerned with the manners and conven-
tions of an artificial, highly sophisticated society. The fashions, man-
ners, and outlook on life of this social group are reflected. The char-
acters are more likely to be types than individualized personalities.
PLOT, though often involving a clever handling of situation and in-
trigue, is less important than ATMOSPHERE and DIALOGUE and SATIRE.
The prose DIALOGUE is witty and finished, often brilliant. The ap-
peal is intellectual but not imaginative or idealistic. SATIRE is di-
rected in the main against the follies and deficiencies of typical
characters, such as fops, would-be wits, jealous husbands, coxcombs
and others who fail somehow to conform to the conventional atti-
tudes and manners of the elegant society of the time. As this SATIRE
is directed against the aberrations of social behavior rather than
of human conduct in its larger aspects, true HUMOR can hardly be
said to be present. A distinguishing characteristic of the comedy of
manners, too, is its emphasis upon an illicit love duel, involving at
least one pair of witty and often amoral lovers. This prevalence of
the immoral *love game" is partly explained by the manners of the
time and social groups concerned, and partly by the special satirical
purpose of the comedy itself. In its SATIRE and REALISM and em-
ployment of "humours" the comedy of manners was somewhat in-
debted to Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy, It owed something, of
course, to the French COMEDY OF MANNERS as practiced by Moliere.
The reaction against the questionable morality of the plays and
a growing sentimentalism brought about the downfall of this type
of COMEDY near the close of the seventeenth century and it was
largely supplanted through most of the eighteenth century by SENTI-
MENTAL COMEDY. Purged of its objectionable features, however, the
comedy of manners was revived by Goldsmith and Sheridan late in
the eighteenth century, and in a somewhat new garb by Oscar Wilde
late in the nineteenth century. The comedy of manners has been
popular in the twentieth century in the works of playwrights like
Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham, and Philip Barry.
A few typical comedies of manners are: Etheredge, The Man of
Mode (1676) ; Wycherley, The Plain Dealer (1674); Congreve, The
Way of the World (1700); Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
(1773); Sheridan, The Rivals (1775) and The School for Scan-
dal (1777); Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895);
Maugham, The Circle (1921); Coward, Private Lives (1931);
Comedy of Situation 10
Barry, The Philadelphia Story (1939). See HIGH COMEDY, REALISTIC
COMEDY, COMEDY OF HUMOUBS.
Comedy of Situation: A COMEDY which depends for its interest
chiefly upon ingenuity of PLOT rather than upon character interest;
COMEDY OF INTRIGUE. Background, too, is relatively unimportant.
There is much reliance upon ridiculous and incongruous situations,
a heaping up of mistakes, plots within plots, disguises, mistaken
identity, unexpected meetings, etc. A capital example is Shake-
speare's The Comedy of Errors, a play in which the possibilities for
confusion are multiplied by the use of twin brothers who have twins
as servants. In each case the twins look so much alike that at times
they doubt their own identity. A COMEDY of this sort sometimes ap-
proaches FARCE. Ben Jonson's Epicene and Middleton's A Trick to
Catch the Old One are later Elizabethan comedies of situation or
intrigue. A modern example is Shaw's You Never Can Tell The
phrase comedy of situation is sometimes used also to refer merely
to an incident, such as FalstafFs description of his fight with the
robbers in Shakespeare's King Henry IV, Part I. See FARCE-COMEDY.
Comic Opera: An OPERETTA, or comedy opera, stressing spectacle
and music but employing spoken DIALOGUE, An early example is
Sheridan's The Duenna (1775). The best known comic operas are
those of Gilbert and Sullivan produced in London, chiefly at the
Savoy (constructed for the purpose) in the 1870's and 1880's, e.g.,
The Mikado (1885). See BALLAD-OPERA.
Comic Relief : A humorous scene, incident, or speech in the course
of a serious FICTION or DRAMA. Such comic intrusions are usually
consciously introduced by the author to provide relief from emo-
tional intensity and at the same time, by contrast, to heighten the
seriousness of the story. When properly employed, they can enrich
and deepen the tragic implications of the action; notable examples
are the drunken porter scene in Macbeth (see De Quincey's essay,
"On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth"), the gravedigger scene
in Hamlet, and Mercutio's role in Romeo and Juliet. Although not a
portion of Aristotle's formula for a TRAGEDY, comic relief has been
almost universally employed by English playwrights.
Commedia del? arte: Improvised COMEDY; a form of Italian LOW
COMEDY dating from very early times, in which the actors, who usu-
101 Commonwealth Interregnum
ally performed conventional or stock parts, such as the "pantaloon"
(Venetian merchant), improvised their DIALOGUE, though a PLOT or
SCENERIO was provided them. A "harlequin" interrupted the action
at times with low buffoonery. A parallel or later form of the corn-
media dell' arte was the MASKED COMEDY, in which conventional
figures (usually in masks) each spoke his particular dialect (as the
Pulcinella, the rogue from Naples). There is some evidence that
the commedia deW arte colored English LOW COMEDY from early
times, but its chief influence on the English stage came in the eight-
eenth century in connection with the development of such spectacu-
lar forms as the PANTOMIME.
Common Measure: See COMMON METER.
Common Meter: A STANZA form consisting of four lines, the first
and third being IAMBIC TETRAMETER (eight syllables, ^ ^
>^ ^ ) and the second and fourth IAMBIC TRIMETER (six sylla-
bles, ^ ^ ^ ). An example:
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.
Marquis of Montrose.
It is distinguished from the BALLAD STANZA principally by its metri-
cal regularity. Often it is called COMMON MEASURE and is designated
by the abbreviation C.M.
Commonplace Book: A classified collection of quotations or argu-
ments prepared for reference purposes. Thus, a reader interested in
moral philosophy might collect thoughts and quotations under such
heads as truth, virtue, or friendship. Commonplace books were
utilized by authors of ESSAYS, theological arguments, and other seri-
ous treatises. The Commonplace Book of John Milton is still in exist-
ence. The term is also sometimes applied to private collections of
favorite pieces of literature such as the poetical miscellanies of
Elizabethan times. R. W. Stallman's The Critics Notebook is an
excellent commonplace book of the NEW CRITICISM.
Commonwealth Interregnum: The period between the execution of
Charles I in 1649 and the restoration of the monarchy under Charles
Compensation
IJ in 1660, during which England was ruled by Parliament under
the control of the PURITAN leader, Oliver Cromwell, whose death in
1658 marked the beginning of the end of the Commonwealth,
John Milton was Latin Secretary in the Commonwealth govern-
ment Although the theatres were closed in 1642, dramatic per-
formances continued more or less openly, but only Davenant's The
Siege of Rhodes (1656), a spectacle play heralding the HEROIC
DRAMA of the RESTORATION, was a significant new DRAMA. It was
an age of major prose works: Milton's political pamphlets, Hobbes'
Leviathan (1651), Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying and Holy Living
(1650, 1651), Walton's The Compleat Angler (1653), and works
by Sir Thomas Browne and Thomas Fuller. The age delighted in
translations of the contemporary French prose romances, and in
1654 Roger Boyle published Parthenissa, in the style of Mile, de
Scud6ry, a precursor of the NOVEL. In poetry Vaughan, Waller,
Cowley, Davenant, and Marvell flourished; the metaphysical strain
continued; and two attempts at the EPIC were made, Davenant's
Gondibert (1650) and Cowley's Davideis (1656), but both are in-
complete. By the end of the Commonwealth Interregnum, John Dry-
den's poetic career was under way. He and Marvell, both of whose
best work was to come later, shared with Milton the honor of being
the best poets of a troubled time, although they wrote little poetry
during it.
Compensation: In METRICS a means of supplying omissions in a
line; a form of SUBSTITUTION. Such omissions are usually unstressed
syllables; the customary means of compensating for their absence
is the pause, which has the effect of a rest in music. It is illustrated
in Tennyson's lines:
Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
Each of these lines has three stressed syllables; and metrically they
are approximately equivalent, despite the fact that there are only
three syllables in the first but seven in the second. The pronounced
pauses following each word of the first line compensate for the un-
stressed syllables that have been omitted. See SUBSTITUTION.
Complaint: A LYBIC poem, frequent in the Middle Ages and the
RENAISSANCE, in which the poet (1) laments the unresponsiveness
of his mistress, as in Surrey's "A Complaint by Night of the Lover
103 Conceit
Not Beloved"; (2) bemoans his unhappy lot and seeks to remedy it,
as in "The Complaint of Chaucer to His Empty Purse"; or (3) re-
grets the sorry state of the world, as in Spenser's Complaints. In a
complaint, which usually takes the form of a MONOLOGUE, the poet
commonly explains his sad mood, describes the causes of it, dis-
cusses possible remedies, or appeals to some lady or divinity for help
from his distress.
Complication: That part of a dramatic or narrative PLOT in which
the entanglement of affairs caused by the conflict of opposing forces
is developed. It is the tying of the knot to be untied in the RESOLU-
TION. In the five-part idea of DRAMATIC STRUCTURE it is synonymous
with RISING ACTION. The second ACT of a five-act TRAGEDY is often
called "the act of complication." See DRAMATIC STRUCTURE, ACT.
Conceit: Originally the term was almost synonymous with "idea"
or "conception," and implied something made or conceived in the
mind. Its later specialized uses in describing a type of poetic META-
PHOR still retain the essential sense of the original meaning, in that
conceit implies intellectual ingenuity whether applied to the Pe-
trarchan conventions of the ELIZABETHAN PERIOD or the elaborate
and witty analogies of the writers of METAPHYSICAL VERSE.
The term is used to designate an ingenious and fanciful notion or
conception, usually expressed through an elaborate ANALOGY, and
pointing to a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar
things. A conceit may be a brief METAPHOR but it usually forms the
framework of an entire poem. In English there are two basic kinds
of conceits: the PETRARCHAN CONCEIT, most often found in love
poems and SONNETS, in which the subject of the poem is compared
extensively and elaborately to some object, a rose, a ship, a garden,
etc.; and the METAPHYSICAL CONCEIT, in which complex, startling,
and highly intellectual analogies are made.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the term was used in
a derogatory sense, the conceit being considered strained, arbitrary,
and false. Dr. Johnson was particularly devastating on the META-
PHYSICAL CONCEIT. Today the term is more nearly neutral, being
used to describe the unhappy over-reaches of poets as well as their
striking and effective comparisons. In contemporary verse the con-
ceit is again a respected vehicle for the expression of witty per-
ceptions and telling analogies. It is used with great effect by Emily
Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Allen Tate, and John Crowe Ransom. See
Concrete Terms 104
METAPHYSICAL CONCEIT, PETKARCHAN COKCEIT, METAPHYSICAL
VEBSE, BAROQUE, GONGORISM, MARINISM.
Concrete Tenns: The converse of ABSTRACT TERMS; although con-
crete terms are close to specific terms or particular terms, the phrase
carries with it significantly the sense of describing something that
has actual existence and can be palpably known or experienced. A
concrete noun evokes an IMAGE of something with an objective
existence; a concrete illustration brings what is abstract into the
range of personal, usually sensory, experience. As ABSTRACT TERMS
form the language of philosophy and science by reducing the par-
ticular instance to the general case or quality, so concrete terms,
with their emphasis on the sensory and the tangible and their ad-
dress to the emotional response, form the basic language of the
literary arts. As Arthur Quiller-Couch said of Shakespeare, so may
we say to some degree of all literary artists: "He chooses the con-
crete word, in phrase after phrase forcing you to touch and see."
See ABSTRACT TERMS, CONCRETE UNIVERSAL, ALLEGORY.
Concrete Universal: A critical term used to designate the idea that
a work of art expresses the universal through the concrete and the
particular. The quarrel between the universal and the particular in
literature is at least as old as Aristotle, who declared POETRY to be
more universal than history. The writers in periods of CLASSICISM
and NEO-CLASSICISM tend to stress the universal aspects; the writers
in periods of ROMANTICISM and REALISM the particular aspects. Yet
if literature is "knowledge brought to the heart" it must talk ulti-
mately of universals and express them in concrete and particular in-
stances. See UNIVERSALITY, ARCHETYPE, ALLEGORY, ABTRACT TERMS,
CONCRETE TERMS.
Confidant (feminine, Confidante): A character in a NOVEL or a
DRAMA who takes little part in the action but is a close friend of the
PROTAGONIST and who receives the confidences and intimate
thoughts of the PROTAGONIST. The use of the confidant enables a
dramatist to<*eveal the thoughts and intentions of die PROTAGONIST
without the use of asides or SOLILOQUIES or the POINT OF VIEW of
an OMNISCIENT AUTHOR. Well-known confidants are Horatio in
Hamlet, Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Maria
Gostrey in James' The Ambassadors. See CHORUS.
105 Connotation
Conflict: The struggle which grows out of the interplay of the two
opposing forces in a PLOT. It is conflict which provides the elements
of interest and suspense in any form of FICTION, whether it be a
DRAMA, a NOVEL, or a SHORT STORY. At least one of the opposing
forces is usually a person, or, if an animal or an inanimate object, is
treated as though it were a person. This person, usually the
PROTAGONIST, may be involved in conflicts of four different kinds:
(1) he may struggle against the forces of nature, as in Jack
London's "To Build a Fire"; (2) he may struggle against another
person, usually the ANTAGONIST, as in Stevenson's Treasure Island
and most MELODRAMA; (3) he may struggle against society as a
force, as in the novels of Dickens and George Eliot; or (4) two
elements within him may struggle for mastery, as in the RESTORA-
TION HEROIC DRAMA or in Macbeth. A fifth possible land of conflict
is often cited, the struggle against Fate or destiny; however, except
where the gods themselves actively appear, such a struggle is
realized through the action of one or more of the four basic
conflicts. Seldom do we find a simple, single conflict in a PLOT, but
rather a complex one partaking of two or even all the elements given
above. For example, die basic conflict in Hamlet may be interpreted
to be a struggle within Hamlet himself, but it is certainly also a
struggle against his uncle as ANTAGONIST, and, if the Freudian
interpretations of motive are accepted, even a struggle against
nature. Dreiser's Sister Carrie records a girl's struggle against
society, as represented by the city, and yet it is a struggle against
her basic nature and even partly within herself. Even so seemingly
simple a story as London's "To Build a Fire," in which the
PROTAGONIST battles the cold unsuccessfully, is also the record of
an inner conflict. The term conflict not only implies the struggle of
a PROTAGONIST against someone or something, it also implies the
existence of some MOTIVATION for the conflict or some goal to be
achieved by it. Conflict is the raw material out of which PLOT is
constructed. See PLOT, MOTIVATION, PROTAGONIST, ANTAGONIST,
DRAMATIC STRUCTURE.
Connecticut Wits: See HARTFORD WITS.
Connotation: The cluster of implications that words or phrases may
carry with them, as distinguished from their denotative meanings.
Connotations may be (1) private and personal, the result of in-
Consonance
dividual experience, (2) group (national, linguistic, racial), or
(3) general or universal, held by all or most men. The scientist and
the philosopher attempt to hold words to their denotative mean-
ing; the literary artist relies upon connotation to carry his deepest
meanings. See DENOTATION, AMBIGUITY, CONCBETE TERMS, ABSTBACT
TERMS.
Consonance: The use at the ends of VERSES of words in which the
final consonants in the stressed syllables agree but the vowels that
precede them differ, as "add-read," "bill-ball," and "born-burn."
Contemporary poets frequently use consonance. In this stanza by
Emily Dickinson
A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun,
Or Nature, spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon,
the linking of "begun" and "afternoon" is an example of con-
sonance. It is also sometimes called HALF RIME and SLANT RIME. See
ASSONANCE.
Contemporary Period in English Literature: The contemporary
period in English literature may be considered to begin with the
first World War in 1914, to be marked by the strenuousness of that
experience and by the flowering of talent and experiment that
came during the boom of the twenties and then fell away during the
ordeal of economic depression in the 1930's. The second World
War, making England an embattled fortress, had catastrophic ef-
fects on all of English life. It was followed by a period of desperate
re-adjustment, a period whose literature was marked by a groping
uncertainty. In very recent times, this uncertainty has given way
to the anger and the protest against their elders of the "Angry
Young Men/' such as John Wain, Colin Wilson, Kingsley Amis, and
John Osborne.
In the early years of the period the novelists of the EDWARDIAN
AGE continued as major figures, with Galsworthy, Wells, Bennett,
Forster, and Conrad dominating the scene, and to be joined before
the 'teens were over by Somerset Maugham. A new fiction, center-
ing itself in the experimental examination of the inner self was
coming into being in the works of writers like Dorothy Richardson
and Virginia Woolf. It reached its peak in the publication in 1922
107 Contemporary Period in English Literature
of James Joyce's Ulysses, a book perhaps as influential as any prose
work by a British writer in this century. In their highly differing
ways D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, and Evelyn Waugh pro-
tested against the nature of modern society; and the maliciously
witty NOVEL, as Huxley and Waugh wrote it in the twenties and
thirties, was typical of the attitude of the age and is probably as
truly representative of the English NOVEL in the contemporary period
as is the NOVEL exploring the private self through the STREAM or
CONSCIOUSNESS. In the thirties and forties, Joyce Gary and Graham
Green produced a more traditional fiction of great effectiveness, and
Henry Green made comedy of the everyday life of man. Today in
writers like Elizabeth Bowen, Angus Wilson, and Ivy Compton-
Burnett the English novel continues its urbane and sharply witty
way, while the "Angry Young Men" write fictional accounts of their
deep dissatisfaction. Throughout the period English writers have
practiced the SHORT STORY with distinction; notable examples
being Katherine Mansfield and Somerset Maugham, working in the
tradition of Chekhov.
The theatre saw the social plays of Galsworthy, Jones, and
Pinero, the play of ideas of Shaw, and the COMEDY OF MANNERS
of Maugham all well established in the EDWARDIAN AGE continue
and be joined by Noel Coward's COMEDY, the proletarian DRAMA
of Sean O'Casey, the serious verse plays of T. S. Eliot and Christo-
pher Fry, and the high craftsmanship of Terence Rattigan. John
Osborne, of the "Angry Young Men," has had marked success in
the theatre in recent years.
Perhaps the greatest changes in literature, however, came in
poetry and criticism. In 1914 Bridges was poet laureate, to be suc-
ceeded in 1930 by John Masefield. Wilfred Owen was one of the
most powerful poetic voices of the early years of the contemporary
period, but his career ended with an untimely death in the first
World War. Through the period Yeats continued poetic creation,
steadily modifying his style and subjects to his late form. At the
time of his death in 1939 he probably shared with T. S. Eliot the
distinction of being the most influential poet in the British Isles.
Yet Eliot's The Waste Land, although its author was American, was
the most important single poetic publication in England in the
period. In the work of Yeats and Eliot, of W. H. Auden, of Stephen
Spender, of C. Day Lewis, of Edith Sitwell, and of Gerard Manley
Hopkins, whose poems were posthumously published in 1918, a
new poetry came emphatically into being. The death at thirty-nine
Contrast 108
of Dylan Thomas in 1953 silenced a powerful lyric voice, which had
already produced fine poetry and gave promise of doing even finer
work. T. S. Eliot and I. A. Richards, along with T. E. Hulme, Her-
bert Read, F. R. Leavis, Cyril Connolly, and others, have created
an informed, essentially anti-Romantic, analytical criticism, center-
ing its attention on the work of art itself.
England in the twentieth century has watched her political and
military supremacy gradually dissipate, and since the second
World War she has found herself greatly reduced in the interna-
tional scene and torn by internal economic and political troubles.
Her writers during these turbulent and unhappy years have turned
inward for their subject matter and have expressed bitter and often
despairing cynicism. Her major literary figures in the present age,
as they were in the EDWARDIAN AGE, have often been non-English.
Her chief poets have been Irish, American, and Welsh; her most in-
fluential novelists, Polish and Irish; her principal dramatists, Irish
and American. Yet in the very young and the very talented writers
beginning work as the decade of the fifties ends may be seen a
promise of new strength and new assurance. See Outline of Literary
History.
Contrast: A rhetorical device by which one element (idea or
object) is thrown into opposition to another for the sake of em-
phasis or clearness. The effect of the device is to make both con-
trasted ideas clearer than either would have been if described
by itself. The principle of contrast, however, is useful for other
purposes than to make definitions or to secure clearness. Skillfully
used by an artist, contrast may become, like colors to the painter or
chords to the musician, a means of arousing emotional impressions
of deep artistic significance.
Controlling Image: An IMAGE or METAPHOR which runs throughout
and determines the form or nature of a literary work. The con-
trolling image of the following poem by Edward Taylor is the
making of cloth:
Make me, O Lord, thy Spinning Wheele compleat;
Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee.
Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate,
And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee.
My Conversation make to be thy Reele,
And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele.
Convention
Make me thy Loome then, knit therein this Twine:
And make thy Holy Spirit, Lord, winde quills:
Then weave the Web thyself e. The yarn is fine.
Thine Ordinances make my Fulling Mills.
Then dy the same in Heavenly Colours Choice,
All pinkt with Vamish't Flowers of Paradise.
Then cloath therewith mine Understanding, Will,
Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory;
My Words and Actions, that their shine may fill
My wayes with glory and thee glorify.
Then mine apparell shall display before yee
That I am Cloathed in Holy robes for glory.
See FUNDAMENTAL IMAGE, CONCEIT, METAPHYSICAL CONCEIT, IMAGE.
Convention: A literary convention is any device or style or subject
matter which has become, in its time and by reason of its habitual
use, a recognized means of literary expression, an accepted element
in technique. The use of ALLITERATIVE VERSE among the Anglo-
Saxons and of the HEROIC COUPLET in the time of Dryden or Pope
are conventions in this sense. The personified virtues of the
MORALITY PLAYS, the braggart soldier of the Elizabethan stage,
and the fainting heroine of sentimental fiction are examples of
conventional STOCK CHARACTERS. Features which later become
conventions usually arise from freshness of appeal, acquire a
pleasing familiarity at the hands of good writers, and eventually,
through excessive or unskillful use, become distasteful and fall into
disuse. Sometimes, however, discarded conventions are revived
"when apparently dead, as when the French poet Villon revived
-successfully the BALLADE. Poetic IMAGERY tends to become con-
ventional, as when a "code" of EPITHETS, adjectives, METAPHORS,
and SIMILES came to be regarded by the Augustans as "poetic."
Not infrequently conventions depart so far from the realities and
probabilities of life that literature could not employ them if
custom had not made them acceptable, as in the case of the
.SOLILOQUY in drama. In real life men do not talk to themselves in
long, rhetorical MONOLOGUES in which they analyze their thoughts
and motives. Yet the device has become so conventional in DRAMA
that Shakespeare could rely upon it as a medium for some of his
finest effects, and such a modern playwright as Eugene O'Neill can
have his characters speak their thoughts in the presence of other
characters who are supposed to hear nothing, an illustration of
Copyright
how an impossibility in real life can become accepted in literature
because of its conventional character. For an illuminating discussion
of some aspects of the subject see J. L. Lowes, Convention and
Revolt in Poetry. See TRADITION, STOCK CHARACTERS, MOTIF,
DRAMATIC CONVENTIONS.
Copyright: The exclusive legal right to publish or reproduce for
sale works of literature or art. Such rights are protected for the
author or publisher by an Act of March 4, 1909, in the United States,
and by the Copyright Act of 1911 in England. International
copyright was established in 1891 but it is generally considered
inadequate. In America a copyright is for twenty-eight years,
renewable once, making a maximum period of protection of fifty-
six years. In England the copyright protects a work for fifty years
after the author's death, regardless of the date of initial publication
of the work. Secondary rights rights to serialize, adapt for motion
pictures, stage, or television create a complicated problem. De-
tailed information on both British and American copyright can
be found in Appendices II and III of the Oxford Companion to
English Literature. See PERATED EDITIONS.
Coronach: A song of lamentation; a funeral DIRGE. A Gaelic word
reflecting a custom in Ireland (where "keening" is the more com-
monly used term) and in the Scottish Highlands. The word means-
a "wailing together," and judging from Sir Walter Scott's presenta-
tion a typical coronach was sung by the Celtic women. In one of
his novels he says, "Their wives and daughters came, clapping their
hands, and crying the coronach, and shrieking/' In The Lady of
the Lake (Stanza xvi of Canto III) appears a coronach of Scott's-
own composition:
He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest, . . .
Corpus Christi Plays: Medieval religious plays based upon the
Bible and performed by town guilds on movable wagons as a part
of the procession on Corpus Christi day. See MYSTERY PLAYS.
Counterplayers: The characters in a DRAMA who plot against the
hero or heroine, e.g., Claudius, Polonius. Laertes, and their as--
sociates in Hamlet. See ANTAGONIST.
111 Courtesy Books
Coup de thedtre: An unexpected, usually unmotivated, surprising
turn in a DRAMA, which produces a sensational effect; by extension
any piece of claptrap or anything designed solely for effect.
Couplet: Two lines of VERSE with similar END-RIMES. Formally, the
couplet is a two-line STANZA form with both grammatical structure
and idea complete within itself, but the form has gone through
numerous adaptations, the most famous of which is HEROIC VERSE.
In French literature couplet is sometimes used in the sense of
STANZA. It is customary but not essential that the length of each
line be the same. Couplets are usually written in octosyllabic and
decasyllabic lines. See CLOSED COUPLET, HEROIC VERSE.
Court Comedy: The characteristics of this type of COMEDY are
explained by the fact that it was written to be performed at the
royal court. Love's Labour's Lost is a court comedy belonging to
Shakespeare's early period. Some years before Shakespeare came to
London, the Elizabethan court comedy had been developed to a
high degree of effectiveness by John Lyly in such plays as Endimion
and Campaspe. Characteristics include: artificial PLOT; little action;
much use of mythology; pageantry; elaborate costuming and scen-
ery; prominence of music, especially songs; lightness of tone;
characters numerous and often balanced (arranged in contrasting
pairs); STRUCTURE artificial; STYLE marked by wrr, grace, verbal
cleverness, quaint IMAGERY, PUNS; prose DIALOGUE; pages promi-
nent, being witty and saucy; eccentric characters such as braggarts,
witches, and alchemists often employed; much farcical action;
allegorical meanings sometimes embodied in the characters and
action. Though some of these traits of the Lylian court comedy
dropped out later, court comedy in the seventeenth century retained
many of them and was always operatic in tone and spectacular in
presentation. See MASQUE.
Courtesy Books: A name given to a class of books which flourished
in late RENAISSANCE times and which dealt with the ideals and
training of the "courtly" person. Often in DIALOGUE form, the
courtesy book discussed such questions as the qualities of a gentle-
man or court lady, what constituted a gentleman, the etiquette of
COURTLY LOVE, the education of the future courtier or prince, and
the duties of the courtier as a state counsellor. The courtesy book
originated in Italy, the most famous example being Castiglione's
Courtly Love
11 Cortegiano, "The Courtier" (1528), which exerted great influence
on English writers, especially after its translation into English by
Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561. The earliest English courtesy book is Sir
Thomas Elyot's Book of the Governour (1531),
Somewhat similar to the courtesy books, but not to be confused
with them, were the numerous etiquette books written not to ex-
plain the character of the noble or royal person but to deal with the
problems of conduct confronting the well-bred citizen as well as
the "gentleman." One of the best is Galateo by the Italian Delia
Casa. Early English examples of this type are The Babees Book and
Caxton's Book of Courtesy.
Many books of the seventeenth century carried on the tradition
established by the RENAISSANCE books of courtesy and etiquette,
such as: John Cleland's Institution of a Young Nobleman, 1607
(Puritan); Henry Peacham's Complect Gentleman, 1622 (courtly);
Richard Brathwaite's The English Gentleman, 1630 (Puritan); and
Francis Osborne's Advice to a Son, 1658 (a precursor of Lord
Chesterfield's Letters). By extension the term courtesy book can
be applied to a poem like Spenser's The Faerie Queene, since one of
the objects of the work is to portray the moral virtues. A similar ex-
tension has applied the term to Franklin's Autobiography, since that
work was written to instruct his son in the ways of the world.
Courtly Love: A philosophy of love and a code of love-making
which flourished in chivalric times, first in France and later in
other countries, especially in England. The exact origins of the
system cannot now be completely traced, but fashions set by
the Provenal TROUBADOUHS and ideas drawn from the Orient and
especially from Ovid were probably the chief sources. The condi-
tions of feudal society and the veneration of the Virgin Mary, both
of which tended to give a new dignity and independence to woman,
also ajFected it. The method of debate or SOLILOQUY by which the
doctrines of courtly love are given expression in literature was
probably indebted to current scholastic philosophy.
According to the system, falling in love is accompanied by
great emotional disturbances;, the lover is bewildered, helpless,
tortured by mental and physical pain, and exhibits certain
"symptoms," such as pallor, trembling, loss of appetite, sleepless-
ness, sighing, weeping, etc. He agonizes over his condition and
indulges in endless self -questioning and reflections on the nature
of love and his own wretched state. His condition improves when
113 "Courtly Makers"
he is accepted, and he is inspired by his love to great deeds. He
and his lady pledge each other to secrecy, and they must remain
faithful in spite of all obstacles. Andreas Capellanus wrote a
treatise late in the twelfth century in which he summarized pre-
vailing notions of courtly love through imaginary conversations and
through his thirty-one "rules." According to the strictest code, true
love was held to be impossible in the married state. Hence some
authorities distinguish between true courtly love as it is illustrated
in the story of Lancelot and Guinevere in Chretien's "The Knight
of the Cart," and Ovidian love. Basically, courtly love was illicit and
sensual, but a sort of Platonic idealism soon appeared and is found
in the usual literary presentation, this modification being doubtless
due to the softening influence of Christianity and polite society.
Courtly love ideas abound in medieval KOMANCE and are perhaps
not unconnected with the later (Renaissance) Petrarchan and
Platonic love doctrines as found, for example, in Eizabethan sonnet-
sequences. The system of courtly love largely controls the behavior
of the characters in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. C. S. Lewis has
made a detailed study of courtly love in The Allegory of Love.
"Courtly Makers": A phrase applied to the court poets in the reign
of Henry VIII who introduced the "new poetry" from Italy and
France into England. "Maker" was used in the sixteenth century,
both in Scotland and England, for poet, the use of the term arising
from the concept of the poet as a creator (the word poet itself
comes from a Greek word meaning maker or do-er) . The "courtly
makers" were given credit by the Elizabethans for "reforming" or
polishing the "rude and homely manner* of earlier English poetry.
Their work was imitative and experimental, based upon forms and
fashions already developed by the Italians. They were most success-
ful perhaps in poetic TRANSLATIONS or PARAPHRASES and in SONGS,
even Henry VIII himself being credited with the authorship of
both words and music of several graceful songs. The introduction of
the SONNET and of BLANK VERSE into English is due to the efforts
of the two most important poets of the group, Sir Thomas Wyatt
and the Earl of Surrey. Other "courtly makers" were William
Cornish, Lord Vaux, Lord Rochford (George Boleyn), Sir Anthony
St. Leger, Lord Morley (Henry Parker), Sir Francis Bryan, Sir
Thomas Chaloner, John Heywood, Robert Fairfax, and Robert
Cooper. Most of the work of these men has probably perished, as
their ideas of "gentlemanly" conduct did not lead them to publish
Courts of Love 114
their work, poetry being cultivated as an incidental grace. Manu-
script collections were made for private libraries, however, one of
which, now commonly known as Tottel's Miscellany, was published
in 1557 and exerted a powerful influence on Elizabethan poetry.
In fact, the chief importance of the "courtly makers" lies in the
pioneer character of their work, as their efforts were brought to
a perfect flowering by the poetic generations which followed
them. Sometimes the term "courtly maker" is applied to any
court poet.
Courts of Love: A phrase applied to supposed tribunals for
settling questions involved in the system of COURTLY LOVE. The
judge, a court lady or Venus herself, would hear debate on such
questions as: "Can a lover love two ladies at once?" "Are lovers or
married couples more affectionate?" Though it was once generally
believed that such courts were actually held in high society in
chivalric times, modern scholarship is inclined to regard the courts
of love as mere literary conventions. The term court of love is also
sometimes extended to include allegorical and processional pageants
such as the Masque of Cupid passage in Spenser's The Faerie
Queene (Book III, Cantos xi-xii). The phrase, too, is sometimes
used loosely as a synonym for COURTLY LOVE.
Covenant Theology: A modification of the doctrines of CALVINISM
made in the seventeenth century and particularly important in New
England. It substitutes for divine decrees as a basis for election
the idea of a contractual relationship between God and man. In the
Covenant theology it is held that God promised Adam and his pos-
terity eternal life in exchange for absolute obedience. When Adam
broke this covenant, he incurred punishment as a legal responsi-
bility for himself and his posterity. However, God made another
covenant with Abraham, promising man the ability to struggle
toward perfection. During THE GREAT AWAKENING Jonathan Ed-
wards attacked the Covenant theology and urged a return to CAL-
VINISM. See CALVINISM; AWAKENING, THE GREAT.
Crisis: In a FICTION or a DRAMA the point at which the opposing
forces that create the CONFLICT interlock in the decisive action on
which the PLOT will turn. Crisis is applied to the EPISODE or incident
wherein the situation in which the PROTAGONIST finds himself is
sure either to improve or grow worse. Since crisis is essentially a
115 Criticism, Historical Sketch
structural element of PLOT rather than an index of the emotional
response which an event may produce in a reader or spectator, as
CLIMAX is, the crisis and the CLIMAX do not always occur together.
(See CLIMAX on this point.) The actual turning point in the action
may result in events which produce climactic effects without
themselves being of compelling interest. See CLIMAX, PLOT, CON-
FLICT, DRAMATIC STRUCTURE.
Critic: One who estimates and passes judgment on the value and
quality of literary works. The term is used for a great variety of
persons ranging from the writers of brief reviews and notices in the
popular press to expounders of the aesthetic principles that define
the nature and function of art. A critic may employ any of many
different types of CRITICISM and support any of many different
theories of art. See CRITICISM, HISTORICAL SKETCH and CRITICISM,
TYPES OF.
Criticism, Historical Sketch: Classical Criticism. The first im-
portant critical treatise, the Poetics of Aristotle (fourth century
B.C.), has proved to be the most influential. This Greek philosopher
defined POETRY as an idealized representation of human action, and
TRAGEDY as a serious, dramatic representation or IMITATION of some
magnitude, arousing pity and fear wherewith to accomplish a
CATHARSIS of such emotions; tragedies should have UNITY and
completeness of PLOT, with beginning, middle, and end. The Poetics
also treats the element of character in TRAGEDY and the relation
of TRAGEDY to EPIC poetry as well as the relation of imaginative
literature to such other forms as history and philosophy. Aristotle's
treatise on the Homeric EPIC has not survived. The great attention
given by the ancients to "rhetoric" is also important critically,
though developed largely because of the interest in oratory.
The great influence of the Poetics began in the RENAISSANCE.
Aristotle's criticism has been much debated by modern students
and not infrequently misunderstood. It may be studied conveniently
with the aid of a commentary such as that of Butcher or Humphry
House.
Another Greek document of primary significance is the treatise
of Longinus, On the Sublime (date uncertain, perhaps third
century after Christ). Very different from the Poetics of Aristotle
in content and spirit, this work acclaims sublimity, height, and
imagination in a style that is itself enthusiastic and eloquent
Criticism, Historical Sketch 116
Longinus finds the sources of the Sublime in great conceptions,
noble passions, and elevated diction.
The foremost Latin critic was Horace, whose Art of Poetry,
written as an informal EPISTLE in verse, has exercised considerable
power. It discusses types of POETRY and of character, stresses the
importance of Greek models, emphasizes the importance of DE-
CORUM, and advises the prospective poet to write both for enter-
tainment and instruction. Many of Horace's phrases have entered
into the common language of criticism, such as ut pictura poesis,
"poetry is like painting"; labor limae, "the labor of the file" (i.e.,
revision); and aut prodesse aut delectare, "either to profit or to
please." The influence of Horace's criticism was especially great in
England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Quintilian's
Institutes of Oratory is, after Horace's epistle, perhaps the most
important Latin critical treatise. Other ancient critics include Plato,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and Lucian among the Greeks;
and Cicero, the Senecas, Petronius, and Macrobius among the Latin
writers. The art of rhetoric constituted an integral part of this
literary criticism.
The Middle Ages. So far as known, there was little interest in
criticism in the Middle Ages. Much of what there was dealt
perfunctorily with Latin versification, rhetoric, and grammar. The
ecclesiastical theologians who dominated the intellectual life were
inclined to regard literature as a servant of theology and philosophy,
and there was consequently a reduced interest in imaginative
literature as such. Classical pagan literature was generally neglected
or little known, and there was not much contemporary literature
of a sort to arouse critical interest. The rhetoricians dealt in great
detail with technical matters of vital interest to the creative writer:
the use and nature of FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE; organization; be-
ginnings; endings; development (amplification, condensation);
STYLE especially the adaptation of STYLE to type of composition;
ornamentation, etc. The very great influence of such teachings upon
the early work of Chaucer has been demonstrated in detail. Certain
passages in Chaucer's poetry, too, show that he was conscious of
the principles controlling literary composition.
The influence of St. Augustine (d. 430), who condemned the
poets because they pictured the gods as vicious, doubtless con-
tributed to the general distrust of literature on moral and reli-
gious grounds which persisted through the Middle Ages into
modern times. It must be noted, however, that St. Augustine's
Criticism, Historical Sketch
attack on imaginative writing produced replies which anticipate
later critical attitudes and arguments: the literary and the moral
points of view should not be confused; the ancients should be
followed, etc. Isidore of Seville (sixth and seventh centuries)
listed the types and kinds of literature (based on Biblical forms).
But it was not until the end of the medieval period that a
really great critic appeared in the person of the Italian poet
Dante, whose De Vulgari Eloquentia (early fourteenth century)
discusses the problems of vernacular literature. Dante reflects
classical ideas on DECORUM, IMITATION, and the nature of the poet.
He discusses diction, sentence-structure, STYLE, versification, and
dialects. Petrarch and Boccaccio, great Italian scholars and writers
of the fourteenth century, produced critical works which belong in
part to the medieval period and in part to the RENAISSANCE which
they helped to usher in. Boccaccio's famous defense of poetry in
Books XIV and XV of his Genealogia Deorum Gentilium is par-
ticularly important to students of later criticism.
The Renaissance: Italy and France. The RENAISSANCE reacted
against the theological interpretation of poetry current in the
Middle Ages and attempted a justification of it as an independ-
ent art, along lines suggested by humanistic ideals. In Italy, Vida,
Roberteili, Daniello, Minturno, Giraldi Cinthio, J. C. Scaliger,
Castelvetro, and many others were concerned with such topics as:
poetry as a form of philosophy and an imitation of life; the doctrine
of verisimilitude (reproduction of actual conditions of life);
pleasurable instruction as the object of poetry; the theory of
DRAMA, especially TRAGEDY the tragic hero and the UNITIES were
much debated; and the theory of the EPIC poem. The causes for
the growth of CLASSICISM have been assigned (by Spingarn) to
HUMANISM, Aristotelianism, and RATIONALISM with PLATONISM,
medievalism, and nationalism acting as ROMANTIC forces. These
tendencies toward CLASSICISM actuated Italian criticism of the six-
teenth century and French criticism of the seventeenth. The first
French critical works were rhetorical and metrical, the most im-
portant being Sibilet's Art of Poetry (1548); but the first highly
significant French criticism centered around the Pleiade, a group
interested in refining the French language and literature by
borrowings and imitations of the classics, Ronsard being its most
famous writer and Du Bellay being the author of its manifesto, his
epochal Defence and Illustration of the French Language (1549).
Among the prominent seventeenth-century French critics were
Criticism, Historical Sketch 118
Malherbe, who reacted strongly against the Pleiade, Chapelain,
Corneille, Saint-Evremond, d'Aubignac, Rapin, Le Bossu, and
Boileau, whose influence was especially powerful. These writers
illustrate the course of French criticism in the direction of
CLASSICISM, a rational crystallizing of poetic theory, and a codifica-
tion of the principles of literary structure.
The English Renaissance. In Renaissance England the earliest
critical utterances were directed toward matters of rhetoric and
diction, as in the "prefaces" of the printer William Caxton (late
fifteenth century) and the rhetorics of Leonard Cox (ca.1530)
and Thomas Wilson (1553). As early as Sir Thomas Elyot's Book
of the Governour (1531) the claims of English as a vehicle for
literature were being urged against the extreme humanist opposi-
tion to the vernacular as crude and not permanent. The actual
development of a native literature was accompanied by discussions
of how best to build up the English vocabulary, the extreme
humanists and INKHORNISTS, who favored the introduction of heavy
Latin and Greek words, being opposed by those who stressed native
words (see PURIST). Much attention was given to the requirements
of DECORUM and IMITATION. The first technical treatise on English
versification was Gascoigne's Certain Notes of Instruction (1575).
Verse forms already developed in English, including RIME, were
perfected in the face of the critical impulse to insist upon such
classical verse forms as the unrimed HEXAMETER. Practice ran ahead
of theory in this matter, as may be seen by comparing the actual
practices of Sidney and Campion with their serious critical condem-
nation of RIME. Campion's essay, Observations in the Art of English
Poesie (1602), was promptly and effectively answered by Samuel
Daniel in his A Defence of Rime. Similarly, Shakespearean RO-
MANTIC TRAGEDY developed in spite of the prevailing critical in-
sistence upon the UNITIES.
But perhaps the most vital critical issue centered about the
effort to justify literature in the face of the PURITAN attack based
upon moral grounds, a movement which attacked the DRAMA in
particular, as in Stephen Gosson's The School of Abuse (1579).
Many of these critical questions were treated in Sidney's Defence
of Poesie (pub. 1595), the most significant piece of criticism of
the period. Sidney stressed the high function of the poet, exalted
poetry above philosophy and history, answered the objections to
poetic art, examined the types of poetry, and assigned praise and
blame among the writers of the preceding generation on the basis
119 Criticism, Historical Sketch
of their conformity to classical principles as expressed by the Italian
critics. Important critical expressions came from Francis Bacon
(Advancement of Learning, 1605) and Ben Jonson (Timber: or
Discoveries). In Jonson, a man of vast learning and uncommon
common sense, we may see the definite tendency toward the NEO-
CLASSICISM that was to become the center of English criticism for
more than a century.
The Restoration: Dryden. The next master was John Dryden,
with his numerous prefaces and essays, the greatest of which is
the Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668). This treatise, written in
dialogue form with ease and vigor, fairly presents the claims of
"ANCIENTS AND MODERNS," of French and English dramatists; BIME,
TRAGI-COMEDY, and the UNITIES receive consideration; the influence
of Corneille is apparent; while much applied criticism keeps the
essay from being entirely theoretical. In his Preface to the Fables
(1700) Dryden gives a noteworthy estimate of the genius of
Chaucer. Other Restoration critics include: Sir Robert Howard,
Thomas Rymer, the Earls of Mulgrave and Roscommon, and Sir
William Temple. The foreign influence was predominantly French.
The Eighteenth Century: Pope, Addison, Johnson. Alexander
Pope was not merely the first poet of his generation, but also its
most significant critic, what with the prefaces to his translation of
Homer and his edition of Shakespeare, and his Essay on Criticism
(1711), by far the leading piece of verse criticism in the language.
In this work Pope set forth the NEO-CLASSIC principles of following
nature and the ancients, outlined the causes of bad criticism,
described the good critic, and concluded with a short history of
criticism. Addison's critical papers in the Spectator (1711-1712) on
TRAGEDY, WIT, BALLADS, Paradise Lost, and the pleasures of the
imagination were designed for a popular audience, but they exerted
a strong influence upon formal criticism and aesthetic theory. The
neo-classical critics in general devoted themselves to such topics
as reason, correctness, WIT, taste, genres, rules, IMITATION, the
classics, the function of the imagination, the status of emotion, and
the dangers of enthusiasm. RATIONALISM and CLASSICISM and the
"school of taste" were held in a balance that often proved precarious.
Gradually, however, the sway of authority was weakened; the
historical point of view gained in general acceptance; textual
criticism became more scientific. But Samuel Johnson remained
the defender of the older order; his large body of critical expression
may be gleaned from his periodical essays, the preface to his edition
Criticism, Historical Sketch 120
of Shakespeare, and his Lives of the Poets. The personality of
Doctor Johnson stimulated orthodoxy as much as did his writings.
Early Romantic Tendencies. But there were dissenters who
were foreshadowing the romantic ideals of the coming era the
Wartons, Edward Young, Bishop Kurd, and others. Joseph Warton
(Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, 1756, 1782) refused
Pope the highest rank among poets because of insufficient emotion
and imagination; Thomas Warton (Observations on The Faerie
Queene of Spenser, 1754) emphasized the emotional quality of the
great Elizabethan poet; Young (Conjectures on Original Composi-
tion, 1759) spoke in favor of independence and against the imita-
tion of other writers; Kurd (Letters on Chivalry and Romance,
1762) justified Gothic manners and design, Spenser's poetry, and
the Italian poets; and attacked some of the main tenets of the
AUGUSTANS. Other eighteenth-century critics of note were John
Hughes, John Dennis, Henry Fielding, Edmund Burke, Goldsmith,
Lord Kames, Hugh Blair, and Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Romanticism: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Lamb. The
volume of poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge entitled Lyrical
Ballads (1798) is frequently cited as formally ushering in the
Romantic Movement. For the second edition (1800) Wordsworth
wrote a preface that acted as a manifesto for the new school and
set forth his own critical creed. It was his object to "choose incidents
and situations from common life/' to use "language really used by
men." Wordsworth was reacting from what he considered the
artificial poetic practice of the preceding era; he condemned the
use of personification and "poetic diction." There could be "no
essential difference between the language of prose and metrical
composition." Wordsworth defined the poet as a "man speaking to
men" and poetry as "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge,"
"the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" which takes its
origin frqm emotion "recollected in tranquillity." Though not
ideally equipped for the r61e of critic, Wordsworth here produced a
document, free from inherited critical jargon and replete with
illustrious passages. It is of prime importance in the history of
English literature and criticism. His own poetic practice is not
always consistent with his theory.
Coleridge, with his superior philosophical training and pro-
fundity of thought, became one of England's greatest critics,
despite his digressiveness and verbosity. The Biographia Literaria
(1817) is both autobiographical and critical. Therein he explained
121 Criticism, Historical Sketch
the division of labor in the Lyrical Ballads: his own endeavors
"should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at
least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a
human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for
these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief
for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith"; while Wordsworth
was "to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of
novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to
the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention to the
lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the
wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for
which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude,
we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither
feel nor understand." These two fundamental romantic points of
view were applied to The Rime of the Ancient Manner of Coleridge
and Lucy Gray of Wordsworth. Coleridge disagreed, however, with
Wordsworth's statements about the principles of METER and POETIC
DICTION: rustic life is not favorable to the formation of a human
diction; poetry is essentially ideal and generic; the language of
Milton is as much that of real life as is that of the cottager; art
strives to give pleasure through beauty. Coleridge subtly ex-
pounded the nature of beauty and the conditions for its existence.
His discussion of the IMAGINATION and the FANCY is penetrating.
In his lectures on Shakespeare Coleridge did much to spread the
romantic worship of the Bard's genius in all its aspects, though, like
Lamb and Hazlitt, he contributed little new to Shakespearean
criticism. The English romanticism of Coleridge and others found
considerable support in the philosophy, aesthetics, and literature
of German romanticism.
Other critics of importance in the first half of the nineteenth
century were Lamb, Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt. Lamb's criticism
was charming and enthusiastic but eccentric, capricious, and
unorganized; it showed good taste, great originality of thought as
well as keenness of phrase; and it stimulated the appreciation of
earlier English literature. Hazlitt is more remarkable for many
happy phrases, sound judgment, and an infectious spirit than for
any systematic philosophy. Hunt is a most catholic and readable
critic. The poet Shelley's Defence of Poetry (1821) is an abstract
apologia reminiscent of RENAISSANCE treatises. Other critics of this
period are: William Blake, Cardinal Newman, Carlyle, De Quincey,
Landor, Henry Hallam, and Macaulay. The review journals, the
Criticism, Historical Sketch 122
Whig Edinburgh Review (ed. Francis Jeffrey) and the Tory
Quarterly Review (ed. William Gifford), voiced fundamentally
conservative opinions and dominated periodical criticism.
The Nineteenth Century; Arnold, Pater; Realism. Matthew
Arnold was the leading critic of the last half of the nineteenth
century. He thought of poetry as a "criticism of life" and of
criticism itself as the effort to "know the best that is known and
thought in the world and by in its turn making this known, to
create a current of true and fresh ideas." Criticism should seek
absolute truth. Form, order, and measure constituted the classical
qualities which Arnold admired. He sought to judge literature by
high standards; he used specimens (or "touchstones") of great
poetry as well as his own sensitive taste in forming judgments. "The
grand style," he said, "arises in poetry, when a noble nature,
poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious
subject." The greatness of a poet "lies in his powerful and beautiful
application of ideas to life." Arnold was primarily interested in the
true and the great; he subordinated the historical method. His
vigorous and lucid style and his high ideals of life and literature have
made him an extremely powerful figure in the history of criticism.
Three of his better known critical essays are The Function of
Criticism (1865), The Study of Poetry (1888), and On Trans-
lating Homer (1861).
In the later nineteenth century we find the tenets of ROMANTI-
CISM still in the field and the principles of REALISM and of IMPRES-
SIONISM gaining ground. The expansion of natural science helped
the progress of realistic and naturalistic criticism (see NATURALISM),
which was a reaction against both CLASSICISM and ROMANTICISM.
HISTORICAL CRITICISM, the attempt to understand a work in the
light of "the man and the milieu" had been in process of develop-
ment for at least two centuries and at last was crystallized in the
writings of the Frenchmen Sainte-Beuve and Taine. IMPRESSIONISM
grew out of ROMANTICISM and obtained an eloquent advocate in
Walter Pater. Victorian critics discussed such topics as the function
and nature of art and literature, the r61e of morality, the place of the
IMAGINATION, the problems of STYLE, the province of the NOVEL,
and the theory of the comic. Though there were no real schools of
critics, the tendency of criticism was away from the application of
standards toward the use of impressionistic methods. The German
influence yielded ground to the French. Significant contributions
were made by Thackeray on the English humorists; John Stuart
123 Criticism, Historical Sketch
Mill on the nature of poetry; Walter Bagehot on pure, ornate, and
grotesque art in poetry; Pater on style and on hedonism in art;
George Meredith on the comic spirit; Leslie Stephen on the
eighteenth century; and Swinburne on the Elizabethan and Ja-
cobean dramatists.
M. H. Abrams, in The Mirror and The Lamp, has pointed out
that all critical theories, whatever their language, discriminate four
elements in "the total situation of a work of art," and he discrimi-
nates both the kinds of criticism and the history of critical theory
and practice in terms of the dominance of one of these elements.
They are: the work, that is, the thing made by the maker, the poem
produced by the poet, the artifact created by the artificer; the artist,
the maker, the poet, the artificer; the universe, that is, the "nature"
that is imitated, if art is viewed as IMITATION, the materials of the
real world or the world of ideal entities out of which the work may
be thought to take its subject; and the audience, the readers,
spectators, or listeners to whom the work is addressed. If the
critic views art basically in terms of the universe, in terms of
what is imitated, he is using the MIMETIC THEORY. If the critic
views art basically in terms of its effect on the audience, he is
using the PRAGMATIC THEORY. If the critic views art basically in
terms of the artist, that is, views it as expressive of the maker,
he is using the EXPRESSIVE THEORY. If the critic views art basically
in its own terms, seeing the work as a self-contained entity, he is
using an OBJECTIVE THEORY.
A backward glance over the history of criticism in the light of
these theories is revealing. The MIMETIC THEORY is characteristic
of the criticism of the classical age, with Aristotle as its great ex-
pounder. Horace, however, introduced the idea of instruction
utile et dulce and thereby put the effect upon the audience in the
center of his view of art. From Horace through most of the eight-
eenth century, the PRAGMATIC THEORY was dominant, although the
NEO-CLASSIC critics revived a serious interest in IMITATION. Indeed,
as M. H. Abrams asserts, "the pragmatic view, broadly conceived,
has been the principal aesthetic attitude of the Western world." At
the same time, it is true that criticism through the eighteenth cen-
tury was securely confident of the imitative nature of art. With the
beginnings of ROMANTICISM came the EXPRESSIVE THEORY, in a sense
the most characteristic of the ROMANTIC attitudes. When Words-
worth calls poetry "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,"
the artist has moved to the center. Now the poet's IMAGINATION is
Criticism, Historical Sketch 124
a new force in the world and a source of unique knowledge, and ex-
pression is the true function of art. Beginning in the nineteenth cen-
tury and becoming dominant in the twentieth has been the "poem
per se . . . written solely for the poem's sake," as Poe expressed it.
Here FORM and STRUCTURE, patterns of IMAGERY and SYMBOLS, be-
come the center of the critic's concern, for he looks at th6 work of
art as a separate cosmos. However, increasing interest in psychology
has kept the contemporary critic also aware of the fact that the
audience functions in the work of art, and views of the MYTH cur-
rent today tend to bring the artist back to a central position and at
the same time to value in terms of the audience the truth he speaks
through his ARCHETYPAL patterns and IMAGES from his racial un-
conscious.
These views of criticism will help us chart the history of the craft
in America in the nineteenth century and in England and America
in the twentieth.
American Criticism in the Nineteenth Century. Criticism in
America, besides reflecting, sometimes tardily, European attitudes,
has been concerned with questions peculiar to a literature growing
out of a transplanted culture. To what extent is American literature
derivative and imitative? How can American literature develop a
purely American spirit? What is this spirit? What of the effect of
PURITAN ethical conceptions upon American literature? How has the
frontier affected it?
Early nineteenth-century criticism, as evidenced by the earlier
numbers of the North American Review (estab. 1815), was con-
servative and NEO-CLASSIC. Pope reigned. Later, the ROMANTIC atti-
tude triumphed, and Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, and eventually
Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Carlyle, and Tennyson were exalted. The
earlier writer-critics were in the main ROMANTIC, Poe, Lowell, and
Emerson. Poe, however, stressed workmanship, technique, struc-
ture, the divorce of art and morality; was highly rational; and enun-
ciated independent theories of the LYRIC and the SHORT STORY.
Emerson believed art should serve moral ends; asserted that all
American literature was derivative; and assumed the ROMANTIC at-
titude toward nature and individualism. Lowell is first IMPRESSION-
ISTIC and ROMANTIC; at times professedly REALISTIC; and eventually
CLASSICAL and ethical, after his revolt against SENTIMENTALISM,
After the Civil War a strong critical movement toward REALISM
developed, and it had two powerful critical spokesmen, William
125 Criticism, Historical Sketch
Dean Howells and Henry James. Interested almost exclusively in
FICTION and particularly in the NOVEL, they advanced a theory that
the fidelity of the work to the universe, with universe defined in a
materialistic or psychological-social sense, was the object of art.
"Realism" was defined by Howells as "neither more nor less than
the truthful treatment of material." Yet there were aspects of the
PRAGMATIC THEORY here, for he saw a moral obligation resting on
the artist in terms of the effects of his works on the audience. At the
close of the century, under the influence of the French, particularly
Zola, a group of American novelists were advancing a theory of art
that was frankly MIMETIC; this is the application of scientific method,
even of scientific law, to enhance the seriousness and increase the
depth of the portraying of the actual by the artist. The theory is
NATURALISM, and Frank Norris was its most vocal expounder as the
century ended. However, Henry James, in critical essays already
written and in the prefaces which he prepared for the collected edi-
tion of his NOVELS in the first decade of the twentieth century, was
to make the most significant formulation of critical principles about
the NOVEL, centering in craftsmanship, that an American has pro-
duced. James and Poe emerge from nineteenth century America as
the most powerful and original American critics of the age. Other
important critics were Hamlin Garland and H. H. Boyesen.
Twentieth Century Criticism. In England and America the first
decade of the twentieth century saw a continuation of the concern
with REALISM and NATURALISM, but little serious critical examination
of them. IMPRESSIONISM and "appreciation," led in England by Wal-
ter Pater and his followers and in America by James Huneker, ruled
the day. In the second decade, a group of Americans, under the lead-
ership of Van Wyck Brooks, attacked the cultural failures of America
and began the search for a "usable past," a search which was to oc-
cupy men like Randolph Bourne, Lewis Mumford, and Bernard De
Voto down to the present and which saw in 19271930 in Vernon L.
Parrington's monumental Main Currents in American Thought one
of the major documents in critical scholarship in the century. At the
same time, in England two young Americans, Ezra Pound and T. S.
Eliot, were learning from T. E. Hulme to distrust ROMANTIC ex-
pressionism and to turn to formalism and objectivity. In the 1920's
the impact of the new psychologies was deeply felt in England,
particularly in the work of I. A. Richards, whose reaction against
IMPRESSIONISM expressed itself in efforts to make an exact scienr a
Criticism, Historical Sketch 126
of the examination of how literature produced psychological states
in its reader. He was followed by Herbert Read and William Emp-
son. And in America Freudian psychology was applied to literary
problems by a variety of critics, but the strong movement was the
NEW HUMANISM, which, under the leadership of Irving Babbit and
Paul Elmer More, formulated a critical position resting on the
traditional moral and critical standards of the humanists.
In the 1930's, as a partial aftermath of the financial collapse,
came a wave of critics espousing Marxist and near-Marxist ideas
a specialized form of PRAGMATIC THEORY both in England and
America. The major English Marxist was Christopher Caudwell;
while no Americans approached him in excellence, critics like Gran-
ville Hicks and V. F. Calverton strongly espoused the reading of
literature in the light of radical social views. During the 1930's in
America, reacting both against the NEW HUMANISTS and the Marx-
ist critics came a group, drawn largely from the AGRARIANS, who
vigorously embraced an OBJECTIVE THEORY of art. Led by John
Crowe Ransom, who gave them a name and something resembling
a credo in his book The New Criticism, these essentially conserva-
tive and anti-romantic writers Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren,
Donald Davidson, Yvor Winters, and later Cleanth Brooks, started
from the position of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and quickly formed
themselves into a powerful force in the formal criticism of litera-
ture. At the same time a similar group, though much less organized,
were practicing a stringent and aesthetically centered criticism in
England, among them being Eliot himself, F. R. Leavis, and Cyril
Connolly, Both in England and America, the theories of Carl Jung
about the racial unconscious (see ARCHETYPE) have been operative
and have received vigorous expression by writers like Maud Bod-
kin and Eliot in England and Susanne Langer and Francis Fergus-
son in America. The twentieth century is often called an age of
criticism and in the richness and complexity of its systems, the rigor
of its application, and the enthusiasm of its espousal of the cause
of the literary arts it can wear that title with honor. Today these
many movements are fusing into a healthy eclecticism, and readers
and writers alike are benefited by it. For a distinguished short sur-
vey of the history of criticism, see W. K, Wimsatt, Jr., and Cleanth
Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History and for American criti-
cism, see Floyd Stovall (ed.), The Development of American Lit-
erary Criticism. See the articles on various kinds of criticism as
listed under CRITICISM, TYPES OF.
127 Criticism, Types of
Criticism, Types of: Criticism is a term which has been applied
since the seventeenth century to the description, justification, analy-
sis, or judgment of works of art. There are many ways in which criti-
cism may be classified. Some of the more common classifications are
given here, as supplementary to M. H. Abrams' discrimination
among the major critical theories as MIMETIC, PRAGMATIC, EXPRES-
SIVE, and OBJECTIVE (see CRITICISM, HISTORICAL SKETCH, begin-
ning at "The Nineteenth Century"). One common dichotomy for
criticism is ARISTOTELIAN vs. PLATONIC. In this sense, ARISTOTELIAN
implies a judicial, logical, formal criticism that tends to find the-
values of a work either within the work itself or inseparably linked
to the work; and PLATONIC implies a moralistic, utilitarian view of
art, where the values of a work are to be found in the usefulness of
art for other and non-artistic purposes. Such a view of PLATONIC
CRITICISM is narrow and in part inaccurate, but those who hold it
point to the exclusion of the poet from Plato's Republic. Essentially
what is meant by the ARISTOTELIAN-PLATONIC dichotomy is an in-
trinsic-extrinsic separation.
A separation between relativistic criticism and absolutist criti-
cism is also often made, in which the relativistic critic employs
any or all systems which will aid him in reaching and elucidating
the nature of a work of art, whereas the absolutist critic holds
that there is one proper critical procedure or set of principles
and no others should be applied to the critical task.
There is also an obvious division between THEORETICAL CRITI-
CISM, which attempts to arrive at the general principles of art and
to formulate inclusive and enduring aesthetic and critical tenets, and
PRACTICAL CRITICISM ( sometimes called "applied** criticism), which
brings these principles or standards to bear upon particular works
of art.
Criticism may also be classified according to the purpose which
it is intended to serve. The principal purposes which critics have-
had are: (1) to justify one's own work or to explain it and its under-
lying principles to an uncomprehending audience (Dryden, Words-
worth, Henry James); (2) to justify imaginative art in a world that
tends to find its value questionable (Sidney, Shelley, the NEW CRITI-
CISM) ; (3) to prescribe rules for writers and to legislate taste for the
audience (Pope, Boileau, the Marxists); (4) to interpret works to
readers who might otherwise fail to understand or appreciate them
(Edmund Wilson, Matthew Arnold); (5) to judge works by clearly
defined standards of evaluation (Samuel Johnson, T. S. Eliot); (6)
Crown of Sonnets
to discover and to apply the principles which describe the founda-
tions of good art (Coleridge, Addison, I. A. Richards).
Criticism is also often divided into the following types in literary
and critical histories: (1) IMPRESSIONISTIC, which emphasizes how
the work of art affects the critic; (2) HISTORICAL, which examines
the work against its historical surroundings and the facts of its au-
thor's life and times; (3) TEXTUAL, which attempts by all scholarly
means to reconstruct the original manuscript or textual version of
the work; (4) FORMAL, which examines the work in terms of the
characteristics of the type or GENRE to which it belongs; (5) JUDI-
CIAL, which judges the work by a definable set of standards; (6)
ANALYTICAL, which attempts to get at the nature of the work as
an object in itself through the detailed analysis of its parts and their
organization; (7) MORAL, which evaluates the work in relation to
human life; and (8) MYTHIC, which explores the nature and signifi-
cance of the ARCHETYPES and archetypal patterns in the work.
These widely differing classification systems for criticism are
not mutually exclusive, and there are certainly others. These will
serve, however, to indicate to the student that the critic has em-
ployed a great variety of strategies in getting at the work of art and
communicating what he finds there.
Crown of Sonnets: Seven SONNETS interlinked by having the last
line of the first form the first line of the second, the last line of
the second form the first line of the third, etc., with the last line of
the last SONNET repeating the first line of the first. Donne's "La
Corona" is an example.
Cubist Poetry: Poetry that attempts to do in VERSE what the cubist
painters do on canvas; that is, take the elements of an experience,
totally fragment them (creating what Picasso calls "destructions")
and then so re-arrange them that a new and meaningful synthesis is
made (Picasso's "sum of destructions"). The poetry of e. e. cum-
mings, Kenneth Rexroth, and some of that of Archibald MacLeish
fit this category.
Cultural Primitivism: The belief that nature (what exists undis-
turbed by man's artifice) is preferable and fundamentally better
than any aspect of man's culture (any area of human activity where,
by art or craft, man has modified or ordered nature). It is a belief
129 Cynicism
that distrusts artifice, logic, social and political organizations, rules,
and conventions. See PRIMITIVISM, CHRONOLOGICAL PRIMITTVISM.
Cycle: A word, originally meaning circle, which came to be applied
to a collection of poems or ROMANCES centering about some out-
standing event or character. Cyclic narratives are commonly ac-
cumulations of TRADITION given literary form by a succession of au-
thors rather than by a single writer. "Cyclic" was first applied to a
series of epic poems intended to supplement Homer's account of
the Trojan War and written by a group of late Greek poets known
as the Cyclic Poets. Other examples of cyclic narrative are the
Charlemagne EPICS and Arthurian ROMANCE, like the "Cycle of
Lancelot/' etc. The MEDIEVAL religious DRAMA presents a cyclic
treatment of Biblical themes.
Cyclic Drama: The great CYCLES of medieval religious DRAMA. See
MYSTERY PLAY.
Cynicism: Doubt of the generally accepted standards and of the in-
nate goodness of human action. In literature the term is important as
one used from time to time to characterize groups of writers or move-
ments distinguished by dissatisfaction with contemporary condi-
tions. Originally the expression came into being with a group of an-
cient Greek philosophers, a group led by Antisthenes and including
such others as Diogenes and Crates. The major tenets of the cynics
were belief in the moral responsibility of the individual for his own
acts and the dominance of the will in its right to control human ac-
tion. Reason, mind, will, individualism were, then, of greater im-
portance than the social or political conduct so likely to be wor-
shiped by the multitudes. This exaltation of the individual over
society it is which makes most unthinking people contemptuous of
the cynical attitude. Any highly individualistic writer, scornful of
the commonly accepted social standards and ideals, is, for this
reason, called cynical. Almost every literature has had its schools
of cynics. It is important to remember that cynicism is not neces-
sarily a weakness or a vice, and that the cynics have done much for
civilization. Samuel Butler's Way of All Flesh and W. Somerset
Maugham's Of Human Bondage are two examples of the cynical
NOVEL.
Dactyl 130
Dactyl: A metrical FOOT consisting of one accented syllable fol-
" w W
lowed by two unaccented syllables, as in the word mannikin. See
METER and VERSIFICATION.
Dadaism: A movement of young writers and artists in Paris during
and just after World War I, which attempted to suppress the logical
relationship between idea and statement, argued for absolute free-
dom, held meetings at bars and in theatres, and delivered itself of
numerous nonsensical and semi-nonsensical "manifestoes." It was
founded in Zurich in 1916 by Tristan Tzara (who then went to
Paris) with the admittedly destructive intent of perverting and de-
molishing the tenets of art, philosophy, and logic and replacing them
with conscious madness as a protest against the insanity of the war.
Similar movements sprang up in Germany, Holland, Italy, Russia,
and Spain. About 1924 the movement developed into SURREALISM.
See Edmund Wilson's AxeEs Castle and Malcolm Cowley's Exile's
Return for accounts of the movement.
Dark Ages: A phrase sometimes loosely used as a synonym for
the medieval period of European history. Its use is vigorously
objected to by most modern students of the Middle Ages, since
the phrase reflects the old, discredited view that the period in
question was characterized by intellectual darkness, an idea that
arose from lack of information about medieval life. The studies
of modern scholars have made it certain that dark ages is a phrase
that completely misrepresents the medieval period, which, as a
matter of fact, was characterized by intellectual, artistic, and even
scientific activity which led to high cultural attainments. Most
present-day writers, therefore, avoid the phrase altogether. Some
who do use it restrict it to the earlier part of the Middle Ages
(fifth to eleventh centuries).
Debat: A type of literary composition, usually in VERSE, that was
highly popular in the Middle Ages, in which two persons or objects,
frequently allegorical, debated some specific topic and then referred
it to a judge. Possibly the debat reflects the influence of the
"pastoral contest* in Theocritus and Virgil. The form was partic-
ularly popular in France, where the subjects debated ranged over
most human interests, such as theology, morality, politics, COURTLY
LOVE, and social questions. In Engknd the debat tended to be
131 Decorum
religious and moralistic. The best English example is The Owl and
the Nightingale (ca.!2th century), whose interpretation has caused
much scholarly debate.
Decadence; A term used in literary history and criticism to denote
the decline or deterioration which commonly marks the end of a
great period. Arthur Symons listed as decadent qualities "an intense
self -consciousness, a restless curiosity in research, an oversubtilizing
refinement upon refinement, a spiritual and moral perversity/* It is
best to remember, however, that the term is relative and can not
always suggest the same qualities to the same writers and that no
two periods of decadence can be just alike. In English dramatic
history the period following Shakespeare was marked by such
decadent qualities as a relaxing of critical standards, a breaking
down of types (COMEDY and TRAGEDY merging), a lowered moral
tone, sensationalism, over-emphasis upon some single interest (like
plot-construction or "prettiness" of style), a decreased seriousness
of purpose, and a loss of poetic power. The "silver age" of Latin
literature (reign of Trajan), including such writers as Tacitus,
Juvenal and Martial (satirists), Lucan, and the Plinys, is called
decadent in relation to the preceding "golden age" of Augustus
made illustrious by Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Livy. In the last
half of the nineteenth and the early years of the twentieth centuries
decadence found a special expression in the work of a group known
as the DECADENTS.
Decadents: A group of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century writers, principally in France but also in England and
America, who held that art was superior to nature, that the finest
beauty was that of dying or decaying things, and who, both in
their lives and their art, attacked the accepted moral, ethical, and
social standards of their time. In France the group included
Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Huysmans, and Villiers de Tlsle
Adam. In England the decadents included Oscar Wilde, Ernest
Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley, and Frank Harris. In America it is
best represented by Edgar Salrus, although there are decadent
qualities in Stephen Crane.
Decorum: A critical term describing that which is proper to a
character, subject, or setting in a literary work. According to
classical standards, the UNITY and harmony of a composition could
be maintained by the observance of dramatic propriety. The STYLE
Definition 132
should be appropriate to the speaker, the occasion, and the subject
matter. So RENAISSANCE authors were careful to have kings speak
in a "high" STYLE (such as majestic blank verse), old men in a
"grave" STYLE, clowns in prose, and shepherds in a "rustic" STYLE.
Puttenham (1589) cites as an example of the lack of decorum the
case of the English translator of Virgil who said that Aeneas was
fain to "trudge" out of Troy (a beggar might "trudge/* but not a
great hero). Beginning in the RENAISSANCE the type to which a
character belonged was regarded as a most important element in
determining his qualities; age, rank, and social status were often
held as fundamental in the art of CHARACTERIZATION. Thus a too
rigid adherence to such distinctions led to a hardening of character.
But on the use of decorum in the Iliad Pope said: "The speeches
are to be considered as they flow from the characters, being perfect
or defective as they agree or disagree with the manners of those
who utter them. As there is more variety of characters in The Iliad,
so there is of speeches, than in any other poem," and "Homer is in
nothing more excellent than in that distinction of characters which
he maintains through his whole poem. What Andromache here
says can be spoken properly by none but Andromache." Decorum
has often been considered the controlling critical idea of the NEO-
CLASSIC age in England.
Definition: A brief EXPOSITION of a term calculated to explain its
meaning. Formal definitions consist of two elements: (1) the gen-
eral class (genus) to which the object belongs, and (2) the specific
ways (differentiae) in which the object differs from other objects
within the same general class. For instance, in the first sentence
above "brief exposition" lists the general class to which definition
belongs and "calculated to explain its meaning" shows the way in
which definition differs from other expositions which may be in-
tended, for instance, to make clear the location of a site, the opera-
tion of a machine or any one of the various other functions which
expositions in general may perform. The following examples should
help to make this clear:
Specific ways in which it
Term defined General class to which differs from other objects
it belongs in the same general class
A canoe is a boat pointed at both ends and
propelled by paddling.
A radio is an instrument for receiving or transmit-
ting wireless messages.
133 Deism
Rarely are single-sentence definitions satisfactory in themselves.
But the principle above stated guides in forming longer expositions
in which both the second and third elements of the definition may
be extended almost indefinitely.
Deism: The religion of those believing in a God who rules the
world by established laws but not believing in the divinity of
Christ or the inspiration of the Bible; "natural" religion, based
on reason and a study of nature, as opposed to "revealed" religion.
The scientific movement which grew out of the new knowledge of
the world and the universe following upon the* discoveries and
theories of Columbus, Copernicus, Galileo, Francis Bacon, and
later the members of the Royal Society, furthered the development
of a rationalistic point of view which more and more tended to
rely upon reason instead of upon revelation in the consideration of
man's relation to God and the Universe. The fact that the concep-
tions of the physical world found in the Old Testament seemed in-
consistent with the newer knowledge shook the faith of many in
the doctrine of the special inspiration of the Bible. Deism was a
product of this general point of view. It absorbed also something
from the theological movements of Arianism (opposition to the
doctrine of the Trinity) and AKMINIANISM (which stressed moral
conduct as a sign of religion and opposed the doctrine of election;
see CALVINISM) . The somewhat prevalent notion that the deists
believed in an "absentee" God, who, having created the world and
set in motion machinery for its operation, took no further interest
either in the world or in man is perhaps unfair, as it is certainly
not applicable to all eighteenth-century deists, some of whom even
believed in God's pardoning of the sins of a repentant individual.
The reputed "father" of the deists was Lord Herbert of Cher-
bury (15831648); later philosophical representatives of the move-
ment included the third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) and Lord
Bolingbroke (1678-1751). From Shaftesbury deistic views passed
to Voltaire and other French philosophers, who in turn powerfully
influenced later English (and American) thought. John Toland
(1670-1722), Anthony Collins (1676-1729), and Matthew Tindal
(d. 1733) wrote important deistic treatises. The fact that there
were groups of theological deists as well as philosophical ones, some
deists not agreeing with other deists, makes it difficult to give any
accurate summary of the tenets of deism, but the following state-
ments perhaps fairly represent the point of view of the English
deists: 1. The Bible is not the inspired word of God; it is good so
Denotation 134
far as it reflects "natural" religion and bad so far as it contains
"additions" made by superstitious or designing persons. 2. Certain
Christian theological doctrines are the product of superstition or
the invention of priests and must be rejected; e.g., the deity of
Christ, the doctrine of the Trinity, and theory of the atonement
for sins. 3. God is perfect, is the creator and governor of the
Universe, and works not capriciously but through unchangeable
laws (hence "miracles" are to be rejected as impossible). 4. Human
beings are free agents, whose minds work as they themselves
choose; even God cannot control man's thoughts. 5. Since man is
a rational creature, like God, he is capable of understanding the
laws of the universe; and as God is perfect, so can man become
perfect through the process of education. Man may learn of God
through a study of nature, which shows design and must therefore
be an expression of God. 6. Practical religion for the individual
consists in achieving virtue through the rational guidance of conduct
(as exemplified in the scheme for developing the moral virtues
recorded by Franklin in his Autobiography). The deistic system is
in some ways more optimistic than CALVINISM, with which it came
into conflict. Some of the "moderate" deists attempted to reconcile
deism with Christianity on the ground that reason and revelation
never disagreed and were but two different methods of discovering
the same body of truth. H. E. Cushman says that deism was
founded on three principles: (1) the origin and truth of religion
may be scientifically investigated; (2) the origin of religion is the
conscience; (3) positive religions are degenerate forms of natural
religion.
The effects of deistic thinking upon literature were very great
and cannot be briefly traced. The deism of Pope's Essay on Man
(partly inspired by Bolingbroke) illustrates the effect on the
"classical" school, while the doctrine of man's perfection in Shelley's
poetry and much of the Wordsworthian worship of nature are
examples of deistic influences on the "romantic" school. The poet
James Thomson was an acknowledged deist. Gibbon's Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) excited much controversy
because of its deistic treatment of Christianity. Tom Paine's Age of
Reason is more deistic than atheistic. In America deism affected the
writing of many writers of the Revolutionary period, notably
Franklin and Jefferson.
Denotation: The specific, exact meaning of a word, independent
of its emotional coloration or associations. See CONNOTATION,
135 Detective Story
Denouement: The final unraveling of the PLOT in DRAMA or
FICTION; the solution of the mystery; the explanation or outcome.
Denouement implies an ingenious untying of the knot of an intrigue,
involving not only a satisfactory outcome of the main situation but
an explanation of all the secrets and misunderstandings connected
with the plot COMPLICATION. In DRAMA denouement may be applied
to both TRAGEDY and COMEDY, though the common term for a tragic
denouement is CATASTROPHE. The final scene of Shakespeare's
Cymbeline is a striking example of how clever and involved a
dramatic denouement may be: exposure of villain, clearing up of
mistaken identities and disguises, reuniting of father and children,
of husband and wife, etc., etc. By some writers denouement is used
as a synonym for FALLING ACTION. See also CATASTROPHE, DRAMATIC
STRUCTURE, SHORT STORY.
Description; That one of the four chief types of composition (see
ARGUMENTATION, EXPOSITION, and NARRATION) which has as its
purpose the picturing of a scene or setting. Though often used
apart for its own sake (as in Poe's Landors Cottage) it more
frequently is subordinated to one of the other types of writing;
especially to NARRATION, with which it most frequently goes hand
in hand. Descriptive writing is most successful when its details are
carefully selected according to some purpose and to a definite
point of view, when its IMAGES are concrete and clear, and when
it makes discreet use of words of color, sound, and motion.
Detective Story: A NOVEL or SHORT STORY in which a crime,
usually a murder the identity of the perpetrator unknown is
solved by a detective through a logical assembling and interpreta-
tion of palpable evidence, known as clues. This definition is the
accepted one for the true detective story, although in practice
much variation occurs. If the variations are too great, however
such as the absence of the detective, or a knowledge from the
beginning of the identity of the criminal, or the absence of a
process of reasoning logically from clues the story falls into the
looser category of MYSTERY STORY. The specific form detective
story had its origin in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," by
Edgar Allan Poe (1841). In this tale, "The Purloined Letter," "The
Mystery of Marie Roget," and "Thou Art the Man," Poe is said to
have established every one of the basic conventions of the detective
story. The form has been remarkably popular in England and
America, as a form of light entertainment for the intellectual
Deus ex machina
Generally, American detective stories have had greater sensational-
ism and action than the English ones, which have usually placed
a premium on tightness of plotting and grace of STYLE. The greatest
of detective story writers was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose
Sherlock Holmes stories seem to have established a character, a
room, a habit, a few gestures and a group of phrases in the enduring
heritage of English-speaking readers. "S. S. Van Dine" (Willard
Huntington Wright) carried ingenuity of plotting to a very high
level in America in the 1920's in his Philo Vance stories, a course in
which he was ably followed by the authors of the Ellery Queen
novels. The introduction of brutal realism, coupled with a poetic
but highly idiomatic STYLE in the detective stones of Dashiell
Hammett in the 1930's has resulted in distinguished work by the
Americans Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. In England
the continuing ingenuity of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr
(also ^Carter Dickson") and the skill and grace of Dorothy Sayers
and the New Zealander Ngaio Marsh are contributions to the form.
All of these practitioners have made it a point of honor to observe
the fundamental rule of the detective story (and the rule which
most clearly distinguishes it from the MYSTERY STORY) : that the
clues out of which a logical solution to the problem can be made be
fairly presented to the reader at the same time that the detective
receives them and that the detective deduce the answer to the riddle
from a logical reading of these clues. See MYSTERY STORY.
Deus ex machina: The employment of some unexpected and im-
probable incident in a story or play in order to make things turn
out right. In the ancient Greek theatre when gods appeared in
plays they were lowered to the stage from the "machine" or stage
structure above. The abrupt but timely appearance of a god in
this fashion, when used to extricate the mortal characters of the
drama from a situation so perplexing that the solution seemed be-
yond mortal powers, was referred to in Latin as the dens ex machina
("god from the machine"). The term is now employed to char-
acterize any device whereby an author solves a difficult situation
by a forced invention. A villain may fail to kill a hero because he
has forgotten to load his revolver. A long-lost brother, given up
for dead, suddenly appears on the scene provided with a fortune
he has won in foreign parts, just in time to save the family from
disgrace or a sister from an unwelcome marriage. The employment
of the deus ex machina is commonly recognized as evidence of
137 Dialects
deficient skill in plot-making or an uncritical willingness to disregard
the probabilities. Though it is sometimes employed by good
authors, it is found most frequently in MELODRAMA. See PLOT,
COUP DE THEATRE.
Dial, The: A periodical published in Boston from 1840 to 1844
as the mouthpiece of the New England transcendentalists. Margaret
Fuller was its first editor (1840-42) and Emerson its second
(1842-44). Among the most famous contributors to The Dial
were Alcott, the two Channings (William H. and William Ellery),
Dana, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Lowell, Thoreau, and Jones Very.
In 1860 another organ of TRANSCENDENTALISM named The Dial
appeared briefly in Cincinnati, edited by Moncure Conway and
with contributions by Emerson, Alcott, and Howells. From 1880
to 1929, a distinguished literary monthly (and between 1892 and
1916, a fortnightly) was published under the name The Dial, first
in Chicago and after 1916 in New York. Until 1916 it was a con-
servative literary review. From 1916 to 1920, under the editorship
of Conrad Aiken, Randolph Bourne, and Van Wyck Brooks, it was
a radical journal of opinion and criticism, publishing writers like
Dewey, Veblen, Laski, and Beard. After 1920 it became the most
distinguished literary monthly in America, noted for its reproduc-
tions of modern graphic art and a powerful advocate of modern
artistic movements. It published writers like Thomas Mann, T. S.
Eliot, and James Stephens. Marianne Moore was editor from 1926
until it ceased publication in 1929.
Dialects: When the speech of two groups or of two persons rep-
resenting two groups both speaking the same language" ex-
hibits very marked differences, the groups or persons are said to
speak different dialects of the language. If the differences are very
slight, they may be said to represent "sub-dialects" rather than
dialects. If the differences are so great that the two groups or
persons cannot understand each other, especially if they come
from separate political units or countries, they are said to speak
different languages. Yet the gradations are so narrow that no '
scientific method has been devised which will make it possible in
all cases to distinguish between a language and a dialect. The chief
cause of the development of dialects is isolation or separation due
to lack of ease of communication. Natural barriers such as mountain
ranges and social barriers caused by hostile relations tend to keep
Dialects
groups from frequent contact with each other with a resultant
development of habitual differences in speech-habits, leading to-
ward the formation of dialects or even languages. Likewise among
neighboring groups the dialect of one group commonly becomes
dominant, as did West Saxon in early England.
When the Teutonic tribes which form the basis of the English
"race" (Angles, Saxons, etc.) came to England from the Con-
tinent in the fifth century, they spoke separate dialects of West
Germanic. In Old English times (fifth to eleventh centuries) there
were four main dialects: (1) Northumbrian (north of the Humber
River) and (2) Mercian (between the Thames and the Humber),
both being branches or sub-dialects of the original Anglian dialect;
(3) the Kentish (southeastern England), based upon the language
of the Jutes, and (4) the Saxon (southern England). The early
literature produced in the Northern districts (seventh to ninth
centuries) is preserved chiefly in Southern (West Saxon) versions
of the tenth and eleventh centuries. In Middle English times the
old dialects appear under different names and with new sub-
dialects. Northumbrian is called Northern; Saxon and Kentish are
called Southern; the Northern English spoken in Scotland becomes
Lowland Scotch; Mercian becomes Midland, and is broken into
two main sub-dialects, West Midland and East Midland. The latter
was destined to become the immediate parent of modern English.
Middle English literature, therefore, exists in a variety of dialects,
more or less clearly differentiated. Layamon's Brut and The Owl and
the Nightingale, for example, are in the Southern dialect; Cursor
Mundi and Sir Tristrem are in Northern; the Ormulum is early
Midland, while Havelok the Dane, Piers Plowman, and the poetry
of Chaucer are in later Midland. The Middle English dialects
differed in vocabulary, sounds, and inflections, so that Northerners
and Southerners had difficulty in understanding each other. A
few examples of the differences may be given: In Northern, "they
sing" would be "they singes"; in Midland, "they singen"; in
Southern, "they singeth." Northern "kirk" is Southern "church."
The present participle in Northern ended in -ande; in Southern,
in -inde or -inge; in Midland, in -ende or -inge. Though the literary
language in modern times has been standardized, it must not be
supposed that dialects no longer exist, especially in oral speech.
Skeat lists nine modem dialects in Scotland; in England proper he
;finds three groups of Northern, ten groups of Midland, five groups
rf Eastern, two groups of Western, and ten groups of Southern.
139 Dialogue
Dialects, American: American dialects are less marked than English
dialects, although some dialectal differences are easily discernible.
However, only in areas where a local patois, such as Cajun in New
Orleans or Gullah on the South Carolina coast, is spoken do
Americans have serious difficulty in understanding one another.
Three broad dialectal areas are generally recognized in the United
States, although their speeches are sometimes given differing names.
These areas are: New England and eastern New York, the speech
of which is usually called "Eastern"; the area south of Pennsylvania
and the Ohio River, extending westward beyond the Mississippi
River into Texas, the speech of which is usually called "Southern";
and the broad area which extends from New Jersey on the Atlantic
coast, through Pennsylvania and western New York into the middle
west and the southwest and then over all the Pacific Coast, an area
which comprises more than three-fourths of the American popula-
tion; the speech of this area is usually called "General American"
and sometimes "Western." Modern methods of transportation and
mass communication are steadily leveling American speech and
eradicating dialectual differences which once existed. At one time
a great number of sub-dialects were recognized and exploited in
LOCAL COLOR writings; most of these have today merged into the
speech patterns of "General American." As a result of the work in
progress on the Linguistic Atlas of the United States (see AMERICAN
LANGUAGE), much more accurate records of remaining regional
and local differences of speech are being made, although at the
time when they are tending to be lost. Dialectal differences in
America are matters of vocabulary, of grammatic habit, and of
pronunciation.
Dialogue: Conversation of two or more people as reproduced in
writing. Most common in FICTION, particularly in DRAMAS, NOVELS,
and SHORT STORIES, dialogue is nevertheless used in general ex-
pository and philosophical writing (Plato). An analysis of dialogue
as it has been employed by great writers shows that it embodies
certain literary and stylistic values: (1) It advances the action in
a definite way and is not used as mere ornamentation. (2) It is
consistent with the character of the speakers, their social positions
and special interests. It varies in tone and expression according
to the nationalities, DIALECTS, occupations, and social levels of the
speakers. (3) It gives the impression of naturalness without being
an actual, verbatim record of what may have been said, since
Diary 140
FICTION, as someone has explained, is concerned with "the sem-
blance of reality,'* not with reality itself. (4) It presents the inter-
play of ideas and personalities among the people conversing; it
sets forth a conversational give and take not simply a series of
remarks of alternating speakers. (5) It varies in DICTION, RHYTHM,
phrasing, sentence length, etc., according to the various speakers
participating. The best writers of dialogue know that rarely do two
or more people of exactly the same cultural and character back-
ground meet and converse, and the dialogue they write notes these
differences. (6) It serves, at the hands of some writers, to give
relief from, and lightness of effect to, passages which are essentially
serious or expository in nature.
It should be noted, however, that in the Eizabethan DRAMA the
CONVENTION of using BLANK VERSE and high rhetoric for noble or
elevated characters and prose for underlings and comic characters
modifies these rules, as did the doctrine of DECORUM in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, plays of wrr, such
as those by Oscar Wilde, and plays of idea, such as those by G. B.
Shaw, unhesitatingly take liberties with the idea of appropriateness
to station and character in dialogue.
The dialogue is also a specialized literary composition in which
two or more characters debate or reason about an idea or a
proposition. There are many notable examples in the world's
literature, the best known being the Dialogues of Plato. Others
include Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, Dryden's Essay on
Dramatic Poesie, and Landor's Imaginary Conversations. Richard
Chase's commentary on American literature, The Democratic Vista,
is cast in dialogue form.
Diary: A day-by-day CHRONICLE of events, a JOURNAL. Usually a
personal and more or less intimate record of events and thoughts
kept by an individual. Not avowedly intended for publication
though it is difficult to insist on this point since many diarists
have certainly kept their tongues in their cheeks most diaries,
when published, have appeared posthumously. Far and away the
most famous diary in English is that of Samuel Pepys, which details
events between January 1, 1660, and May 29, 1669. Other im-
portant English diaries are those of John Evelyn, Bulstrode White-
locke, George Fox, Jonathan Swift, John Wesley, and Fanny
Burney. Noted American diarists include Samuel Sevpell, Sarah K.
Knight, and William Byrd, The diary has, in late years, become a
141 Dictionaries
conscious literary form used by travelers, statesmen, politicians,
etc., as a convenient method of presenting the run of daily events
in which they have had a hand. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY, BIOGRAPHY.
Diatribe: Writing or discourse characterized by bitter invective,
abusive argument. A harangue. Originally it was a treatment in
DIALOGUE of a limited philosophical proposition in a simple, lively,
conversational tone. Popular with the Stoic and Cynic philosophers,
it became noted for the abusiveness of the speakers, a fact which
led to its present-day meaning.
Diction: The use of words in oral or written discourse. A simple
list of words makes up a vocabulary; the accurate, careful use of
these words in discourse makes good diction. The qualities of proper
diction as illustrated by the work of standard authors are: (1) the
apt selection of the word for the paiticukr meaning to be con-
veyed, (2) the use of legitimate words accepted as good usage
(excluding all SOLECISMS, BARBARISMS, and improprieties) and (3)
the use of words which are clear-cut and specific. The manner in
which words are combined constitutes STYLE rather than diction
since diction refers only to the selection of words employed in the
discourse.
There are at least four levels of usage for words: the formal, the
informal, the colloquial, and SLANG. Formal refers to the level of
usage common in serious books and formal discourse; informal
refers to the level of usage found in the relaxed but polite conversa-
tion of cultivated people; colloquial refers to the everyday usage
of a group and it may include terms and constructions accepted in
that group but not universally acceptable; and SLANG refers to a
group of newly COINED WORDS which are not acceptable for polite
usage as yet.
It should be noted that the accepted diction of one age often
sounds unacceptable to another. See POETIC DICTION.
Dictionaries: At different times during their five hundred years of
development, English dictionaries have emphasized different
elements and have passed through an evolution as great as any of
our literary forms or tools. In their modern form dictionaries arrange
their words alphabetically, give explanations of the meanings, the
derivations, the pronunciations, illustrative quotations and idioms,
synonyms, and antonyms. Sometimes, however, the "dictionary" is
Dictionaries 142
restricted to word-lists of a special significance as dictionaries of
law, of medicine, of art, etc.
Of the dictionaries available to the American student and reader,
the following should he noted: There are three American "un-
abridged" that is, purporting to record the totality of words in
current usage dictionaries: The Century (1889), The New Stand-
ard (1893), and The New International (1898); all have been
frequently revised. However, the most complete dictionary on the
market is from England, the Oxford New English Dictionary
(1884r-1928). Three sizable shorter dictionaries are in wide use in
America: the American College Dictionary (1947); Webster's New
Collegiate Dictionary (1949), an abridgement of The New Inter-
national Dictionary; and Webster's New World Dictionary (1953);
all of these are frequently revised. Of special interest to the literary
student are the Dictionary of American English (1938-1944), the
Dictionary of Americanisms (1951) , the English Dialect Dictionary,
edited by Joseph Wright (6 volumes), and the Dictionary of Slang
and Unconventional English, edited by Eric Partridge. H. W.
Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage is a witty and in-
dispensable guide to good usage and graceful expression, and is
particularly valuable for Americans in the revision by Marjorie
Nicolson.
"English lexicography began," says a writer in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, "with attempts to explain Latin words by giving English
equivalents'* and cites the Promptorium Parvulorum (1440) of
Galfridus Grammaticus, a Dominican monk of Norfolk, printed by
Pynson in 1499 as an early example. Just which publication deserves
the distinction of being called the first English dictionary it is dif-
ficult to say because the evolution was so gradual that the concep-
tion of what constituted a good word-book differed from year to
year. Vizetelly gives credit to Richard Huloet's Abecedarium
(1552) as the first dictionary; the Britannica article credits "the
first approach to success in collecting and defining all words in good
usage in the English language" to Nathaniel Bailey, whose major
work was not published until 1730; The Dictionary of Syr T. Eliot,
Knyght, (1538), appears to have been the work first to establish
the term "dictionary."
The evolution of the English dictionary is a study interesting
enough to warrant the serious attention of scholars. Here only an
outline can be suggested The early word-books started off listing
simply the "hard words" which people might not be expected to
143 Dictionaries
know; the classification was sometimes alphabetical, sometimes by
subject matter. Later, the lexicographers looked upon themselves
as literary guardians of national speech and listed only such words
as were dignified enough to be of "good usage"; the function of
these compilers was to standardize, to "fix" the national language.
Illustrative of this point of view were the collections of such
scholarly academies as those of Italy and France; and, indeed, Dr.
Samuel Johnson, a whole academy in himself, first held and later
abandoned tibis same sort of ideal (see list below). Archbishop
Trench, a British scholar, declared roundly in 1857 that a proper
dictionary was really an "inventory of language" including col-
loquial uses as well as literary uses and Trench's insistence on the
philological attitude for the lexicographer probably did more to
develop the modern word-book than any other single influence.
A list of some of the titles important in the evolution of the
dictionary, exclusive of those given above, includes:
John Florio (1598), Queen Annas New World of Words.
Robert Cawdrey (1604) (who used English words only), A Table
Alphabeticall Contyning and Teaching the True Writing and Under-
standing of Hard Usuall English Wordes.
Handle Cotgrave (1611), A Bundle of Words.
John Bullokar (1616), An English Expositor.
Henry Cockeram (1623), The English Dictionarie (in which "idiote"
was defined as "an unlearned asse").
Thomas Blount (1656), Glossographia.
Edward Phillips (1658), The New World of English Words.
Nathaniel Bailey (1721), Universal Etymological English Dictionary.
Samuel Johnson (1755), Dictionary of the English Language (in which
50,000 words were explained. The most pretentious volume published
up to that time. The personal element injected into definitions gives
us such famous explanations as that for oats: "a grain which in Eng-
land is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the peo-
ple," and, further, that Whig was "the name of a faction" while Tory
signified "one who adhered to the antient constitution of the state and
the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of England, opposed to a
Whig ).
Thomas Sheridan (1780), Complete Dictionary of the English Language
(which gave special emphasis to the pronunciation of the words).
Samuel Johnson (1798?), A School Dictionary. The first American dic-
tionary. This Johnson was not related to the earlier Dr. Samuel. This
first American dictionary simplified some of the English spellings and
began the use of phonetic marks as aids to pronunciation.
Noah Webster (1828), American Dictionary; the most famous name
in American lexicography.
Joseph Emerson Worcester (1846), Universal and Critical Dictionary
of the English Language.
Didactic Poetry 144
In 1884 was begun in England the great work A New English
Dictionary on Historical Principles, founded mainly on material
accumulated by the Philological Society, and edited by James A.
H. Murray, Henry Bradley, and W. A. Craigie. From Murray's part
in the editing of the first volume, the work is sometimes called
Murray's Dictionary, though it is more commonly called the Neiv
English Dictionary or the Oxford English Dictionary. It was
completed in 1928. Though issued in "parts*' the full work is now
printed in ten large volumes or twenty "half -volumes." It is easily
the greatest of all English dictionaries in the fullness of its illustra-
tive examples and in its elaborate analysis of the meanings and
etymologies. The citations are drawn from English writings ranging
in date from the years 1200 to 1928. It is particularly valuable for its
dated quotations of actual sentences showing the meanings of a
word at various periods. It contains 240,165 "main words," of
which 177,970 are in current use. With the addition of subordinate
words, combinations, and a small number of foreign words, the
total number of words entered for definition runs to 414,825. See
LEXICOGRAPHY.
Didactic Poetry: POETRY which is intended primarily to teach a
lesson. The distinction between didactic poetry and non-didactic
poetry is difficult to make and always involves a subjective judgment
of the author's purpose on the part of the critic or reader. For
example, Bryant's "To a Waterfowl" is obviously concerned with
an ethical or religious idea, yet it is not generally considered
didactic, perhaps because most readers sense that the idea of a
protective Providence is dramatically appropriate to the physical
and emotional situation being presented that the poet is com-
municating his feeling about the idea rather than communicating the
idea itself. On the other hand, Pope's Essay on Criticism is an
emphatic instance of didactic poetry. See DIDACTICISM.
Didacticism: Lnstructiveness in a literary work one of the purposes
of which appears to be to give guidance, particularly in moral,
ethical, or religious matters. Since all literary art exists in order to
communicate something an idea, a teaching, a precept, an
emotion, an attitude, a fact, an autobiographical incident, a sensa-
tion the ultimate question of didacticism in a literary work ap-
pears to be one of the intent of the author or of his ostensible
purpose. If, of Horace's dual functions of the artist, he elects
145 Dilettante
instruction as his primary goal, he is didactic in intent or we may
say that the purpose of the work he produces is didactic. Another
way of stating the problem is to say that if the thing to be com-
municated takes precedence as an act of communication over the
artistic qualities of the FORM through which it is communicated
the work is didactic. Viewed in still another way, a work is*
didactic if it would have as its ultimate effect a meaning or a
result outside itself. In a sense those who divide CRITICISM into
PLATONIC and ARISTOTELIAN are dividing the purposes of literary
art into didactic and non-didactic. From this definition it is obvious
that didacticism is an acceptable aspect of literature, at least up
to a certain point, despite he fact that the term usually carries a
derogatory meaning in CRITICISM. The objection to didacticism
results from a feeling that, if carried too far or borne too self-
righteously, it will subvert the object of literature to lesser and
ignoble purposes. Among those who make didactic demands of
literature today are the practitioners of MORAL CRITICISM, the
Marxists, and those who measure literature by sociological stand-
ards. The most bitter foes of didacticism today are probably the
NEW CRITICS, who do not declare poetry to be meaningless but
who declare its significant meaning to be intrinsic. See AUTOTELIC;
BELIEF, THE PROBLEM OF; ARISTOTELIAN CRITICISM; PLATONIC
CRITICISM; NEW CRITICISM; CRITICISM, TYPES OF; CRITICISM, HIS-
TORICAL SKETCH; PARAPHRASE, HERESY OF.
Dieresis: A term sometimes used in METRICS to designate the situa-
tion where the pause in a VERSE falls at the end of a FOOT; usually
called CAESURA. See CAESURA.
Digression: The insertion of material unrelated or distantly rekted
to the specific subject under discussion in a given work. In a work
with a firm PLOT, a digression is a serious violation of UNITY. In
the FAMILIAR ESSAY it is a standard device, and it was not infre-
quently used in the EPIC. The device was particularly popular in
seventeenth and eighteenth century English writing, notable ex-
amples being the digressions in Swift's Tale of a Tub and Sterne's
"Digression on Digressions" in Tristram Shandy. If a digression is
lengthy and formal it is sometimes called an EXCURSUS.
Dilettante: One who follows an art for the love of it rather than as a
serious profession. In literature, as with the other arts, the term has
Dimeter
taken on a derogatory meaning, however, and is more usually em-
ployed to indicate one who reads and talks books and writers from
hearsay and a careless reading, perhaps of reviews, as opposed to
the student who makes a careful and critical study of a writer,
period, movement, or book. Originally a dilettante meant an ama-
teur; now it usually means a dabbler.
Dimeter; A VERSE consisting of two FEET. See SCANSION.
Dirge: A wailing SONG sung at a funeral or in commemoration of
death. A short LYKIC of lamentation. See CORONACH, ELEGY, MONODY,
PASTORAL ELEGY, THRENODY.
Discovery: In a TRAGEDY, the revelation of a fact previously un-
known to the character, a knowledge of which now results in the
turning of the action. See DRAMATIC STRUCTURE.
Disguisings: In medieval times (and in some places into the twen-
tieth century) a species of game or spectacle with a procession of
masked figures. Disguisings were usually of a popular or folk char-
acter. See MASQUE.
Dissertation: A formal, involved EXPOSITION written to clarify some
scholarly problem. Dissertation is sometimes used interchangeably
with imsis but the usual practice, at least in college and university
circles, is to reserve dissertation for the more elaborate essays and
papers written "in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
doctor's degree" and to limit the use of THESIS to smaller problems,
less perplexing, less involved, submitted for the bachelor's or mas-
ter's degree. Of course these words as employed in academic circles
are part of the CANT of college language since both THESIS and
dissertation are commonly used off college campuses simply to sig-
nify careful, thoughtful discussions, in writing or speech, on almost
any serious problem. In literature the term has been used lightly, as
in Lamb's "A Dissertation on Roast Pig" and formally as in Boling-
broke's Dissertation on Parties or in Newton's dissertations; here
the term implies learned formality.
Dissonance: Harsh and inharmonious sounds, a marked breaking
of the music of a VERSE of POETRY, which may be intentional, as it
often is in Browning, but if unintentional is a major poetic flaw. The
147 Divine Afflatus
term is also sometimes applied to RIMES that are almost true RIMES
but fail by a slight margin to be perfect because of variations in
vowel sounds too slight to earn them the name of ASSONANCE; a form
of HALF-RIME Or SLANT RIME.
Distich: A COUPLET. Any two consecutive lines in similar form and
riming. An EPIGRAM or MAXIM completely expressed in couplet form.
Example:
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, hut always to be, blest.
Pope
See -STICK.
Distributed Stress: A term used to describe a situation in METRICS
where each of two syllables takes, or shares, the STRESS. Also called
HOVERING STRESS Or RESOLVED STRESS. See HOVERING STRESS.
Dithyramb: Literary expression characterized by wild, excited, pas-
sionate language. Its LYRIC power relates it most nearly to VERSE
though its unordered sequence and development, its seemingly im-
provised quality, give it often the form of prose. Dithyrambic VERSE
was probably originally meant to be accompanied by music and was
historically associated with Greek ceremonial worship of Dionysus.
It formed the original for the choral element in Greek VERSE, later
developing into the finer quality which we know as Greek TRAGEDY.
Rather rare in English, dithyrambic verse is most closely related to
the ODE; it finds its best expression in Dryden's Alexanders Feast.
Ditty: A SONG, a REFRAIN. The term is somewhat vaguely and
loosely used for almost any short, popular, simple melody. It im-
plies something familiar and is perhaps most often applied to SONGS
of the sailor. The term is also used, in the sense of THEME, to refer
to any short, apt saying or idea which runs through a composition.
Divine Afflatus, The: A phrase used to mean poetic inspiration, par-
ticularly the exalted state immediately preceding creative composi-
tion, when the poet is felt to be receiving his inspiration directly
from a divine source. The doctrine of divine inspiration for poets was
advocated by Plato. Although the phrase and doctrine have been
used in a serious and sincere sense by such a poet as Shelley, the
Doctrinaire 148
term is perhaps more often used now in a somewhat contemptuous
sense, to imply a sort of pretentious over-valuation in a would-be
poet or a bombastic spirit in an orator, whose fervid style or manner
is felt not to be justified by the actual substance of the poem or ora-
tion.
Doctrinaire: An adjective applied to one whose attitude is con*
trolled by a preconceived theory or group of theories and who is
inclined to disregard other points of view as well as practical con-
siderations. His view is likely to be theoretical, narrow, and one-
sided, as compared with practical and broad-minded. Criticism like
Dr. Samuel Johnson's may be doctrinaire because controlled by
a definite code of critical doctrines. Literature itself may be called
doctrinaire when written, like some of Carlyle's books, to demon-
strate such a doctrine as "hero-worship" or the "gospel of work"; or
like a novel of William Godwin's, to preach a social doctrine. Po-
litically, the word was applied to the constitutional royalists in
France after 1815. See DIDACTICISM.
Doggerel: J e rky rude composition in VERSE. Any poorly executed
attempt at POETRY. Characteristics of doggerel verse are monotony
of RIME and RHYTHM, cheap sentiment, and trivial, trite subject
matter. Some doggerel does, however, because of certain humorous
and BURLESQUE qualities it attains, become amusing and earns a
place on one of the lower shelves of literature. Doctor Johnson's
parody on Percy's "Hermit of Warkworth" is an example:
As with my hat upon my head
I walk'd along die Strand,
I there did meet another man
With his hat in his hand.
Domestic Tragedy: In spite of the authority of Aristotle and the
examples of the great CLASSICAL and ROMANTIC TRAGEDIES of Jon-
son, Shakespeare, and others, the English stage at various periods
has produced tragedies based not upon the lives of historical per-
sonages of high rank (see TRAGEDY) but upon the lives of everyday
contemporary folk. Running contrary to the prevailing critical con-
ceptions of the proper sphere of TRAGEDY, domestic tragedy was
long in winning critical recognition. Indeed, Allardyce Nicoll notes
that the earlier domestic tragedy of the eighteenth century was a
149 Double Rime
purely English form, as only in England were dramatists bold
enough to helieve that a serious play could be contemporary and
topical. In Elizabethan times were produced such powerful domes-
tic tragedies as the anonymous Arden of Feversham (late sixteenth
century), Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed With Kindness
(acted 1603), and The Yorkshire Tragedy (1608, anon.). The type
failed, however, to hold its popularity in competition with oiber
forms, and disappeared from the stage. This early Elizabethan do-
mestic tragedy specialized in murder stories taken from contem-
porary bourgeois life. In the eighteenth century domestic tragedy
reappeared, tinged this time with the SENTIMENTALISM of the age,
as in George Lillo's The London Merchant (1731) and Edward
Moore's The Gamester (1753), in the latter of which plays the
tragic hero is a gambler who, falsely accused of murder, takes
poison and dies just after hearing that a large amount of money
has been left to him. The eighteenth-century domestic tragedy, how-
ever, was crowded out by other forms, though the idea was taken
over by foreign playwrights and later in the nineteenth century re-
introduced from abroad, especially under the influence of Ibsen,
since whose time the old conception of TRAGEDY as possible only
with heroes of high rank has definitely given way to plays which
present fate at work among the lowly. No catalogue of these mod-
em plays can here be attempted, though John Masefield's Tragedy
of Nan (1909) may be noted as an important twentieth-century ex-
ample of the form, as is also O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, Arthur
Miller's The Death of a Salesman, and Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof.
Doric: The Doric DIALECT in ancient Greece was thought of as
lacking in refinement, and Doric architecture was marked by sim-
plicity and strength rather than by beauty of detail. So a rustic or
"broad" DIALECT may be referred to as Doric, and such simple idyllic
pieces of literature as Tennyson's Dora or Wordsworth's Michael
may be said to exhibit Doric qualities. It is often applied to PAS-
TORALS. Perhaps the best single synonym is "simple." See ATTIC,
with which Doric was and is in conscious contrast.
Double Rime: FEMININE RIME, that is, RIME in which the similar
stressed syllables are followed by identical unstressed syllables.
"Stream" and "beam" are RIMES; "streaming" and "beaming" are
double rimes.
Drama 15
Drama: Aristotle called drama "imitated human action." But since
his meaning of IMITATION is in doubt, this phrase is not so simple or
clear as it seems. Professor J. M. Manly sees three necessary ele-
ments in drama: (1) a story (2) told in action (3) by actors who
impersonate the characters of the story. This admits such forms as
PANTOMIME. Yet many writers insist that DIALOGUE must be present,
e.g., Professor Schelling, who calls drama "a picture or representa-
tion of human life in that succession and change of events that we
call story, told by means of dialogue and presenting in action the
successive emotions involved." Dramatic elements have been com-
bined and emphasized so differently in dramatic history as to make
theoretical definition difficult.
Origins: Greek and Roman Drama. Some account of how drama
originated and how it has developed will perhaps throw more light
upon its nature. Drama arose from religious ceremonial. Greek
COMEDY developed from those phases of the Dionysian rites which
dealt with the theme of fertility; Greek TRAGEDY came from the
Dionysian rites dealing with life and death; and medieval DRAMA
arose out of rites comrnemorating the birth and the resurrection of
Christ. These three origins seem independent of each other. The
word COMEDY is based upon a word meaning "revel," and early
Greek COMEDY preserved in the actors' costumes evidences of the
ancient phallic ceremonies. Gradually comedy developed away from
this primitive display of sex interest in the direction of greater DE-
CORUM and seriousness, though the "Old Comedy" was gross in
character. SATIRE became an element of COMEDY as early as the
sixth century B.C. Menander (342-291 B.C.) is a representative of
the "New Comedy" a more conventionalized form which was imi-
tated by the great Roman writers of COMEDY, Plautus and Terence,
through whose plays classical COMEDY was transmitted to the
Elizabethan dramatists.
The word TRAGEDY seems to mean a "goat-song," and may reflect
Dionysian death and resurrection ceremonies in which the goat was
the sacrificial animal. The DITHYBAMBIC chant used in these festivals
is perhaps the starting point of TRAGEDY. The possible process of de-
velopment has been thus stated by Professor Nicoll: "From a com-
mon chant the ceremonial song developed into a primitive duologue
between a leader, dressed probably in the robes of the god, and
the chorus. The song became elaborated; it developed narrative ele-
ments, and soon reached a stage in which the duologue told in primi-
tive wise some story of the deity. Further forward movements were
151 Drama
introduced. Two leaders instead of one made their appearance. The
chorus gradually sank into the background, no longer taking the
place of a protagonist." 1 The great Greek authors of TRAGEDIES were
Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), and Eu-
ripides (480-406 B.C.). Modeled on these were the Latin CLOSET-
DRAMAS of Seneca (4? B.C.-A.D. 65) which exercised a profound
influence upon Renaissance TRAGEDY (see SENECAN TRAGEDY).
Rebirth of Drama in Middle Ages. The decline of Rome wit-
nessed the disappearance of acted classical DRAMA. The MIME sur-
vived for an uncertain period and perhaps aided in preserving the
tradition of acting through wandering entertainers (see JONGLEUR,
MINSTREL). Likewise, dramatic ceremonies and customs, some of
them perhaps related to the ancient Dionysian rites themselves,
played an uncertain part in keeping alive in medieval times a sort
of substratum of dramatic consciousness. Scholars are virtually
agreed, however, that the great institution of MEDIEVAL DRAMA in
Western Europe, leading as it did to modern drama, was a new
form which developed, about the ninth and following centuries,
from the ritual of the Christian Church (see MEDIEVAL DRAMA).
The dramatic forms resulting from this development, MYSTERY or
CYCLIC PLAYS, MIRACLE PLAYS, MORALITIES, flourishing especially
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, lived on into the RENAIS-
SANCE.
Renaissance English Drama. The new interests of the RENAIS-
SANCE included TRANSLATIONS and IMITATIONS of classical DRAMA,
partly through the medium of SCHOOL and UNIVERSITY PLAYS, partly
through the work of university-trained professionals engaged in
supplying dramas for the public stage or the court or such institu-
tions as the INNS OF COURT, and partly through the influence of clas-
sical dramatic CRITICISM, much of which reached England through
Italian scholars. Thus a revived knowledge of ancient drama united
with the native dramatic traditions developed from medieval forms
and technique to produce in the later years of the sixteenth century
the vigorous and many-sided phenomenon known as ELIZABETHAN
DRAMA, with its spectacular and patriotic CHRONICLE PLAYS, its
TRAGEDIES OF BLOOD, its light-Jiearted COURT COMEDIES, its dreamy
and delightful ROMANTIC COMEDIES, its PASTORAL PLAYS, satirical
plays, and realistic presentations of London life. These dramas
l Allardyce Nicoll, British Drama, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1925,
p. 15. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
Drama 152
were written by playwrights who made up collectively an illustrious
group of able dramatists, led by the immortal Shakespeare. All Eng-
lish drama shared the DECADENT tendencies of JACOBEAN and CARO-
LINE times and in 1642 the PURITANS officially closed the theatres.
Restoration and Eighteenth-century Drama. The stout efforts
of Ben Jonson in Elizabethan times to curb the romantic tendencies
which had helped to make possible the masterpieces of Shakespeare
and to insist upon the observance of classical rules of drama bore
late fruit when in RESTORATION times, under the added influence of
French drama and theory, English drama was officially revived un-
der court auspices. NEO-CLASSIC tendencies now held sway. Shake-
speare was "rewritten" for the stage. The HEROIC PLAY and the new
COMEDY OF MANNERS flourished, followed in the eighteenth century
first by the SENTIMENTAL COMEDY and DOMESTIC TRAGEDIES and in
the latter part of the century by a chastened COMEDY OF MANNERS
under Goldsmith and Sheridan.
Nineteenth-century Drama. MELODRAMA and spectacle reigned
through the early nineteenth century, occasional efforts to produce
an actable literary drama proving futile. The late nineteenth cen-
tury witnessed an important revival of serious drama, with, how-
ever, a tendency away from the established TRADITIONS of poetic
TRAGEDY and COMEDY in favor of shorter plays stressing ideas or
problems or situations and depending much upon DIALOGUE.
American Drama. In America theatrical performances, at first
produced by amateurs, appeared very early in the eighteenth cen-
tury in such cities as Boston, New York, and Charleston, S. C.,
though no drama was written by an American till about the middle
of the century, at which time important groups of professional ac-
tors also appeared. The early drama was imitative and dependent
upon English originals or models. The Revolutionary War produced
some political plays. The first native TRAGEDY was Thomas Godfrey's
Prince of Parthia (acted 1767), and the first COMEDY professionally
produced was Royall Tyler's The Contrast (1787). The early nine-
teenth century witnessed a growing interest in the theatre, William
Dunlap and John Howard Payne (author of "Home, Sweet Home")
being prolific playwrights. Increased use was made of American
themes. In the middle of the century George Henry Boker pro-
duced notable ROMANTIC TRAGEDIES, and literary drama received
some attention. American dramatic art advanced in the period fol-
lowing the Civil War with such writers as Bronson Howard, though
it was restricted greatly by the triumph of commercial theatrical
153 Drama
management. The early twentieth century produced several drama-
tists of note (William Vaughn Moody, Percy MacKaye, Josephine
Peabody, Eugene O'Neill) and has witnessed a remarkable growth
Of the LITTLE THEATRE MOVEMENT.
Twentieth-century Drama: There has been a healthy rebirth of
dramatic interest and experimentation in the twentieth century
both in Great Britain and in the United States. In the Irish Theatre,
under the leadership of people like Lady Gregory and Douglas
Hyde, a vital drama has emerged, with original and powerful plays
from men like W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, Padraic Colum, and Sean
O'Casey (see CELTIC RENAISSANCE). Meanwhile, in England the
influence of Ibsen (also important on the Irish playwrights) made
itself strongly felt in the PROBLEM PLAYS and DOMESTIC TRAGEDIES
of Henry Arthur Jones and Arthur Wing Pinero, in the witty and
highly intellectual drama of G. B. Shaw, and in the REALISM of
W. S. Houghton and John Galsworthy. Somerset Maugham, Noel
Coward, and James Barrie have been active producers of COMEDY;
John Masefield gave expression to the tragic vision in a long series
of plays. T. S. Eliot and Christopher Fry revived and enriched
verse drama. Also important is John Osborne, the leader of Eng-
land's "Angry Young Men" (Look Back in Anger).
The twentieth century saw the development of a serious American
drama. Early in the century REALISM, which had had its first Ameri-
can dramatic representation in J, A. Herne's Margaret Fleming in
1890, was followed, sometimes afar off, by Percy MacKaye, William
Vaughn Moody, and Rachel Carothers. But it remained for the
great craftsmanship, serious experimentation, and morbid imagina-
tion of Eugene O'Neill to give a truly American expression to the
tragic view of experience. O'Neill is the greatest playwright America
has produced and the example both of his success and of his ex-
perimentation fired a host of others. Thornton Wilder, Philip Barry,
Lillian Hellman, Sidney Howard, Robert Sherwood, Tennessee Wil-
liams, and Arthur Miller have given America a serious drama for
the first time in its history. Barry, S. N. Behrman, George Kaufman,
and John van Druten have practiced the comic craft with skill.
Maxwell Anderson revived the verse play successfully, and Rodgers
and Hammerstein gave the musical comedy unexpected depth and
beauty in Oklahoma and other "musicals."
Details of dramatic history are given throughout the Outline of
Literary History. See also COMEDY, CONFLICT, CHARACTERIZATION,
DRAMATIC STRUCTURE, PLOT, and TRAGEDY.
Dramatic Conventions 154
Dramatic Conventions: Whether one approach the DRAMA as spec-
tator, reader, or student, he must bring to it what Coleridge aptly
called "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which
constitutes poetic faith/' Although the DRAMA is, as Aristotle as-
serted, an IMITATION of life, the stage and the printed page present
physical difficulties for the making of such IMITATIONS. The various
devices which have been employed as substitutions for reality in
the DRAMA and which the audience must accept as real although it
knows them to be false are called dramatic conventions. One ap-
proaching a DRAMA must, in the first place, accept the fact of im-
personation or representation. The actors on the stage must be taken
as the persons of the story (though this acceptance by no means
precludes a degree of detachment sufficient to enable the spectator
to appraise the art of the actor). The stage must be regarded as
the actual scene or geographical SETTING of the action. The intervals
between ACTS or SCENES must be expanded imaginatively to cor-
respond with the needs of the story. Moreover, one must accept
special CONVENTIONS, not inherent in DRAMA as such but no less
integral because of their traditional use, such as the SOLILOQUY, the
"asides/* the fact that ordinary people are made spontaneously to
speak in highly poetic language and that actors always speak louder
than would be natural, actually pitching their voices to reach the
most distant auditor rather than the persons in the group on the
stage, etc. Similarly one must be prepared at times to accept cos-
tuming that is conventional or symbolic rather than realistic.
In the ELIZABETHAN THEATRE, the spectator had imaginatively to
picture the platform as in turn a number of different places; in the
modern theatre, he must accept the idea of the invisible "fourth
wall" through which he views interior actions. All means of getting
inside the minds of characters and they are many are CONVEN-
TIONS (even if only within the single play; see O'Neill's Strange
Interlude) that are successful exactly to die extent that the audience
is willing to believe them. Even the curtain which opens and closes
the DRAMA is in its way as pure a CONVENTION as the CHORUS of a
Greek TRAGEDY. See CONVENTION.
Dramatic Irony: The words or acts of a character in a play may
carry a meaning unperceived by himself but understood by the
audience. Usually the character's own interests are involved in a
way he cannot understand. The IRONY resides in the contrast be-
tween the meaning intended by the speaker and the added signify
155 Dramatic Poetry
cance seen by others. The term is occasionally applied also to non-
dramatic narrative, and is sometimes extended to include any situa-
tion (such as mistaken identity) in which some of the actors on the
stage or some of the characters in a story are "blind" to facts known
to the spectator or reader. So understood, dramatic irony is re-
sponsible for much of the interest in FICTION and DRAMA, because
the reader or spectator enjoys being in on the secret. For an example
see TRAGIC IRONY. The complexity and the centrality of dramatic
irony to a serious consideration of DRAMA is shown in R. B. Sharpe's
detailed Irony in the Drama.
Dramatic Monologue: A LYRIC poem which reveals "a soul in action"
through the- conversation of one character in a dramatic situation.
The character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener in a
dramatic moment in the speaker's life. The circumstances surround-
ing the conversation, one side of which we "hear" as the dramatic
monologue, are made clear by implication in the poem, and a deep
insight into the character of the speaker is given. Although a quite
old form, the dramatic monologue was brought to a very high level
by Robert Browning, who is often credited with its creation. Ten-
nyson used the form on occasion, and contemporary poets have
found it congenial, as witness the work of Robert Frost, E. A. Robin-
son, Carl Sandburg, Allen Tate, and T. S. Eliot, whose "Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a distinguished twentieth century example
of a dramatic monologue. See SOLILOQUY.
Dramatic Poetry: A term that, logically, should be restricted to
poetry which employs dramatic form or some element or elements
of dramatic technique as a means of achieving poetic ends. The
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE is an example. The dramatic quality may
result from the use of DIALOGUE, MONOLOGUE, vigorous DICTION,
BLANK VERSE, or the stressing of tense situation and emotional CON-
FLICT. Because of the presence of dramatic elements in the poems
to be included in the volume, Browning used the phrase "Dramatic
Lyrics" as the subtitle of Bells and Pomegranates, No. Ill (1842),
However, the phrase dramatic poetry is not infrequently employed
broadly so as to include compositions which, like Shakespeare's The
Tempest, may be more properly classed as POETIC DRAMA, or which,
like Browning's Pippa Passes, are more commonly called CLOSET
DRAMAS (see CLOSET DRAMA).
Dramatic Structure 156
Dramatic Structure: The ancients compared the PLOT of a DRAMA
to the tying and untying of a knot. The principle of dramatic CON-
FLICT, though not mentioned as such in Aristotle's definition of
DRAMA, is implied in this figure. The technical structure of a serious
play is determined by the necessities of developing this dramatic
CONFLICT. Thus a well-built TRAGEDY will commonly show the fol-
lowing divisions, each of which represents a phase of the dramatic
CONFLICT: introduction, RISING ACTION, CLIMAX or CRISIS (turning
point), FALLING ACTION, and CATASTROPHE. The relation of these
parts is sometimes represented graphically by the figure of a pyra-
mid, called Freytag's pyramid, the rising slope suggesting the RISING
ACTION or tying of the knot, the falling slope the FALLING ACTION or
resolution, the apex representing the CLIMAX.
The introduction (or EXPOSITION) creates the tone, gives the set-
ting, introduces some of the characters, and supplies other facts
necessary to the understanding of the play, such as events in the
story supposed to have taken place before the part of the action
included in the play, since a play, like an EPIC, is likely to plunge
in medias res, "into the middle of things." In Hamlet, the bleak
midnight scene on the castle platform, with the appearance of the
ghost, sets the keynote of the TRAGEDY, while the conversation of the
watchers, especially the words of Horatio, supply antecedent facts,
such as the quarrel between the dead King Hamlet and the King of
Norway, The ancients called this part the PROTASIS.
The RISING ACTION, or COMPLICATION, is set in motion by the EX-
CITING FORCE (in Hamlet the ghost's revelation to Hamlet of the
murder) and continues through successive stages of CONFLICT be-
tween the hero and the COUNTERPLAYERS up to the CLIMAX or turn-
ing point (in Hamlet the hesitating failure of the hero to kill
Claudius at prayer) . The ancients called this part the EPITASIS.
The downward or FALLING ACTION stresses the activity of the
forces opposing jthe hero and while some suspense must be main-
tained, the trend of the action must lead logically to the disaster
with which the TRAGEDY is to close. The FALLING ACTION, called by
the ancients the CATASTASIS, is often set in movement by a single
event called the TRAGIC FORCE, closely related to the CLIMAX and
bearing the same relation to the FALLING ACTION as the EXCITING
FORCE does to the RISING ACTION. In Macbeth the TRAGIC FORCE is
the escape of Fleance following the murder of Banquo. In Hamlet
it is the "blind" stabbing of Polonius, which sends Hamlet away from
the court just as he appears about to succeed in his plans. The latter
157 Dramatic Structure
part of the FALLING ACTION is sometimes marked by an event which
delays the CATASTKOPHE and seems to offer a way of escape for the
hero (the apparent reconciliation of Hamlet and Laertes). This is
called the "moment of final suspense" and aids in maintaining in-
terest. The FALLING ACTION is usually shorter than the RISING ACTION
and often is attended by some lowering of interest (as in the case
of the long conversation between Malcolm and MacDuff in Mac-
beth), since new forces must be introduced and an apparently in-
evitable end made to seem uncertain. RELIEF SCENES are often re-
sorted to in die FALLING ACTION, partly to mark the passage of time,
partly to provide emotional relaxation for the audience. The famous
scene of the grave diggers in Hamlet is an example of how this BE-
LIEF SCENE may be justified through its inherent dramatic qualities
and through its relation to the serious action (see COMIC RELIEF).
The CATASTROPHE, marking the tragic failure, usually the death,
of the hero (and often of his opponents as well) comes as a natural
outgrowth of the action. It satisfies, not by a gratification of the
emotional sympathies of the spectator but by its logical conformity,
and by a final presentation of the nobility of the succumbing hero.
A "glimpse of restored order" often follows the CATASTROPHE proper
in a Shakespearean TRAGEDY, as when Hamlet gives his dying vote
to Fortinbras as the new king.
This five-part dramatic structure was believed by Freytag to be
reflected in a five-act structure for TRAGEDY. However, the imposing
of a rigorous five-act structure upon Elizabethan TRAGEDY is ques-
tionable, since relatively few plays fall readily into the pattern of
an ACT of EXPOSITION, an ACT of RISING ACTION, an ACT of CLIMAX,
an ACT of FALLING ACTION, and an ACT of CATASTROPHE. It should
be noted too that this structure based upon the analogy of the
tying and untying of a knot is applicable to COMEDY, the NOVEL, and
the SHORT STORY, with the adjustment of the use of the broader
term DENOUEMENT for CATASTROPHE in works that are not tragic,
despite the fact that technically CATASTROPHE and DENOUEMENT
are synonymous. (See ACT, CATASTROPHE, and DENOUEMENT.)
During the nineteenth century conventional structure gave way
to a newer technique. First, COMEDY, under the influence of French
bourgeois comedy, the "well-made play" of Eugene Scribe and
others, developed a set of technical CONVENTIONS all its own; and
as a result of the movement led by Ibsen, serious DRAMA cast off the
restrictions of five-act TRAGEDY and freed itself from conventional
formality. By the end of the century the traditional five-act
Drama
structure was to be found only in poetic or consciously archaic
TRAGEDY, whose connection with the stage was artificial and gen-
erally unsuccessful. However the fundamental elements of structure
given here remained demonstrably present, though in modified
form, in these newer types of plays. If at first glance it seems that
Ibsen opens one of his DOMESTIC TRAGEDIES at or just before the
TRAGIC FORCE, the EXPOSITION, the EXCITING FORCE, and the RISING
ACTION which brought about the situation with which he opens are
still present and are communicated to the audience by implication
and FLASHBACK. The fundamental dramatic structure seems time-
less and impervious to basic change. See TRAGEDY, CONFLICT, ACT,
CATASTROPHE, CLIMAX, CRISIS.
Drame: A form of play between TRAGEDY and COMEDY developed
by the French in the eighteenth century and later introduced into
England, where it is often called a "drama." It is a serious play, of
which the modern PROBLEM PLAY is an example.
Dream Allegory (or Vision): The dream was a conventional nar-
rative frame that was widely used in the Middle Ages and is still
employed on occasion. The narrator falls asleep and while sleeping
dreams a dream which is the actual story told in the dream frame.
In the Middle Ages the device was used for ALLEGORY. Among the
major dream allegories are The Romance of the Rose, Dante's
Divine Comedy, Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess and The House
of Fame, The Pearl, and The Vision of Piers Plowman. The dream
allegory forms the narrative frame for Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress
and Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. See ALLEGORY, FRAME-
STORY.
Droll: A short dramatic piece (also known as "drollery" or "droll
humour") cultivated on the COMMONWEALTH stage in England as a
substitute for full-length or serious plays not permitted by the
government. A droll was likely to be a "short, racy, comic" scene
selected from some popular play (as a Launcelot Gobbo scene from
The Merchant of Venice) and completed by dancing somewhat in
the manner of the earlier JIG.
Dumb Show: A pantomimic performance used as a part of a play.
The term is applied particularly to such specimens of silent acting
as appeared in Elizabethan DRAMA. The dumb show provided a
159 Early Tudor Age
spectacular element and was often accompanied by music. Some-
times it employed allegorical figures like those in the MORALITY
PLAY and the MASQUE. Sometimes it foreshadowed coming events
in the action and sometimes it provided comment like that of the
CHORUS. Sometimes it appeared as PROLOGUE or between ACTS and
sometimes it was an integral part of the action, being performed
by the characters of the play proper. Whatever its origin, it seems
to have appeared first in the third quarter of the sixteenth century
in the Senecan plays (see SENECAN TRAGEDY). It continued in use
well into the seventeenth century. More than fifty extant Eliza-
bethan plays contain dumb shows. The one appearing in Shake-
speare's Hamlet (Act III, Scene ii) is unusual in that it is pre-
liminary to a show which is itself a "play within a play." Other well-
known Elizabethan plays containing dumb shows are Sackville and
Norton's Gorboduc (1562), Robert Greene's James the Fourth
(1591), John Marston's Malcontent (1604), John Webster's
Duchess of Malfi (1614), and Thomas Middleton's The Changeling
(1623). See DISGUISINGS, MASQUE, PAGEANT, PANTOMIME.
Duodecimo: A BOOK SIZE, designating a book whose SIGNATURES
result from sheets folded to twelve leaves or twenty-four pages. See
BOOK SIZES.
Dynamic Character: A character in a FICTION or DRAMA who
develops or changes as a result of the actions of the PLOT. See
CHARACTERIZATION.
Early Tudor Age, 1500-1557: During the early years of the six-
teenth century, the ideals of the RENAISSANCE were rapidly replac-
ing those of tie Middle Ages, The Reformation of the English
church and the revival of learning known as HUMANISM were mak-
ing major modifications in English life and thought. In literature it
was a time of experimentation and of extensive formal borrowings
from French and Italian writings. Wyatt and Surrey imported and
"Englished" the SONNET and BLANK VERSE, while Barclay and Skel-
ton continued the older satiric tradition. Sir Thomas Elyot and Sir
Thomas More were the major prose writers, and the translators and
the chroniclers were adding substantially both to English knowledge
and to English prose style. The late medieval DRAMA was still
dominant, with the MYSTERY PLAYS, MORALITIES, and INTERLUDES
in great vogue, although SCHOOL PLAYS were beginning to introduce
Early Victorian Age
new elements into the DRAMA, notably in Ralph Roister Doister, the
first "regular" English COMEDY. Perhaps the most important single
book, from a literary point of view, was Tottel's Miscellany (1557),
a collection of the "new poetry" which paved the way for Eliza-
bethan poets. See THE RENAISSANCE and Outline of Literary History.
Early Victorian Age, 1832-1870: The period between the death of
Sir Walter Scott and 1870 was a time of the gradual lessening of
the Romantic impulse and the steady growth of REALISM in English
letters. It bears to ROMANTICISM much the same relation that the
AGE OF JOHNSON bears to the NEO-CLASSIC PERIOD it is an age
in which the seeds of the new movement were being sown but
which was still predominantly of the old. In poetry, the voices of
the major Romantics had been stilled by death, except for that of
Wordsworth, and a new poetry more keenly aware of social issues
and more marked by doubts and uncertainties resulting from the
pains of the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION and the advances in scien-
tific thought appeared The chief writers of this poetry were Tenny-
son, Browning, Arnold, and the young Swinburne. In the NOVEL
Dickens, Thackeray, the Bronte sisters, and Trollope flourished. In
the essay CarJyle, Newman, Ruskin, Arnold, and DeQuincey did
outstanding work. See ROMANTIC PERIOD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE,
VICTORIAN, and "Outline of Literary History."
Eclogue: Literally, eclogue in Greek meant "selection" and was
applied to various kinds of poems. From its application to Virgil's
PASTORAL poems, however, eclogue came to have its present re-
stricted meaning of a formal PASTORAL poem following the tradi-
tional technique derived from the IDYLLS of Theocritus (third
century B.C.). Conventional eclogue types include: (1) the singing
match: two shepherds have a singing contest on a wager or for
a prize, a third shepherd acting as judge; (2) the rustic DIALOGUE:
two "rude swains" engage in banter, perhaps over a mistress,
perhaps over their flocks; (3) the DIRGE or lament for a dead
shepherd (see PASTORAL ELEGY); (4) the love-lay: a shepherd
may sing a song of courtship or a shepherd or shepherdess
may complain of disappointment in love; (5) the EULOGY. In
RENAISSANCE times, following Mantuan's Latin eclogues (fifteenth
century) the eclogue was used for veiled SATIRE, particularly SATIRE
against the corruptions of the clergy, against political factions,
161 Edinburgh Review
and against those responsible for the neglect of poetry. The
earliest and most famous collection of conventional eclogues in
English literature is Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender (1579),
made up of one eclogue for each month. By the eighteenth century
a distinction was made between eclogue and PASTORAL, the term
eclogue being used to describe the FORM and PASTORAL the content.
Hence eclogue came to mean a DRAMATIC POEM, with little action
or characterization, in which sentiments are expressed in DIALOGUE
or SOLILOQUY, and eclogues laid in towns became possible. See
PASTORAL.
Edinburgh Review: A quarterly JOURNAL of CRITICISM founded
in 1802 by Francis Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Henry Brougham.
The first issue, consisting of 252 pages, appeared October 10,
1802, under the editorship of Sydney Smith, though Jeffrey was
subsequently the editor for twenty-seven years. The state of
CRITICISM and book reviewing at the time was so low that the
founders determined on a vigorous, outspoken policy which not
only made a successful publication (10,000 circulation after ten
years), but also stirred up the whole English-reading world.
Among the contributors to the Review were some of the most
brilliant writers of the time, the list including in addition to the
editors such men as Walter Scott, Henry Hallam, and Francis
Horner. The motto of the publication Judex damnatur, cum
nocens absolvitur, "the judge is condemned when the guilty man is
acquitted" indicates clearly the rigorous policy of the founders,
and, if the ire which the magazine aroused in many quarters is a
criterion, it appears that not only were few guilty men acquitted,
but that many innocent men were condemned. After seven years
of being browbeaten, the Tories started a rival journal, the Quarterly
Review (1809), the two publications riding literary and political
prejudices hard and enlivening British CRITICISM while giving to
journalism one of its most brilliant and erratic epochs.
One of the abhorrences of the Edinburgh Review was the
"lakers* (Lake School of writers), more particularly Southey and
Wordsworth. An article by Henry Brougham called Hours of
Idleness (reviewing an early volume by Byron) provoked Byron's
famous satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Later con-
tributors included Macaulay, Carlyle, Hazlitt, and Arnold. The
Edinburgh Review ceased publication in 1929.
Edition 162
Edition: "In modern times we can define edition as the whole
number of copies of a book printed at any time or times from
one setting-up of type, and IMPRESSION as the whole number of
copies printed at one time (in ordinary circumstances, the total
number of copies printed without removing the type or plates
from the press). By ISSUE is generally meant some special form
of the book in which, for the most part, the original printed sheets
are used but which differs from the earlier or normal form by the
addition of new matter or by some difference in arrangement. Parts
of an IMPRESSION printed on different paper are also sometimes
referred to as different ISSUES. The word is, however, very loosely
used, and a -cheap 'reissue' may merely mean the old book quite
unchanged, except perhaps for the substitution of a cheaper binding,
but at a reduced price/' 1 As applied to old books, edition and
IMPRESSION are practically synonymous, because of the practice of
distributing type after a printing. Other uses of the term edition
appear in such phrases as "a ten-volume edition of Kipling" (re-
ferring to the form of publication) and "Grosart's edition of
Spenser" (reflecting the fact of editing) .
Editorial: A short ESSAY, expository or argumentative in character,
used in newspapers or magazines. The purpose of the editorial
is usually to discuss current news events, and the subjects treated
may range from matters of purely local importance through county,
state, national, and international affairs. The usual editorial form
falls naturally into three divisions: a statement of the event or
situation to be discussed, a clarification of this situation through
elaboration of the points concerned, and an expression of the opinion
of the editorial office as to the significance, justice, or purpose
inherent in the situation. Some publications print as editorials
pleasant little essays on insignificant or minor situations, frankly
admitting such bits to publication simply for the charm of their
STYLE or the grace of their HUMOR.
Edwardian Age: The name usually given the period in English
literature between the death of Victoria in 1901 and the beginning
of the first World War in 1914, so-called after King Edward VII,
who ruled from 1901-1910. It was a period marked by a strong
*R. B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Stu-
dents, p. 175. Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission of the
publishers.
Edwardian Age
reaction in thought, conduct, and art to the stiff propriety and
conservatism of the Victorian age. The regular mental posture of
the Edwardians was critical and questioning. There was a growing
distrust of authority in religion, morality, and art, a basic doubt
of the conventional "virtues," and a deep-felt need to examine
critically all existing institutions. These attitudes expressed them-
selves in literature that was brilliant and elegant, although not
always deep or enduring.
The CELTIC RENAISSANCE in Ireland awakened the dramatic
talents of Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, Lennox Robinson, J. M.
Synge, and W. B. Yeats; the intellectual DRAMA of G. B. Shaw
continued the Ibsen influence; James Barrie and Lord Dunsany
kept romance and whimsy alive on the stage. In England John
Galsworthy was producing social plays, such as The Silver Box,
Strife, and Justice.
In poetry it was an age of endings and beginnings. Victorianism
lingered on in the verses of the LAUREATE, Alfred Austin (succeeded
in 1913 by Robert Bridges) , and in the work of men like Noyes and
Kipling. George William Russell ("A.E.") and W. B. Yeats were
beginning poetic careers; Masefield's first volumes appeared; and
Hardy's The Dynasts made its ambitious appearance.
But it was predominantly an age of prose. REALISM and
NATURALISM advanced steadily. In the NOVELS of Arnold Bennett
were detailed pictures of the grim commonplace; in those of
Galsworthy the beginnings of the SAGA of the middle classes. H. G.
Wells launched his novelistic criticisms of society; and Kipling
recorded the march of empire. But the greatest writers of prose
in the British Isles in the Edwardian Age were James Joyce, whose
Dubliners appeared in 1914, and Joseph Conrad, who during the
Edwardian Age published distinguished work, including Yout/i
and Nostromo.
Works of distinction or promise, other than those by authors
already mentioned, included Butler's The Way of Att Flesh, Hud-
son's Green Mansions, Stephens' Crock of Gold, and Barrie's The
Admirable Crichton.
The degree to which the new strength and brilliance of English
writing was moving away from its older orientations is demon-
strated, perhaps, by the fact that in the Edwardian Age the best
dramatist was an Irishman, Shaw; the best poet an Irishman, Yeats;
the best novelist an expatriated Pole, Conrad; and the figure with
greatest promise for the future another Irishman, Joyce.
Effect 164
Effect: Totality of impression or emotional impact upon the
reader. "The tale of effect" was a term used to describe GOTHIC
and horror stories of the type published in Blackwoo&s Magazine
in the first half of the nineteenth century. Poe considered the
primary objective of the SHORT STORY to be the achieving of a
unified effect. The effect striven for may be one of horror, mystery,
beauty, or whatever the writer's mood dictates, but once the effect
is hit upon, everything in the story PLOT, CHARACTERIZATION,
SETTING must work toward this controlling purpose. One of the
paragraphs in Foe's criticism of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales
stands out as the best explanation of this principle of effect;
A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not
fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having con-
ceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be
wrought out, he then invents such incidents he then combines such
events as may best aid him in establishing his preconceived effect. If
his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then
he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should
be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not
to the one preestablished design. And by such means, with such care
and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him
who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfac-
tion. . . .
Elaboration: A rhetorical method for developing a THEME or
picture in such a way as to give the reader a completed impression.
This may be done in various ways: by repetition of the statement
or idea, by a change of words and phrases, by supplying additional
details, etc. Over-elaboration, however, immeoliately becomes a
fault since it results in Polonius-like diffuseness, wordiness, and
stupidity. Elaboration is also used as a critical term characterizing
a literary, rhetorical STYLE which is rather ornate. See AMPLIFICA-
TION.
Elegiac: In classical PROSODY, a METER used in the DISTICH em-
ployed for lamenting or commemorating the dead; it consists of a
VERSE of DACTYLIC HEXAMETER followed by One of PENTAMETER.
The ancient poets used elegiacs not only for THRENODIES but also
for SONGS of war and love. The elegiac meter has been popular in
Germany but rarely used in England and America. Coleridge's
DISTICH will serve as an example:
In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column,
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.
165 Elizabethan Age
In English CRITICISM, the term elegiac is used as an adjective to
describe poetry expressing sorrow or lamentation (as in elegiac
strains) or belonging to or partaking of an ELEGY.
Elegy: A sustained and formal POEM setting forth the poet's medita-
tions upon death or upon a grave THEME. The meditation often is
occasioned by the death of a particular person, but it may be a
generalized observation or the expression of a solemn mood. A
classical form, common to both Latin and Greek literatures, the
elegy originally signified almost any type of serious, subjective
meditation on the part of the poet whether this reflective element
was concerned with death, love, or war, or merely the presentation
of information. In classic writing the elegy was more distinguishable
by its use of ELEGIAC meter than by its subject matter. The
Elizabethans used the term for love poems, particularly COM-
PLAINTS. Notable English elegies include the OLD ENGLISH poem
"The Wanderer," The Pearl, Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess,
Donne's Elegies, Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,
Tennyson's In Memoriam, and Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloom'd." These poems indicate the variety of method,
mood, and subject which is included under the term elegy. A
specialized form of elegy, popular with English poets, is the
PASTORAL ELEGY, of which Milton's Lycidas is an outstanding ex-
ample. See PASTORAL ELEGY.
Elision: The omission of a part of a word for ease of pronunciation,
for EUPHONY, or to secure a desired rhythmic eifect. This is most
often accomplished by the omission of a final vowel preceding an
initial vowel as "th'orient" for "the orient," but elision also occurs
between syllables of a single word as "ne'er" for "never."
Elizabethan Age: The name given in English literature to the
segment of the RENAISSANCE which occurred during the reign of
Elizabeth I (1558-1603). The meaning of the term is sometimes
extended to include the JACOBEAN PERIOD (1603-1625). An age of
great nationalistic expansion, commercial growth, and religious
controversy, it saw the development of English DRAMA to its highest
level, a great outburst of LYRIC song, and a new interest in
CRITICISM, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare flourished;
and Bacon, Jonson, and Donne first stepped forward. It has justly
been called the "Golden Age of English Literature." For details of
Elizabethan Drama 166
its literary history, see "The Elizabethan Age" in The Outline of
Literary History; for a sketch of its literature see RENAISSANCE.
Elizabethan Drama: This phrase is commonly used for the entire
body of RENAISSANCE English DRAMA produced in the century
preceding the closing of the theatres in 1642, although it is some-
times employed in a narrower sense to designate the DRAMA of the
later years of Elizabeth's reign and the few years following it.
Thus, Shakespeare is an Elizabethan dramatist, although more
than one third of his active career lies in the reign of James I.
Modern English DKAMA not only came into being in Elizabethan
times but developed so rapidly and brilliantly that the Elizabethan
era is the golden age of English DRAMA.
Lack of adequate records makes it impossible to trace the steps
by which Elizabethan drama developed, though the chief elements
which contributed to it can be listed. From MEDIEVAL DRAMA came
the TRADITION of acting and certain CONVENTIONS approved by the
populace. From the MORALITY PLAYS and the INTERLUDES in
particular came comic elements. With this medieval heritage was
combined the classical TRADITION of DRAMA, partly drawn from a
study of the Roman dramatists, Seneca (tragedy) and Plautus and
Terence (comedy), and partly from humanistic CRITICISM based
upon Aristotle and transmitted through Italian RENAISSANCE scholar-
ship. This classical influence appeared first in the SCHOOL PLAYS.
Later it affected the DRAMA written under the auspices of the royal
court and of the INNS OF COURT. Eventually it influenced the plays
of the university-trained playwrights connected with the public
stage. Indeed, the part played by the UNIVERSITY WITS in adapting
classical dramatic materials to the demands of the popular stage
seems to have advanced dramatic technique to a point where it
was ready for the perfecting touch of the master dramatist himself.
The modern theatre arose with Elizabethan drama (see PUBLIC
THEATRES, PRIVATE THEATRES). For types of Elizabethan drama
and names of dramatists see Outline of Literary History (pp. 532-
541) and TRAGEDY, ROMANTIC TRAGEDY, CLASSICAL TRAGEDY, TRAG*
EDY OF BLOOD, COMEDY, COMEDY OF HUMOURS, COURT COMEDY,
REALISTIC COMEDY, CHRONICLE PLAY, and MASQUE.
Elizabethan Literature: Literature produced in England during
the ELIZABETHAN AGE; that is, 1558-1603, although the meaning
167 Emblem Books
is often extended to include the JACOBEAN PERIOD, and sometimes
given as wide a scope as 1550-1660. See ELIZABETHAN AGE.
Elizabethan Miscellanies: Poetical ANTHOLOGIES made in the
ELIZABETHAN AGE. See MISCELLANIES, POETICAL.
Elizabethan Theatres: Public and private playhouses that de-
veloped and flourished in the ELIZABETHAN AGE. See PUBLIC
THEATRES, PRIVATE THEATRES.
Ellipsis: A figure of speech characterized by the omission of one
or more words which, while essential to the grammatic structure
of the sentence, are easily supplied by the reader. The effect of
ellipsis is rhetorical; it makes for emphasis of statement The device
often traps the unwary user into difficulties, since carelessness will
result in impossible constructions. The safe rule is to be sure that
the words to be supplied occur in the proper grammatic form not
too remote from the place the ellipsis occurs. In the following
quotations the brackets indicate ellipsis:
Where wigs [strive] with wigs, [where] with sword-knots
sword-knots strive,
[Where] Beaus banish beaus, and [where] coaches coaches drive.
Pope
Emblem Books: An "emblem" consisted of a motto expressing
some moral idea and accompanied by a picture and a short poem
illustrating the idea. The poem was always short SONNETS, EPI-
GRAMS, MADRIGALS, and various STANZA forms being employed.
The picture (originally itself the "emblem") was symbolic. A col-
lection of emblems was known as an emblem book. Emblems and
emblem books, which owed their popularity partly to the newly
developed art of engraving, were very popular in all Western
European languages in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries. Examples of emblems: The motto Divesque miserque y
"both rich and poor/' illustrated by a picture of King Midas sitting
at a table where everything was gold and by a verse or "posie"
explaining how Midas, though rich, could not eat his gold; Parler
peu et venir au poinct, "speak little and come to the point,"
illustrated by a quatrain and a picture of a man shooting at a
target with a cross-bow. Edmund Spenser's earliest known literary
Emotional Element in Literature 168
work consisted of TRANSLATIONS of SONNETS of Du Bellay and Pe-
trarch for A Theatre of Worldings (1569), a translation of a Dutch
emblem book. Several of Spenser's poems, such as The Shepheardes
Calender and Muiopotmos, show the influence of emblems. Shake-
speare seems to have made much use of emblem literature, as in the
casket scene in The Merchant of Venice. Francis Quarles is the
author of an interesting seventeenth-century emblem book.
Emotional Element in Literature: Although generalizations about
the nature, intent, and language of literature are at best unsatis-
factory efforts to bind together a congeries of contrasting and often
conflicting elements, men have usually agreed in distinguishing
among scientific, philosophical, and artistic expressions. It is true
that the term literature is sometimes applied to graceful and effec-
tive DESCRIPTIONS, EXPOSITIONS, and ARGUMENTS whose purpose
is to explain, instruct, or persuade; in a stricter sense, however,
literature is properly reserved for expressions in which the aesthetic
aim is equal to or outweighs the scientific or philosophical. This
is, of course, a way of asserting that the grace, beauty, and sym-
metry of art are more than ornaments or sugar-coating for the pill
of fact or concept. In a basic sense, the scientist appeals to our
sense of fact; the philosopher to our intellectual being, our
powers of logic and conceptualizing; and the artist to our emotional
being, our inner selves. On the simplest level of language, science
employs words for their DENOTATIONS, giving them verifiable but
GENERAL referents in the world of things; philosophy deals with
ABSTRACT THERMS, being concerned with the conceptualizing of
experience; art deals with CONCRETE TERMS, tangible, particular,
specific. These CONCRETE TERMS are frequently IMAGES that evoke
immediate emotional responses from the reader. (See ABSTRACT
TERMS; CONCRETE TERMS; BELIEF, THE PROBLEM OF: CRITICISM,
TYPES OF.)
In I. A. Richards* distinction, art uses "emotive language"
language employed for the effects it produces in emotion and at-
titude as contrasted with science which uses "referential language"
language used for the sake of the reference it produces. To insist
upon this emotional quality of literature is not to deny it other
kinds of meaning and value, but it is to insist that literature conveys
these other meanings and values in the uniquely emotive language
of art. (See CONCRETE UNIVERSAL.)
Contemporary criticism has interested itself deeply in the emo-
169 Empiricism
tional aspect of literature, with the assertion that there is an
aspect of knowledge which can be conveyed by no other means
than through the language and form of art (see OBJECTIVE COR-
RELATIVE).
Empathy: The act of identifying ourselves with an object and
participating in its physical and emotional sensations, even to the
point of making our own physical responses, as, standing before a
statue of a discus-thrower, one flexes his muscles to hurl die discus.
Empathy may be expended upon an inanimate object, an animal,
or a person. It may be active, in that it results in the creative
process, or it may be passive, in that it results from reading and
appreciation. It is to be contrasted with "sympathy" through which
we have a fellow-feeling for someone; for empathy implies an
"involuntary projection of ourselves" into something or someone
else. Some modern critics see in empathy the key to the nature and
meaning of art (see EMOTIONAL ELEMENT IN LITERATURE). The
term is a translation of Hermann Lotze's word Einfuhlung "feeling
into" and it entered our critical vocabulary in this century.
Emphasis: A principle of rhetoric dictating that important elements
be given important positions and adequate development whether
in the sentence, the paragraph, or the whole composition. The
more important positions are, naturally, at the beginning and end.
But emphasis may also be secured (1) by repetition of important
ideas, (2) by the development of important ideas through supply-
ing plenty of specific detail, (3) by simply giving more space to
the more important phases of the composition, (4) by contrasting
one element with another since such contrasts focus the reader's
attention on the point in question, (5) by careful selection of
details so chosen that subjects related to the main idea are included
and all irrelevant material excluded, (6) by climactic arrangement,
(7) by mechanical devices such as capitalization, italics, symbols,
different colors of ink, etc.
Empiricism: In philosophy, the practice of drawing rules of
practice not from theory but from experience. Hence an empirical
method is sometimes equivalent to an "experimental'* method. In
medicine, however, an "empiric" usually means a quack. The term
is sometimes borrowed by literary critics and used in a derogatory
sense, an empiric judgment being an untrained one. The empirical
Encomium
method, in the sense of the experimental, is important in literary
theories of NATURALISM.
Encomium; In Greek literature a poem or speech in praise of a
living person before a select group. Today any speech or writing
that is of a laudatory nature. See PANEGYRIC, EULOGY.
End-Rime: RIME that occurs at the ends of the VERSES. See RIME.
End-stopped Lines: Lines of verse in which both the grammatical
structure and the sense reach completion at the end of the line.
The absence of ENJAMBEMENT, or RUN-ON LINES.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul:
Pope
English Language: The English language developed from the
West Germanic dialects spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and other
Teutonic tribes which participated in the gradual invasion and
occupation of England in the fifth and sixth centuries, a move-
ment which resulted in the obliteration of the earlier Celtic and
Roman cultures in the island. The word English applied to the
language reflects the fact that Anglo-Saxon literature first flourished
in the North and was written in the Anglian dialects (hence Englisc,
"English") spoken in Northumbria and Mercia. Later, under King
Alfred, the West Saxon region became the cultural center. The
word Englisc was still employed as its name, however, and the
earlier Anglian literature was copied in the West Saxon dialect,
now commonly referred to as OLD ENGLISH, or "Anglo-Saxon/ 7 As
a language West Saxon was very different from modern English. It
was burdened with grammatical gender, declensions, conjugations,
tense-forms, and case-endings almost equal in extent to those found
in Latin. The word "stone," for example, had six forms (singular:
stan f stanes, stane; plural: stdnas, stana, stdnwn) representing five
cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental). Pro-
nouns and verbs likewise possessed complicated inflectional systems.
In addition, the four great DIALECTS of the OLD ENGLISH PERIOD
(Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, Kentish) differed among
themselves in grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. The first
writing was in RUNES, which were displaced later by the Roman
alphabet used by the Christian missionaries. Specimens of OLD
171 English Language
ENGLISH have survived from as early as the eighth century, but
most of the existing manuscripts are in West Saxon of the tenth
and eleventh centuries. Though a few Latin and fewer Celtic words
were added to the vocabulary in OLD ENGLISH times, most of the
words were Teutonic, consisting of words used by the Angles and
Saxons, augmented by the introduction of Danish and Norse words
as the result of later invasions.
The changes which have made modern English look like a
different language from OLD ENGLISH are the result of the opera-
tion of certain natural tendencies in language development, such
as the progressive simplification of the grammar; and the acci-
dents of history, such as the NOBMAN CONQUEST and the growth
of London as a cultural center. The greatest change took place
in the earlier part of the period known as MIDDLE ENGLISH (ca.
1100-C0.1500) or a little earlier. The leveling of inflections and
other simplifying forces, already under way in late OLD ENGLISH
times, were accelerated by the results of the NORMAN CONQUEST,
which dethroned English as the literary language, in favor of the
French language spoken by the newcomers (see ANGLO-FRENCH
and ANGLO-NORMAN). Left to the everyday use of the subjugated
native elements of the population, English changed rapidly in the
direction of modern English, as is shown in manuscripts written
about 1200, when English was again coming into literary use. By
late MEDDLE ENGLISH times (fourteenth century) the process of
simplification had gone so far that in Chaucer's time almost all the
old inflections either were lost or were weakened to a final -e, often
unpronounced. The introduction of French words in the MIDDLE
ENGLISH period proved a powerful source of enrichment to the
English vocabulary. By this time, too, many Danish words, acquired
much earlier, appear. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a
significant step toward the development of a standardized, uniform
language came with the new prominence given the London DIALECT
(largely East Midland), which thus became the basis for Modern
English. This development came chiefly from the growing im-
portance of London commercially and politically, the influence of
the writings of Chaucer and his followers, the adoption of English
instead of French in the courts and schools (fourteenth century),
and the employment of this DIALECT by Caxton, the first English
printer (late fifteenth century).
Modern English (ca.1500 on) has been marked by an enor-
mous expansion in vocabulary, the new words being drawn from
English Literature, Periods of
many sources, chiefly Latin and French. Since French is itself
based upon Latin, English has acquired many doublets, such as
"strict" and "strait," permitting further developments in shades
of meaning. An examination of a dictionary will show the vast
preponderance of foreign words over native English words, though
the latter include the more frequently used words of everyday
intercourse, such as "man," "wife," "child," "go," "hold," "day,"
"bed," "sorrow," "hand." The stylistic effect of English prose
writing is greatly affected by the nature of the vocabulary used,
particularly as between native English words and those derived
from Latin, either directly or through French. The native words in
general give an effect of simplicity and strength, while the Latin
or Romance words impart smoothness and make possible fine
distinctions in meaning. Modern English has also drawn freely
upon many other sources for new words. Greek, for example, has
been resorted to for scientific terms, new words being formed from
Greek root-meanings, Greek prefixes, suffixes, etc. In grammar,
the simplification process has been retarded in modern times by
such conservative forces as grammars, DICTIONARIES, printers, and
school teachers. Likewise spelling and pronunciation have become
fixed in somewhat chaotic and archaic forms by the influence of
the same standardizing tendencies.
Today only a quarter of the words in common usage in English
are of OLD ENGLISH derivation, yet the ones which determine the
nature of the language articles, pronouns, and connecting words
are of OLD ENGLISH origin. What inflectional endings remain
for pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs are OLD ENGLISH, as are our
verb forms. We have retained the Germanic word order, the
Germanic tendency to associate ACCENT and loudness and to stress
the first syllable of nouns. We have borrowed three-fourths of our
words and have always fitted them into an English frame. The
result is that English remains basically a Teutonic tongue, which
perpetually renews itself at the fountain of the world's languages.
See OLD ENGLISH, MIDDLE ENGLISH, ANGLO-NORMAN, DIALECTS,
AMERICAN ENGLISH.
English Literature, Periods of: The division of a nation's literary
history into periods offers a convenient method for studying
authors and movements, as well as the literature itself, in their
proper perspectives. Hence most literary histories and anthologies
are arranged by periods. In the case of English literature, there are
173 English Literature, Periods of
almost as many arrangements as there are books on the subject. This
lack of uniformity arises chiefly from two facts. In the first place,
periods merge into one another because the supplanting of one
literary attitude by another is a gradual process. Thus the earlier
romanticists are contemporary with the later neo-classicists, just
as the neo-classical attitude existed in the very heyday of Eliz-
abethan romanticism. Dates given in any scheme of literary periods,
therefore, must be regarded as approximate and suggestive only,
even when they reflect some very definite fact, as 1660 (the
Restoration of the Stuarts) and 1798 (the publication of Lyrical
Ballads). In the second place, the names of periods may be
chosen on very different principles. One plan is to name a period
from its greatest or its most representative author: Age of Chaucer,
Age of Spenser, etc. Another is to coin a descriptive adjective from
the name of the ruler: Elizabethan Period, Jacobean Period,
Victorian Period. Or pure chronology or names of centuries may
be preferred: Fifteenth-Century Literature, Eighteenth-Century
Literature, etc. Or descriptive tides designed to indicate prevailing
critical or philosophical attitudes, or dominant fashions or "schools**
of literature may be used: Neo-classicism, Romanticism, Age of
Reason. Logically, some single principle should control in any
given scheme, but such consistency is not always found. The table
below gives the scheme used in this book:
PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
428-1100 Old English Period
1 100-1350 Anglo-Norman Period
1350-1500 Middle English Period
1500-1660 The Renaissance Period
1500-1557 Early Tudor Age
1558-1603 Elizabethan Age
1603-1625 Jacobean Age
1625-1649 Caroline Age
1649_i(360 T ne Commonwealth Interregnum
1660-1798 The Neo-Classical Period
1660-1700 The Restoration Age
1700-1750 The Augustan Age
1750-1798 The Age of Johnson
1798-1870 The Romantic Period
1798-1832 The Age of the Romantic Triumph
1832-1870 The Early Victorian Age
Enjambement 174
1870-1914 The Realistic Period
1870-1901 The Late Victorian Age
1901-1914 The Edwardian Age
1914-1960 The Contemporary Period
Historical sketches of the periods listed in this table are given
in the Handbook, and briefer descriptions of the subdivisions of
periods (here called uniformly ages) are also given in the Hand-
book. The Outline of Literary History follows this table and gives
details of general and literary history.
Enjambement: The device of continuing the sense and grammatical
construction of a VERSE or a COUPLET on into the next.
Enjambement occurs with the presence of the RUN-ON LINE and
offers contrast to the END-STOPPED LINE. The first and second lines
below, carried over to the second and third for completion, are
illustrations of enjambement:
Or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook, that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God.
Milton
Enthymeme: A SYLLOGISM informally stated and omitting one of
the two premises either the major or the minor. The omitted
premise is to be understood. Example: "Children should be seen
and not heard. Be quiet, John." Here the obvious minor premise
that John is a child is left to the ingenuity of the reader.
Enumerative Bibliography: A list of works of a particular country,
author, printer, or type. See BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Envoy ( envoi)-. A conventionalized STANZA appearing at the close
of certain poems; particularly associated with the French BALLADE
form. The envoy (1) is usually addressed to a prince, a judge, a
patron, or other person of importance; (2) repeats the REFRAIN
line used throughout the BALLADE; (3) consists normally of four
lines (though not necessarily so limited); (4) usually employs the
bcbc rime-scheme. See BALLADE.
Epic: A long narrative POEM in elevated STYLE presenting char-
acters of high position in a series of adventures which form an
175 Epic
organic whole through their relation to a central figure of heroic
proportions and through their development of EPISODES important
to the history of a nation or race. The origin of epics is a matter of
great scholarly dispute. According to one theory, the first epics
took shape from the scattered work of various unknown poets,
and through accretion these early EPISODES were gradually molded
into a unified whole and an ordered sequence. Though held
vigorously by some, this theory has generally given place to one
which holds that the materials of the epic may have accumulated
in this fashion but that the epic poem itself is the product of a
single genius who gives it STRUCTURE and expression. Epics without
certain authorship are called FOLK EPICS, whether the scholar
believes in a folk, or a single authorship theory of origins, however.
Epics, both FOLK and ART EPICS, share a group of common char-
acteristics: (1) The hero is a figure of heroic stature, of national or
international importance, and of great historical or legendary sig-
nificance; (2) the setting is vast in scope, covering great nations,
the world, or the universe; (3) the action consists of deeds of great
valor or requiring superhuman courage; (4) supernatural forces
gods, angels, and demons interest themselves in the action and
intervene from time to time; (5) a STYLE of sustained elevation and
grand simplicity is used; and (6) the epic poet recounts the deeds
of his heroes with objectivity. To these general characteristics ( some
of which are omitted from particular epics), should be added a
list of common devices or CONVENTIONS employed by most epic
poets: the poet opens by stating his theme, invokes a Muse to inspire
and instruct him, and opens his narrative in medias res in the
middle of things giving the necessary EXPOSITION in later portions
of the epic; he includes catalogues of warriors, ships, armies; he
gives extended formal speeches by the main characters; and he
makes frequent use of the EPIC SIMTJLE.
A few of the more important FOLK EPICS are: The Iliad and The
Odyssey (by Homer), the Old English Beowulf, the East Indian
Mdhdbharata, the Spanish Cid, the Finnish Kalevala, the French
Song of Roland, and the German Nibelungenlied. Some of the best
known ART EPICS are: Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy (al-
though it lacks many of the distinctive characteristics of the epic),
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Milton's Paradise Lost. American poets
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries struggled to
produce a good epic poem on the American adventure, but without
success. Longfellow's Hiawatha is an attempt at an Indian epic.
Epic Formula 176
Whitman's Leaves of Grass, considered as the autobiography of a
generic American, is sometimes called an American epic, as is
Stephen Vincent Benet's John Browns Body.
In the Middle Ages there was a great mass of literature verging
on the epic in form and purpose though not answering strictly to
die conventional epic formula. These poems are variously referred
to as epic and as ROMANCE. Spenser's The Faerie Queene is the
supreme example.
Epic Formula: See EPIC.
Epic Simile: An elaborated comparison. This type differs from an
ordinary SIMILE in that it is more involved, more ornate, and is a
conscious imitation of the Homeric manner. The secondary object
or picture is developed into an independent aesthetic object, an
IMAGE which for the moment excludes the primary object with
which it is compared. The following from Paradise Lost may serve
as an example:
Angel Forms, who lay entranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow die brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot-wheels.
Milton
Epicurean: A piece of literature may be said to be epicurean if it
exhibits a mood or spirit of surrender to the search for pleasure,
especially such sensuous pleasures as eating and drinking. The
usage arose through a misunderstanding of what Epicurus, a Greek
philosopher, meant by "pleasure" when he advocated the doctrine
that man's legitimate aim was the pursuit of pleasure. Of course,
epicurean may be applied to an author himself.
Epigram: A pointed saying; hence an epigrammatic style is con-
cise, pointed, often antithetical, as "Man proposes but God dis-
poses." This rhetorical use of the word is derived from certain quali-
ties of a type of poem known as an epigram. Originally (in ancient
Epilogue
Greece) an epigram meant an inscription, especially an EPITAPH.
Then it came to mean "a very short poem summing up as though
in a memorial inscription what it is desired to make permanently
memorable in a single action or situation" (Mackail). Hence the
epigram was characterized by compression, pointedness, clarity,
BALANCE, and polish. Examples of the ancient epigram may be
found in the Greek Anthology and in the work of the Roman poet
Martial (A.D. 40-104), whose work supplied the models for Ben
Jonson, the greatest writer of epigrams in the English RENAISSANCE.
Martial had used the epigram for various themes and purposes:
EULOGY, friendship, compliment, EPITAPHS, philosophic reflection,
jeux & esprit, and (especially) SATIRE, particularly against sham
and hypocrisy. Although numerous epigrams were written by
sixteenth-century English writers, notably John Heywood, they
did not conform closely to the classical type, reflecting rather
various forms of medieval HUMOR and SATIRE. With the realistic
revolt against Elizabethan ROMANTICISM just before 1600, the
classical epigram was cultivated, chiefly as a vehicle for SATIRE.
Many collections were published between 1596 and 1616, includ-
ing the famous one of Sir John Harington (1615). All these re-
flected the current idea that an epigram was a pointed SATIRE.
Jonson undertook to restore the wider classical use of the word
and he wrote not only satirical EPIGRAMS but EPISTLES, verses of
compliment, EPITAPHS, reflective verses, etc. An epigram of this
period was typically a short poem consisting of two parts, an intro-
duction stating the occasion or setting the tone, and a conclusion
which sharply and tersely, often with the effect of surprise, gives
the main point. In the eighteenth century the spirit though not
the form of the epigram continued. Many of Pope's couplets are
epigrams when separated from their context. Coleridge, too, in-
dulged in the epigram on occasion, but Walter Savage Landor
was its greatest and most persistent user after Jonson.
Epilogue: A concluding statement; an appendix to a composition.
Sometimes used in the sense of a PERORATION to a speech, but
more generally applied to the final remarks of an actor addressed
to the audience at the close of the play. Opposed to PROLOGUE, a
speech used to introduce the play. Puck, in A Midsummer Nighfs
Dream, recites an epilogue which is characteristic of RENAISSANCE
plays in that it bespeaks the good will of the audience and courte-
ous treatment by critics. As the use of epilogues became more
Episode 178
general, poets of reputation were often paid to contribute epi-
logues to plays much as PREFACES written by prominent authors
are now sometimes paid for by publishers. Epilogues were an in-
dispensable part of all major dramatic efforts in the late seven-
teenth century and throughout the eighteenth century, disappear-
ing from general use about the middle of the nineteenth. They are
now rarely employed.
Episode: An incident presented as one continuous action. Though
having a UNITY within itself, the episode in any composition is
usually accompanied by other episodes so woven together accord-
ing to the conscious artistic purpose of the writer as to create a
SHORT STORY, DRAMA, or NOVEL. Originally, in Greek DRAMA, an
episode referred to that part of a TRAGEDY which was presented
between two CHORUSES. More narrowly the term is sometimes used
to characterize an incident injected into a piece of FICTION simply
to illuminate character or to create background where it bears
no definite relation to the PLOT and in no way advances the action.
Episodic Structure: A critical term applied to writing which con-
sists of little more than a series of incidents. Simple narrative as
opposed to narrative with PLOT. The episodes succeed each other,
in this type of writing, with no very logical arrangement (except
perhaps that of chronology) and without COMPLICATION or a close
interrelationship. Travel books naturally fall into episodic struc-
ture. The term is applied also to long narratives which may con-
tain complicated PLOTS, like the Italian ROMANTIC EPIC, if the
action is made leisurely by the use of numerous episodes em-
ployed for the purpose of developing character or PLOT. The
METRICAL ROMANCE and the PICARESQUE NOVEL are said to have
episodic structure, since the events that occur in them have no
causal relationship and are together because they happened in
chronological order to a single character. As a rule, a work with
episodic structure has little or no central PLOT.
Epistle: Theoretically an epistle is any LETTER, but in practice
the term is limited to formal compositions written by an individual
or a group to a distant individual or group. The most familiar
use of the term, of course, is to characterize certain of the books
of the New Testament The epistle differs from the common LET-
179 Epistolary Novel
TER in that it is a conscious literary form rather than a spontane-
ous, chatty, private composition. Ordinarily the epistle is asso-
ciated with the scriptural writing of the past, but this is by no
means a necessary restriction since the term may be used to in-
dicate formal LETTERS having to do with public matters and with
philosophy as well as with religious problems. It is regularly ap-
plied to the formal LETTERS of dedication that appear in books.
Pope used it to describe formal LETTERS in verse.
Epistolary Novel: A NOVEL in which the narrative is carried for-
ward by LETTERS written by one or more of the characters. It has
the merit of giving the author an opportunity to present the feel-
ings and reactions of characters without himself intruding into
the action of the NOVEL; it further gives a sense of immediacy to
the action, since the LETTERS are usually written in the thick of
the action. The epistolary novel also enables the author to present
multiple points of view on the same event through the use of
several correspondents* epistolary records of the occurrence. It is
also a device for creating VERISIMILITUDE, the author merely serv-
ing as "editor" for the correspondence of "actual" persons. Ob-
vious disadvantages are the fact that the correspondents in an
epistolary novel become incredible and indefatigable scribblers
under the most surprising circumstances and the fact that the en-
forced objectivity of the "editor" shuts the author off from com-
ment on the actions of his characters.
Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) is frequently considered
the first English epistolary novel, although the use of LETTERS to
tell stories and to give racy gossip and sage instruction goes back
in England at least as far as Nicholas Breton's A Poste with a
Packet of Mad Letters (1630) and includes such sentimental
analyses of the feminine heart as Aphra Behn's Love Letters Be-
tween a Nobleman and His Sister (1683). Richardson's Clarissa
Harlowe (1748) is certainly the greatest, as it is the most ex-
tended, of epistolary novels. The form was popular in the eight-
eenth century, particularly for the SENTIMENTAL NOVEL. Other
notable examples are Smollett's Humphry Clinker (1771) and
Fanny Burney's Evelina (1778). The epistolary method has not
often been successfully used in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, although the use of LETTERS within NOVELS has been
common. See NOVEL.
Epitaph ISO
Epitaph: Inscription used to mark burial places. Commemorative
VEBSES or lines appearing on tombs or written as if intended for
such use. Since the days of early Egyptian records epitaphs have
had a long and interesting history, and while they have changed
somewhat as to purpose and form, they show less development
than most literary types. The information usually incorporated
in such memorials includes the name of the deceased, the dates
of birth and death, age, profession (if a dignified one), together
with some pious motto or invocation. Many prominent writers
notably Johnson, Milton, and Pope have left epitaphs which
they wrote in tribute to the dead. Early epitaphs were usually
serious and dignified since they chiefly appeared on the tombs
of the great but more recently they have, either consciously or
unconsciously, taken on humorous qualities. Certainly one of the
most famous inscriptions is that marking Shakespeare's burial
place:
Good frend, for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased here;
Bleste be ye man y* spares thes stones,
And curst be he y* moves my bones,
But this is as much a curse as an epitaph. "O rare Ben Jonson"
and "Exit Burbage* are two examples of simple and effective
epitaphs. A famous French inscription is from Pere Lachaise in
Paris:
Ci-git ma femme: ah! que c'est bien
Pour son repos, et pour le mien!
The epitaph "On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke," formerly
attributed to Ben Jonson, though now credited to William Browne,
deserves quotation:
Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse:
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou hast slain another,
Fair and learned and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
Epitasis: A term used by the ancients to designate the BISING AC-
TION of a DRAMA. See DRAMATIC STRUCTURE.
Epithalamium (Epithalamion): A bridal SONG; a SONG or POEM
written to celebrate a wedding. Many ancient poets (the Greek
181 Epithet
Pindar, Sappho, and Theocritus and the Roman Catullus) as well
as modern poets (like the French Ronsard and the English Spen-
ser) have cultivated the form. Perhaps Spenser's Epithalamion
(1595), written to celebrate his own marriage, is the finest of
the English marriage hymns. The successive STANZAS in this poem
treat such topics as: invocation to the Muses to help praise his
bride; bride is awakened by music; decking of the bridal path
with flowers; nymphs adorn the bride; the assembling of the
guests; description of the beauty of the bride, physical and
spiritual; the bride at the altar; the marriage-feast; welcoming
the night; asking the blessing of Diana and Juno and the
stars.
Epithet: Strictly an adjective or adjective phrase used to point
out a characteristic of a person or thing, as Goldsmith's "noisy
mansions" (for schoolhouses), but sometimes applied to a noun
or noun phrase used for a similar purpose, as Shakespeare's "The
trumpet of the dawn" (for the cock). Many considerations enter
into the success of an epithet, such as its aptness (indeed, epithet
is actually used sometimes rather loosely to mean any apt phrase),
its freshness, its pictorial quality, its connotative value (what it
suggests rather than says), its musical value, etc. In literature re-
memberable epithets are very often figurative, as Keats' "snarling
trumpets** and Milton's 'laboring clouds/'
The so-called HOMERIC EPITHET, often a compound adjective,
as "all-seeing" Jove, "swift-footed" Achilles, "blue-eyed" Athena,
"rosy-fingered" dawn, depends upon aptness combined with fa-
miliarity rather than upon freshness or variety. It is almost a part
of a name. Since epithets often play a prominent part in the
calling-of-names which characterizes INVECTIVE or personal SAT-
IRE, some persons have the mistaken notion that an epithet is al-
ways uncomplimentary. A TRANSFERRED EPITHET is an adjective
used to limit grammatically a noun which it does not logically
modify, though the relation is so close that the meaning is left
clear, as Shakespeare's "dusty death," or Milton's "blind mouths."
This subtly suggestive device, often involving the PATHETIC FAL-
LACY, is used effectively by the poets. The following phrases con-
tain examples of epithets: glimmering landscape, murmuring
brook, dazzling immortality, pure-eyed Faith, silver answer, pros-
tituted muse, dark-skirted wilderness, circumambient foam, care-
charmer sleep, sweet silent thought, meek-eyed peace.
Epitome 182
Epitome: A summary or abridgment, A condensed statement of
the content of a book. A "miniature representation" of a subject.
Thus Magna Charta has been called the epitome of the rights of
Englishmen, and Ruskin referred to St. Mark's as an epitome of
the changes of Venetian architecture through a period of nine
centuries.
Epode: One of the three STANZA forms employed in the PINDARIC
ODE. The others are STROPHE and ANTISTROPHE. See ODE.
Eponym: The name of a person who is so commonly associated
with some widely recognized attribute that the name comes to
stand for the attribute, as Helen for beauty or Caesar for dictator,
Equivalence: In METRICS, a kind of SUBSTITUTION, in which a
FOOT equal to the one expected but different from it is used in a
VERSE. In QUANTITATIVE VERSE, one long syllable was considered
the equivalent of two short syllables and thus a SPONDEE (two
long syllables) could be substituted for an ANAPEST (two shorts
and a long). See SUBSTITUTION, COMPENSATION.
Equivocation: The use of a word in two distinct meanings, with
the intention to deceive. See EQUIVOQUE.
Equivoque: A kind of PUN in which the same word or phrase is
so used that it has two different and incongruous meanings. If the
equivoque is used with the intention to deceive the result is
called EQUIVOCATION.
Erotic Literature: Amorous writing. The classification of litera-
ture as erotic is based on the subject matter love rather than
the literary form employed. Consequently erotic literature em-
braces almost any form of writing the LYRIC, the DRAMA, SHORT
STORY, NOVEL, even EPIGRAMS and ELEGIES, the LYRIC proving
perhaps the most popular vehicle. The lines which distinguish
erotic literature from any writing based on the love theme are
hard to draw. The classification is broad enough to include the
range of writing about love from the mildly sentimental to the
actually pornographic. The presentation of love in literature
called erotic must, however, approach the fleshly quality to be
placed in this category.
183 Essay
Esperanto: An artificial speech constructed from roots common to
the chief European languages and designed for universal use.
Esperanto was devised by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, a Russian, and
took its name from Zamenhofs pseudonym, "Dr. Esperanto,"
used in signing his first pamphlet on the subject in 1887. The ac-
count in The Encyclopaedia Britannica summarizing the principles
which should govern any truly universal language states that
such a speech "should be international, easy for aU, euphonious,
phonetic, flexible, regular, adaptable, and must be tested by long
continued practical use on a large scale," requirements which, the
Esperantists argue, their language has met. Certain qualities of
the language may here be pointed out: the grammar is so simple
as to be clear after a few minutes* study, the spelling is strictly
phonetic, the language is euphonious and adaptable, and pronun-
ciation is simple since the ACCENT alwavs falls on the penult.
Since Zamenhofs beginning in 1887, Esperanto has grown in
popularity, although it gives little promise toaay of becoming a
truly universal tongue.
Essay: A moderately brief prose discussion of a restricted topic.
Because of the wide application of the term, no satisfactory defini-
tion can be arrived at (one book on the essay spends forty-three
pages on "What Is an Essay?"). Nor can a wholly acceptable
"classification" of essay types be made. Among the terms that
have been used in attempting classifications of the essay are:
moralizing, critical, character, anecdotal, letter, narrative, aphoris-
tic, descriptive, reflective, biographical, historical, periodical, di-
dactic, editorial, whimsical, psychological, outdoor, nature, cos-
mical, and personal. Such a list, although depressingly long, is
incomplete; obviously the task of classifying the essay, like that
of defining it, has eluded human skill. A basic and very useful di-
vision can, however, be made: FORMAL and INFORMAL ESSAYS.
The INFORMAL ESSAY, sometimes called the "true" essay, includes
moderately brief aphoristic essays like Bacons, PERIODICAL ES-
SAYS like Addison's, and PERSONAL ESSAYS like Lamb's. Qualities
which make an essay INFORMAL include: the personal element
(self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential
manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconven-
tionality or novelty of theme, freshness of form, freedom from
stiffness and affectation, incomplete or tentative treatment of
topic. The points of view and wide range of themes in the IN-
Essay 184
FOKMAL ESSAY may be suggested by citing a few typical titles:
"On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places" (Stevenson), "A Cure
for Fits in Married Ladies" (Steele), "A Chapter on Ears"
(Lamb), "A Dissertation on Roast Pig" (Lamb), "Getting Up on
Cold Mornings" (Hunt), "On Going a Journey" (Hazlitt ad-
vocating the solitary hike), "Every Man's Natural Desire to Be
Somebody Else" (Crothers). Qualities of the FORMAL ESSAY in-
clude: sober seriousness of purpose, dignity, logical organization,
length. The term may include both short discussions, expository
or argumentative, such as the serious magazine ARTICLE, and
longer treatises, like the chapters in Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-
Worship. However, a sharp distinction between even FORMAL
and INFORMAL ESSAYS can not be maintained at all times. In the
following sketch the INFORMAL ESSAY will be given chief con-
sideration, since it lies more completely in the realm of literature.
Montaigne: Beginnings. When the French philosopher Mon-
taigne retired from active life to devote himself to study and re-
flection (the "contemplative" life), he followed the fashion of
the times in his practice of collecting pithy sayings MAXIMS,
APHORISMS, ADAGES, APOTHEGMS, PROVERBS along with ANEC-
DOTES and quotations from his readings in the classics, A collec-
tion of such wise sayings upon a single topic was known in France
as a legon morale. After a time Montaigne developed the habit
of recording also the results of a searching self-analysis and be-
came attracted by the idea that he was himself representative of
man in general. He published his first collection of such writings
in 1580 under the title Essais the first use of the word for short
prose discussions. The word means "attempts," and by the use
of it Montaigne meant to indicate that his discussions were tenta-
tive or incomplete as compared with ordinary formal philosophi-
cal writings. By adding the personal element to the aphoristic
legon morale Montaigne created the modern essay. "Myself," he
said, "am the groundwork of my book." The second edition (1588)
gave even greater emphasis to the personal element. Mainly philo-
sophical and ethical, the essays cover a wide range of topics*. "Of
Idleness," "Of Liars/' "Of Ready and Slow Speech/' "Of Smells
and Odors," "Of Cannibals," "Of Sleeping,'* "Upon Some Verses of
Vergil," etc.
The Essay in England: Bacon and the Seventeenth Century.
When the youthful Francis Bacon published in 1597 his first col-
lection of aphoristic essays, he borrowed his title, Essays, from Mon-
185 Essay
taigne's book and became the first English "essayist." As a matter
of fact Bacon's essays, which he referred to as "dispersed medita-
tions," are less indebted to Montaigne than to earlier collections of
"sentences" or wise sayings and to the wisdom literature of the
Greeks and Romans, Bacon himself citing especially Seneca's Epis-
tles to Lucilius as ancient examples of the type. The ten essays first
published were short and consisted chiefly of a collection of MAXIMS
on a given subject. The book was very popular, and revised, en-
larged editions were issued in 1612 and 1625. The later essays are
longer, sometimes more personal, and are developed by a wealth
of illustration, quotation, and figures of speech. In fact, Bacon's
STYLE achieved a compactness, clarity, imaginative richness, phrasal
power, and sentence-rhythm which have made his essays an endur-
ing part of the world's literature. The "aphoristic" quality of his
STYLE is seen in such typical quotations as these: "The errors of
young men are the ruin of business," and "He that hath a wife and
children hath given hostages to fortune." In attitude and tone Ba-
con's essays are highly practical and utilitarian rather than ethically
idealistic. Like the Renaissance COURTESY BOOKS they had for their
chief purpose the giving of useful advice to those who wished to
get on in practical life, especially as men of affairs.
After Bacon the seventeenth century contributed little to the
development of the INFORMAL ESSAY, the influence of Bacon and
Montaigne dominating such essays as were produced. Owen Fell-
tham's Resolves (1620) shows the application of Bacon's method
to religious topics. Sir William Cornwallis' Essays (1600) reflects
the method of Montaigne. More worthy essayists appeared after
the Restoration. Sir William Temple, the statesman, and Abraham
Cowley, the poet, wrote Montaigne-like PERSONAL ESSAYS while liv-
ing in retirement, Cowley's being particularly happy efforts. Though
the INFORMAL ESSAY, strictly defined, received little attention in this
century, there was much prose writing closely related to the IN-
FORMAL and FORMAL ESSAY. The chapters of Sir Thomas Browne's
Religio Medici ( 1642) in their STYLE and in their tendency toward
self -revelation and moralizing are suggestive of the INFORMAL ES-
SAY, as are the miscellaneous sketches in Ben Jonson's Timber, or
Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter (1641). Dryden's famous
Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668) is an example of a critical essay
in conventional DIALOGUE form. The numerous PREFACES and books
on literary CRITICISM from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries are also forerunners of the later critical essay. Milton's
Essay 186
great Areopagitica, in form an argumentative address, is a masterly
example of what might now be called a FORMAL ESSAY. Not unre-
lated to essay writing, too, are such long prose treatises as Robert
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Locke's Essay on the
Human Understanding (1690), and even Izaak Walton's famous
Compleat Angler (1653). The LETTER or formal EPISTLE as a ve-
hicle for writing which was much like the INFORMAL ESSAY appeared
in James HowelTs Familiar Letters (1645-1655). The seventeenth
century also saw the development in English of the CHARACTER, a
brief character sketch of a quality or type-personality destined to
become popular and exert an appreciable influence upon the
PERIODICAL ESSAY of the eighteenth century, partly, to be sure,
through the work of a French writer of CHARACTERS, La Bruyere,
who had combined the CHARACTER with the essay. The EPIGRAM,
as written by Ben Jonson, in its depiction of moral and social types
sometimes became a sort of counterpart of the CHARACTER and
may have influenced essay writers.
The Periodical Essay: Eighteenth Century. The second great
step in the history of the INFORMAL ESSAY came with the creation by
Steele and Addison in the early years of the eighteenth century of
the PERIODICAL ESSAY, SL new art-form which achieved great popu-
larity and attracted the genius of the best writers of the time. In
1691 there had appeared with Dunton's Athenian Gazette a new
type of PERIODICAL, small in format and designed to entertain as
well as instruct. A feature of Daniel Defoe's A Weekly Review of
Affairs in France (1704) had been a department called "Advice
from the Scandalous Club/' gossipy in character. From this germ
Richard Steele developed the new essay in his Tatler (1709-1711) .
The purpose of the papers was "to recommend truth, innocence,
honor, virtue, as the chief ornaments of life/' Joseph Addison soon
joined Steele and the two later launched the frankly informal daily
Spectator (1711-1712; 1714). The new essay was affected not only
by its periodical form, which prescribed the length, but by the gen-
eral spirit of the times. RENAISSANCE individualism was giving way
to a centering of interest in society, and the moral reaction from the
excesses of the RESTORATION AGE made timely the effort of the
essayists to reform the manners of the age, refine its tastes, and
provide topics for discussion at the popular coffee houses of Lon-
don.
As compared with earlier essays, the PERIODICAL ESSAY is briefer,
less aphoristic, less intimate and introspective, less individualistic, less
187 Essay
"learned," and is more informal in STYLE and tone, making more use
of HUMOR and SATIRE, and embracing a wider range of topics. The
appeal is to the middle classes as well as to the cultivated few, but
the city reader seems always to have been in the authors' minds.
Addison referred to two types of Spectator papers: "serious essays"
on such well-worn topics as death, marriage, education, and friend-
ship; and "occasional papers," dealing with the "folly, extravagance,
and caprice of the present age/* The latter class especially aided in
.fixing as a tradition of the INFORMAL ESSAY that delightful in-
formality, whimsicality, HUMOR, and grace which appears in scores
of essays on such topics as women's fashions, dueling, witchcraft,
coffee houses, and family portraits. The type developed much con-
ventional machinery such as fictitious characters, clubs, visions, and
imaginary correspondents.
The popularity of the form led to many imitations of the Toiler
and Spectator, such as the Guardian, the Female Tatler, the
Whisperer, and men like Swift, Pope, and Berkeley contributed
essays to some of them. The novelist Fielding incorporated essays
in his Tom Jones. Later in the century Dr. Samuel Johnson (in the
Eambler, 1750-1752, and the Idler papers, 1758-1760), Lord
Chesterfield, Horace Walpole, and Oliver Goldsmith appeared as
accomplished informal essayists. Some of Goldsmith's Letters from
a Citizen of the World (1760-1761) are noted examples of the
form. After Goldsmith the essay declined as a literary form, though
pleasant specimens of the form were written by Henry Mackenzie
and Richard Cumberland.
The Personal Essay; Nineteenth Century. A great revival of
interest in the writing of both FORMAL and INFORMAL ESSAYS ac-
companied the triumph of the ROMANTIC MOVEMENT and the found-
ing of new types of magazines in the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, and brought about new forms and fashions. The informal
type responded to the romantic impulses of the time. The produc-
tion of the PERSONAL ESSAY, too, was stimulated greatly by the de-
velopment of a new type of periodical: Blackwootfs Magazine
(1817) and the London Magazine (1820), which provided a mar-
ket for the essays of Lamb, Hazlitt, Hunt, De Quincey, and others.
Lamb's Essays of Elia (begun in 1820) exhibited an intimate STYLE,
an autobiographical interest, a light and easy HUMOR and senti-
ment, an urbanity and unerring literary taste which have made
Lamb one of the favorite essayists of all time. Even the novelists
took up essay writing (Dickens, Sketches by Box, 1836; Thackeray,
Essay 188
Roundabout Papers, 1860-1863). Though they followed in many
respects their eighteenth-century predecessors, this group of nine-
teenth-century essayists accomplished a great change in the essay
form. Freed from the space restrictions of the Tatler type and en-
couraged by a reading public eager for "original" work, these writers
modified the Addisonian essay by making it more personal, longer,
and more varied in theme, and by freeing it from the stereotyped
features of the earlier form. Late in the century a worthy successor
to Lamb appeared in Robert Louis Stevenson, for whose whimsical
humor, nimble imagination, accomplished STYLE, and buoyant per-
sonality, the PERSONAL ESSAY formed an ideal medium of expression
(Virginibus Puerisque, 1881; Memories and Portraits, 1887). More
recent writers of the informal essay in England are A. C. Benson,
G. K. Chesterton, and E. V. Lucas.
The Formal Essay: Nineteenth Century. The FORMAL ESSAY
of the early nineteenth century was largely the result of the ap-
pearance of the critical magazine, especially the Edinburgh Review
(1802), the Quarterly Review (1809), and the Westminster Re-
view (1824). Book reviews in the form of long critical essays were
written by Francis Jeffrey, T. B. Macaulay, Thomas De Quincey,
Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, and later by George Eliot, Mat-
thew Arnold, and many others. The manner of the FORMAL ESSAY
appears also in the works of many other prose writers of the cen-
tury. The separate chapters in the books of such men as Thomas
Carlyle, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Charles Kingsley, Leslie Ste-
phen, Walter Bagehot, T. H. Huxley, Matthew Arnold, and Cardinal
Newman are essay-like treatments of phases of the historical, bio-
graphical, scientific, educational, religious, and ethical topics con-
cerned.
The Essay in America. Though there is some reflection of essay
literature in such early American writers as Cotton Mather, Jona-
than Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander
Hamilton, and such "itinerant" Americans as Tom Paine and J. H.
St. John de Crevecoeur, the first really great literary essayist in
America is Washington Irving, whose Sketch-Book (1820) contains
essays of the Addisonian type. Some of H. D. Thoreau's works (e.g.,
Waiden) exhibited characteristics of the INFORMAL ESSAY, and
Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
(1857) was a successful writer of informal, humorous essays. Ralph
Waldo Emerson, reminiscent of Bacon in his aphoristic style, fired
with transcendental idealism, became perhaps the best known of
189 Eulogy
all American essayists. James Russell Lowell (Among My Books,
1870, 1876) is another notable writer of essays, as is Edgar Allan
Poe, who produced important critical essays. Later able essayists,
formal or informal, include G. W. Curtis, C. D. Warner, W. D.
Howells, Mark Twain, and John Burroughs. More recent names
are those of Agnes Repplier, S. M. Crothers, Katherine Fullerton
Gerould, Dallas Lore Sharp, Henry Van Dyke, William Beebe,
Christopher Morley, James Thurber, E. B. White, and the writers
for the New Yorker.
Summary. In attempting to sum up the evolution of the essay
as a form one must again note the distinction between the FORMAL
and the INFORMAL ESSAY. The FORMAL ESSAY, instead of crystalliz-
ing into a set literary type, has tended to become diversified in
form, spirit, and length, according to the theme and serious pur-
pose of its author. At one extreme it is represented by the brief,
serious magazine ARTICLE and at the other by scientific or philo-
sophical treatises which are books rather than essays. The tech-
nique of the FORMAL ESSAY is now practically identical with that
of all factual or theoretical prose writing in which literary effect is
secondary to serious purpose. Its tradition has doubtless tended
to add clarity to English prose style by its insistence upon unity,
structure, and perspicacity.
The INFORMAL ESSAY, on the other hand, beginning in aphoristic
and moralistic writing, modified by the injection of the personal
element, broadened and lightened by a free treatment of human
manners, modified and partly controlled in style and length by
the limitations of periodical publication, has developed into a
recognizable literary GENRE, the first purpose of which is to enter-
tain, and the manner of which is sprightly, light, novel, or humor-
ous. As such the form has aided in giving something of a Gallic
grace to other forms of prose composition, notably letterwriting.
But valuable though its contributions to prose writing have been
and respected as it is today as a literary GENRE, the INFORMAL
ESSAY has had few skillful or serious practitioners in the twentieth
century. Perhaps our frenzied age is ill-suited to its sane, calm
Etiquette Books (Renaissance): See COURTESY BOOKS.
Eulogy: A formal, dignified speech or writing, highly praising a
person or a thing. See ENCOMIUM.
Euphemism 190
Euphemism: A figure of speech in which an indirect statement is
substituted for a direct one in an effort to avoid bluntness. With
the advance of REALISM in recent years strained euphemisms are
seldom found in literature, since authors now generally realize
that such expressions are taken by discriminating readers as evi-
dences of a tendency to be insincere or even sentimental. Small-
town journalistic style, however, still abounds with such locu-
tions as "passed on" for "died/' etc. Euphemistic terms have
been much used by many writers in an effort to mention a dis-
agreeable idea in an agreeable manner.
Euphony: A quality of good STYLE which demands that one
select combinations of words which sound pleasant to the ear.
Harsh, grating, cacophonous sounds violate euphony and make
for unpleasantness in reading. Careful writers avoid such pitfalls
as the juxtaposition of harsh consonants, a series of unaccented
syllables, unconscious riming or repetition of similar sounds,
jerky rhythm, and excessive ALLITERATION.
Euphuism: An affected STYLE of speech and writing which flour-
ished late in the sixteenth century in England, especially in court
circles. It took its name from Euphues (1579) by John Lyly, who
developed the STYLE partly in an effort to refine English prose style
and partly in an effort to attract, through novelty and lightness, the
interest of the feminine readers whom he professed to write for. The
chief characteristics of euphuism are: balanced construction, often
antithetical and combined with ALLITERATION; excessive use of the
rhetorical question; a heaping up of SIMILES, illustrations, and ex-
amples, especially those drawn from mythology and "unnatural
natural history" about the fabulous habits and qualities of animals
and plants. Following are some typical passages from Euphues:
"Be sober but not too sullen; be valiant but not too venturous";
"For as the finest ruby staineth the color of the rest that be in place,
or as the sun dimmeth the moon, so this gallant girl more fair than
fortunate and yet more fortunate than faithful, etc."; "Do we not
commonly see that in painted pots is hidden the deadliest poison?
that in the greenest grass is the greatest serpent? in the clearest
water the ugliest toad?" "The filthy sow when she is sick eateth the
sea-crab and is immediately recured: the tortoise having tasted the
viper sucketh Organum and is quickly revived; the bear ready to
pine eateth up ants and is recovered; tie dog having surfeited . . .
191 Excursus
eateth grass and procureth remedy, etc."; "Being incensed against
the one as most pernicious and enflamed with the other as most
precious."
Lyly did not invent euphuism; rather he combined and popu-
larized elements which others had developed. The RENAISSANCE
had been greatly interested in perfecting vernacular STYLE (Italian,
French, Spanish, English) in connection with the theory that mod-
ern languages were capable of being used for great literature. Im-
portant forerunners of Lyly in England were Lord Berners, in his
translation of Froissart's Chronicle (1523, 1525); Sir Thomas
North's translation (1557) of The Dial of Princes by Guevara
(whose Spanish itself was highly colored) ; and George Pettie in his
A Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure (1576). One of Pettie's sen-
tences, for example, reads: "Nay, there was never bloody tiger that
did so terribly tear the little lamb, as this tyrant did furiously fare
with the fair Philomela."
The chief vogue of euphuism was in the 1580*s, though it was
employed much later. The court ladies cultivated it for social con-
versation, and such writers as Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge
used it in their novels (as Menaphon and Rosalynde). Sir Philip
Sidney reacted against it and was followed by many others. Shake-
speare both employed it and ridiculed it in Love's Labour's Lost.
Though the extravagance and artificiality of euphuism make it seem
ludicrous to a modern reader, it is to be remembered that it actually
played a powerful and beneficial r61e in the development of Eng-
lish prose. It established the idea that prose (formerly heavy and
Latinized) might be written with IMAGINATION and FANCY, while
its emphasis on short clauses and sentences and on balanced con-
struction aided in imparting clearness to prose STYLE. These virtues
of clearness and lightness and pleasant ornamentation remained as
a permanent contribution after a better taste had eliminated the
vices of extravagant artificiality. In a justly famous scene between
Falstaff and Prince Hal, Shakespeare mocks the euphuistic style
(Henry IV, Pt. I, Act II, Sc. 4) .
Exciting Force: In a DRAMA the force which starts the CONFLICT of
opposing interests and sets in motion the BISING ACTION of the play.
Example: the witches' prophecy to Macbeth, which stirs him to
schemes for making himself king. See DRAMATIC STRUCTURE.
Excursus: A formal, lengthy DIGRESSION. See DIGRESSION.
Exemplum 192
Exemplum; A moralized TALE. Just as modern preachers often
make use of "illustrations/' so medieval preachers made extensive
use of TALES, ANECDOTES, and INCIDENTS, both historical and
legendary, to point morals or illustrate definite doctrines. Often
highly artificial and to a modern reader incredible, these "examples"
seem to have appealed very strongly to medieval congregations,
because of their concreteness, their narrative and human interest,
as well as their moral implications. Collections of exempla, classified
according to subject, were prepared for the use of preachers. An
important book of the sort was Jacques de Vitry's Exempla (early
thirteenth century) . At times sermons degenerated into mere series
of ANECDOTES, sometimes even humorous in character. Dante in
thirteenth-century Italy and Wycliffe in fourteenth-century England
protested against this tendency, and Wycliffe as an element in
his reform program omitted exempla from his own sermons.
The influence of exempla and example-books on medieval
literature was very great, as may be illustrated from several of
Chaucer's poems. The Nuns Priest's Tale, for example, itself cast
into sermon form, uses exempla, as when Chanticleer tells 1 Pertelot
ANECDOTES to prove that dreams have a meaning. The Pardoner's
Tale is itself an exemplum to show how Avarice leads to an evil end.
Existential Criticism: A contemporary school of CRITICISM, led by
Jean Paul Sartre, which denies the legitimacy of the traditional
critical questions, and examines a literary work in terms of the
ways in which it explores the existential questions and in terms of
its existent impact on the reader. See EXISTENTIALISM.
Existentialism: A term applied to a group of attitudes current in
philosophical, religious, and artistic thought during and after
World War II, which emphasizes existence rather than essence
and sees the inadequacy of the human reason to explain the enigma
of the universe as the basic philosophical question. The term is so
broadly and loosely used that an exact definition is not possible. In
its modern expression it had its beginning in the writings of the
nineteenth century Danish theologian, S0ren Kierkegaard. The
German philosopher Martin Heidegger is important in its formula-
tion, and the French novelist-philosopher Jean Paid Sartre has
done most to give it its present form and popularity. Existentialism
has found art and literature to be unusually effective methods of
Existentialism
expression; in the NOVELS of Franz Kafka, Dostoyevski, Camus,
Faulkner, and Hemingway, and in the plays and novels of Sartre,
it has found its most persuasive media.
Basically the existentialist assumes that the significant fact is
that we and things in general exist, but that these things have no
meaning for us except as we through acting upon them can create
meaning. Sartre claims that the fundamental truth of existentialism
is in Descartes* formula, "I think; therefore, I exist" The existential
philosophy is concerned with the personal "commitment" of this
unique existing individual in the "human situation.*' It attempts
to codify the irrational aspect of man's nature, to objectify non-
being or nothingness and see it as a universal source of fear, to
distrust concepts, and to emphasize experiential concreteness. The
existentialist's point of departure is the immediate sense of aware-
ness that man has of his situation. A part of this awareness is the
sense man has of meaninglessness in the outer world; this meaning-
lessness produces in him a discomfort, an anxiety, a loneliness in
the face of man's limitations and a desire to invest experience with
meaning by acting upon the world, although efforts to act in a
meaningless, "absurd" world lead to anguish, greater loneliness,
and despair. Such a philosophical attitude can result in nihilism
and hopelessness, as, indeed, it has with many of the literary
existentialists.
On the other hand, the existential view can assert the possibility
of improvement. Most pessimistic systems find the source of their
despair in the fixed imperfection of human nature or of the human
context; the existentialist, however, denies all absolute principles
and holds that human nature is fixed only in that we have agreed
to recognize certain human attributes; it is, therefore, subject to
change if men can agree on other attributes or even to change by a
single man if he acts bravely in contradiction to the accepted
principles. Hence, for the existentialist, the possibilities of altering
human nature and society are unlimited* but, at the same time,
man can hope for aid in making such alterations only from within
himself.
In contradistinction to this essentially atheistic existentialism,
there has also developed a sizable body of Christian existential
thought, represented by men like Karl Jaspers, Jacques Maritain,
Nicolas Berdyaev, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich. An excellent
general and sympathetic treatment of the existential attitude may
be found in William Barrett's Irrational Man.
Expletive 194
Expletive: An interjection to lend emphasis to a sentence or, in
VEBSE especially, the use of a superfluous word (some form of the
verb "to do," for example) to make for RHYTHM. Profanity is, of
course, another form of expletive use. Careless speech is full of
superfluous words which are expletive in nature. A common col-
loquial expletive is "you see" added frequently to a statement, as
"I went home, you see, at ten o'clock."
Explication de texte: A method which originated in the teaching
of literature in France; it involves the painstaking analysis of the
meanings, relationships, and AMBIGUITIES of the words, IMAGES,
and small units that make up a literary work. It is now one of the
tools of the NEW CRITICS. See ANALYTICAL CRITICISM, AMBIGUITY,
NEW CRITICISM.
Exposition; One of the four chief types of composition, the others
being ARGUMENTATION, DESCRIPTION, and NARRATION. Its purpose
is to explain the nature of an object, an idea, or a THEME. Exposition
may exist apart from the other types of composition, but frequently
two or more of the types are blended, DESCRIPTION aiding exposi-
tion, ARGUMENT being supported by exposition, NARRATION re-
inforcing by example an exposition. The following are some of
the methods used in exposition (they may be used singly or in
various combinations): identification, definition, classification, il-
lustration, comparison and contrast, and analysis.
In DRAMATIC STRUCTURE the exposition is the introductory
material, which creates the tone, gives the SETTING, introduces the
characters, and supplies other facts necessary to an understanding
of the play. See DRAMATIC STRUCTURE.
Expressionism: A movement affecting painting, the DRAMA, the
NOVEL, and POETRY, which followed and went beyond IMPRES-
SIONISM in its efforts to "objectify inner experience." Fundamentally
it means the willing yielding up of the REALISTIC and NATURALISTIC
methods, of VERISIMILITUDE, in order to use objects in art not
as representational but as transmitters of the impressions and
moods of a character or of the author or artist. In painting, for
instance, "childhood" might be shown not through a conventional
representational picture of children at play or at school but by
seemingly unarticulated and exaggerated physical details that sug-
195 Expressionism
gest "childhood" or convey the impression which the artist has of
the concept "child."
As an organized literary movement expressionism was strongest
in the theatre in the 1920's, and its entry into other literary forms
was probably through the stage. Expressionism had its origin in
the German theatre in the early years of the century. It was a
response to several different forces: the growing size and mechanism
of society with its tendency to depress the value of the arts made
the artists seek new ways of making art forms valuable instruments
for man; at the same time the depth psychologists, notably Freud,
laid bare the phantasms in the depths of the human mind and
offered the artist a challenge accurately to record them; mean-
while Marxism had instructed even the non-Marxist artist that the
individual was being lost in a mass society; to these pressures came
the example of the dramas of Strindberg, whose plays The Dance
of Death (1901) and The Dream Play (1902) employ extensive
non-realistic devices. The German dramatists Wedekind, Georg
Kaiser, and Ernst Toller and the Czech dramatist Karel Capek (the
author of the nightmarish fantasy of the future, R. 17. H.) were the
major figures in the European expressionistic drama, which flour-
ished in the 1920*s. It was marked by unreal atmosphere, a night-
marish quality of action, distortion and over-simplification, the de-
emphasis of the individual (characters were likely to be called
the "Father** or the "Bank Clerk" ), anti-realistic stage SETTINGS, and
staccato, telegraphic DIALOGUE. The expressionistic DRAMA was
strongly influential on Pirandello and Lorca. For American students
it is most important in its impact on Eugene O'Neill, whose
Emperor Jones attempts to project by symbolic scenes and sound-
effects the racial memories of a modern Negro. Elmer Rice's The
Adding Machine, which uses moving stages and other non-realistic
devices to express the mechanical world seen by one cog in it
named Mr. Zero, is an almost equally noted example. Elements of
expressionism can be seen in the plays of Thornton Wilder, Arthur
Miller, and Tennessee Williams.
In the NOVEL the presentation of the objective outer world as
it expresses itself in the impressions or moods of a character is a
device widely used. The most famous extended example is Joyce's
Finnegans Wake, although the expressionistic intent and method
is often apparent in works using the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
technique, as witness the "Circe* episode in Joyce's Ulysses.
Expressive Theory of Criticism 196
Probably the most complete transfer of the quality of expres-
sionistic drama to the NOVEL, however, is to be found in the
works of Franz Kafka.
The revolt against REALISM, the distortion of the objects of the
outer world, and the violent dislocation of time sequence and
spatial logic in an effort accurately but not representationally to
show the world as it appears to a troubled mind can be found in
contemporary poetry, particularly that of Robinson Jeffers and T.
S. Eliot, whose "The Hollow Men" is an excellent example and
whose The Waste Land is the poetic classic of the movement. See
IMPRESSIONISM, REALISM.
Expressive Theory of Criticism: The term, used by M. H. Abrams,
that designates a theory of art which holds the object of the artist
to be the expression of his emotions, impressions, or beliefs; an
essential doctrine of the ROMANTIC critics. See CRITICISM, HIS-
TORICAL SKETCH.
Extravaganza: A fantastic, extravagant, or irregular composition.
It is most commonly applied to dramatic compositions such as
those of J. R. Planche, the creator of the dramatic extravaganza.
Planche himself defined it as a "whimsical treatment of a poetical
subject as distinguished from the broad caricature of a tragedy or
serious opera, which was correctly described as burlesque/* The
subject was often a fairy tale. The presentation was elaborate, and
included dancing and music. An example is Planche's Sleeping
Beauty (acted 1840). A later use of extravaganza, still current, is
to designate any extraordinarily spectacular theatrical production.
The term extravaganza is also applied to fantastic musical composi-
tions, especially musical CARICATURES. In literature the term is
occasionally used to characterize such rollicking or unrestrained
work as Butler's Hudibras, a CARICATURE of the PURITANS.
Eye-Rime: RIME that appears correct from the spelling, but is
HALF-RIME or SLANT-RIME from the pronunciation, as "watch" and
"match" or love'* and "move."
Fable: A brief TALE, either in prose or VERSE, told to point a moral.
The characters are most frequently animals, but they need not
be so restricted since people and inanimate objects as well are
sometimes the central figures. The subject matter of fables has to
197 Fairy Tale
do with supernatural and unusual incidents and often draws its
origin from FOLKLORE sources. By far the most famous fables are
those accredited to Aesop, a Greek slave living about 600 B.C.; but
almost equally popular are those of La Fontaine, a Frenchman
writing in the seventeenth century, because of their distinctive
HUMOR and WIT, their wisdom and sprightly SATIRE. Other im-
portant fabulists are Gay (England), Lessing (Germany), Krylov
(Russia). A fable in which the characters are animals is called a
BEAST FABLE, a form that has been popular in almost every period
of literary history, usually as a satiric device to point out the
follies of mankind. The BEAST FABLE continues to be vigorous in
such diverse works as Kipling's Jungle Books and Just So Stories,
Joel Chandler Hams' Uncle Remus stories, and George Orwell's
Animal Farm. Many critics, particularly in the NEO-CLASSIC PERIOD,
have used fable as a term for the PLOT of a FICTION or a DRAMA.
See BEAST EPIC, BESTIARY, ALLEGORY.
Fabliau: A humorous TALE popular in medieval French literature.
The fabliaux gained their wide diffusion largely through the popu-
larity of the JONGLEUR, who spread the fabliaux widely throughout
France. The conventional form was eight-syllable VERSE. These
fabliaux consisted of stories of various types, but one point was
uppermost their humorous, sly SATIRE on human beings. Themes
frequently used in these stories, which were often bawdy, dealt
familiarly with the clergy, ridiculed womanhood, and were pitched
in a key which made them readily and boisterously understandable
to the uneducated. The form was also present in English literature
of the MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD, Chaucer especially leaving us
examples of fabliaux, in tales of the Miller, Reeve, Friar, Sum-
moner, Merchant, Shipman, and Manciple. Although fabliaux often
had ostensible "morals'* appended to them, they kck the serious
intention of the FABLE, and they differ from the FABLE too in
always having human beings as characters and in always maintain-
ing a REALISTIC tone and manner.
Fairy Tale: A story relating mysterious pranks and adventures of
supernatural spirits who manifested themselves in the form of
diminutive human beings. These spirits possessed certain qualities
which are constantly drawn upon for TALES of their adventures:
supernatural wisdom and foresight, a mischievous temperament,
the power to regulate the affairs of man for good or evil, the
Falling Action
capacity to change themselves into any shape at any time. Fairy
tales as such though they had existed in varying forms before
became popular toward the close of the seventeenth century..
Almost every nation has its own fairy literature, though the FOLK-
LOBE element embodied in fairy tales prompts the growth of re-
lated TALES among different nations. Some of the great source-
collections are the Pentamerone of Basilio (Italian), the Contes de
ma Mere Wye of Perrault (French), the Cabinet des F6es
(French), and those of the Grimm brothers in German and of
Keightley and Croker in English. Hans Christian Andersen, of
Denmark, is probably the most famous writer of original fairy tales.
Falling Action: The second "half or RESOLUTION of a dramatic
PLOT. It follows the CXJMAX, beginning often with a TRAGIC FORCE,
exhibits the failing fortunes of the hero (in TRAGEDY) and the suc-
cessful efforts of the COUNTERPLAYERS, and culminates in the
CATASTROPHE. See DRAMATIC STRUCTURE.
Familiar Essay: A term applied to the more personal, intimate
type of INFORMAL ESSAY. It deals lightly, often humorously, with
personal experiences, opinions, and prejudices, stressing especially
the unusual or novel in attitude and having to do with the varied
aspects of everyday life. Goldsmith, Lamb, and Stevenson were
particularly successful in the form. See ESSAY.
Fancy: A critical term now used almost exclusively in the
Coleridgean opposition of IMAGINATION AND FANCY, in which fancy
is "mechanic, 7 * logical, "the aggregative and associative power,"
as opposed to the "organic" and "creative" IMAGINATION. See
IMAGINATION AND FANCY.
Fantastic Poets: A term applied by Milton to the school of meta-
physical poets (see METAPHYSICAL VERSE).
Fantasy: Though sometimes used as an equivalent of FANCY and
even of IMAGINATION (see IMAGINATION AND FANCY), fantasy is
usually employed to designate a "conscious breaking free from
experienced reality," as Pellizzi defines it. The term is applied to
a work which takes place in a non-existent and unreal world, such
as fairyland, or concerns incredible and unreal characters, as in
Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird, or employs physical and scientific
principles not yet discovered or contrary to present experience, as
199 Federalist Age in American Literature
in SCIENCE-FICTION and UTOPIAN fiction. Fantasy may be em-
ployed merely for the whimsical delight of author or reader, or it
may be the means used by the author for serious comment on
reality. The most sustained example of fantasy, combining both
intentions, in recent literature are the novels of James Branch
Cabell laid in the mythical kingdom of Poictesme.
Farce: The word developed from Late Latin farstts, connected
with a verb meaning "to stuff." Thus an expansion or amplification
in the church liturgy was called a farse. Later, in France, farce
meant any sort of extemporaneous addition in a play, especially
comic jokes or "gags," the clownish actors speaking "more than was
set down" for them. In the late seventeenth century farce was used
in England to mean any short humorous play, as distinguished from
regular five-act COMEDY. The development in these plays of certain
elements of LOW COMEDY is responsible for the usual modern
meaning of farce: a dramatic piece intended to excite laughter and
depending less on PLOT and character than on exaggerated, im-
probable situations, the humor arising from gross incongruities,
coarse wit, or horseplay. Farce merges into COMEDY, and the same
play (e.g., Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew) may be called
by some a farce, by others a COMEDY. Life Below Stairs (1759),
with the production of which Garrick was connected, has been
termed the "best farce" of the eighteenth century. In the American
theatre, Brandon Thomas* Charley's Aunt (1892), dealing with
the extravagant events resulting from a female impersonation, is
the best known American farce, although farce has been the stock-
in-trade of motion-picture comedians. See FARCE-COMEDY.
Farce-Comedy: A term sometimes applied to comedies which
rely for their interest chiefly on farcical devices (see FARCE, LOW
COMEDY), but which contain some truly comic elements which
elevate them above most FARCE. Shakespeare's The Taming of the
Shrew and The Merry Wives of Windsor are called farce-comedies
by some authorities. One writer distinguishes between the -farce-
comedy of Aristophanes (loose STRUCTURE, variety of appeal,
operatic quality) and that of Plautus (careful STRUCTURE, intricate
INTRIGUE, broad HUMOR).
Federalist Age in American Literature: The portion of American
literary history between the formation of the national government
Feminine Ending 200
and the "Second Revolution" of Jacksonian Democracy, so-called
because of the dominance of the Federalist Party in American
political life and thought The period extends from 1790 to 1830.
Internationally, the Age saw the emergence of the United States
as a world force through the War of 1812. Internally it was an
"Era of Good Feeling," with the sectional and social issues which
were to plague the nation in mid-century just beginning to be
felt. It was an age of rapid literary development. In 1790 the
United States could boast of few distinguished writers of any
land and almost none of belletristic excellence; at its close America
was clearly ready for the artistic burgeoning forth that marked the
period from 1830 to the Civil War. Poetry moved from the
imitative neo-classicism of Barlow and Dwight, through the limited
romanticism of Freneau, to the first notable American achievements
in verse in the work of Bryant. The novel, first practiced in
America in 1789, saw good work by Charles Brockden Brown and
H. H. Brackenridge and the establishment of a distinctively
American romance with the Leatherstocking Tales of James Feni-
more Cooper. Irving in his burlesque Knickerbocker's History and
in his essays and tales found an international audience. The North
American Review, founded in 1815, was a thriving quarterly. In
the decade 1800-1810, Hawthorne, Simms, Whittier, Longfellow,
Poe, and Holmes were born; and 1819 was an annus mirabilis, being
the birth year of Lowell, Melville, and Whitman. By 1830 the
neo-classic, restrained, aristocratic Federalist that America had
been had given way to a romantic, exuberant, democratic young
giant that was flexing its muscles and was beginning effectively to
express itself in art as well as action. See Outline of Literary History
and REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD m AMERICAN
JjTrERATURE.
Feminine Ending: An extra-metrical syllable, bearing no STRESS,
added to the end of a line in IAMBIC or ANAPESTIC METER. This
variation gives a sense of movement and an irregularity to the
METER which make for grace and lightness. The form is perhaps
most commonly used in BLANK VERSE. The second line below carries
an illustration:
O! I could play the woman with mine eyes
And braggart with my tongue. But gentle heavens,
Cut short all intermission.
Shakespeare
201 Fiction
Feminine Rime (double rime): A RIME of two syllables, one
stressed and one unstressed, as waken and forsaken, audition and
rendition. In Chaucer, the feminine rime was very common because
of the frequent recurrence of the final -e in Middle English. The
term "feminine" is a courtesy either to the form or to woman-
hood since it is employed to connote the lightness and grace
which result from the use of this type of BIME.
Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.
Bret Harte
Feudalism: The system of social and political organization that
prevailed in Western Europe during a large part of the medieval
period. It developed from the anarchy which followed the fall of
Charlemagne's empire in the ninth century. In feudal theory every
landholder was merely the tenant of some greater landlord. Thus,
the barons or powerful prelates were the tenants of the king; the
lesser lords, knights, and churchmen were tenants of the barons
and prelates; while the serfs and "villeins" were tenants of the
lesser nobles. In practice as the whole system was based upon
force the relations were more complicated: even kings some-
times owed allegiance to a great churchman or baron. As rent
the various groups paid to their immediate superiors "service,"
which might consist of visible property or of military aid. Socially,
there were two sharply defined classes: the workers (villeins or
free renters; serfs or bondmen); and the "prayers and fighters"
(knights, upper clergy, lords). Feudalism broke down in the
fifteenth century. The ideals of chivalry (see CHIVALRY IN ENGLISH
LITERATURE) grew out of feudalism and powerfully affected the
character of much medieval and even RENAISSANCE literature,
notably the ROMANCES and ROMANTIC EPICS. The feudal social
order is pictured in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and its evils set
forth in the Vision of Piers Plowman (fourteenth century).
Fiction: Narrative writing drawn from the IMAGINATION of the
author rather than from history or fact. The term is most fre-
quently associated with NOVELS and SHORT STORIES, though DRAMA
and NARRATIVE POETRY are also FORMS of fiction, and FABLES,
PARABLES, FAIRY TALES, and FOLKLORE contain fictional elements.
Figurative Language 202
Sometimes authors weave fictional episodes about historical char-
acters, epochs, and settings and thus make "historical fiction."
Sometimes authors use imaginative elaborations of incidents and
qualities of a real person in a BIOGRAPHY, resulting in a type of
writing popular in recent years, the "fictional BIOGRAPHY." Some-
times the actual events of he author's Me are presented under the
guise of imaginative creations, resulting in "autobiographical
fiction." Sometimes actual persons and events are presented under
the guise of fiction, resulting in the ROMAN A CLEF. The chief
function of fiction is to entertain, to be "interesting" in Henry
James' phrase; but it often serves also to instruct, to edify, to
persuade, or to arouse. It is one of the chief devices by which man
communicates his vision of the nature of reality in CONCRETE
TERMS.
Since fiction is a subject matter rather than a type of literature,
one interested in any of the particular forms which fiction assumes
should turn to the articles on specific types, such as NOVEL, SHORT
STORY, DRAMA, NARRATIVE POEM, FABLE, for details of the history
and STRUCTURE of these types.
Figurative Language: Intentional departure from the normal
order, construction, or meaning of words in order to gain strength
and freshness of expression, to create a pictorial effect, to describe
by ANALOGY, or to discover and illustrate similarities in otherwise
dissimilar things. Figurative language is writing that embodies
one or more of the various FIGURES OF SPEECH, the most common of
which are: ANTITHESIS, APOSTROPHE, CLIMAX, HYPERBOLE, IRONY,
METAPHOR, METONYMY, PERSONIFICATION, SIMILE, SYNECDOCHE.
These figures are often divided into two classes: TROPES, literally
meaning "turns," in which the words in the figure undergo a de-
cided change in meaning, and "figures of thought,** in which the
words retain their literal meaning but their rhetorical pattern is
changed. An APOSTROPHE, for example, is a "figure of thought,"
and a METAPHOR is a TROPE. See IMAGERY, METAPHOR, TROPE.
Figures of Speech: The various kinds of departure from normal
construction or meaning of language when it is employed figura-
tively. See FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE.
FUidh (pi. fili): Early Irish professional poets. See IRISH LITERA-
TURE.
203 Fleshly School of Poetry
Fin de siecle: "End of the century," a phrase often applied to the
last ten years of the nineteenth century. The eighteen-nineties were
a transitional period, one in which writers and artists were
consciously abandoning old ideas and conventions and attempting
to discover and set up new techniques and artistic objectives. One
writer (Holbrook Jackson) has noted three main characteristics
of the decade in art and literature: DECADENCE, exemplified in
Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley; REALISM or "sense of fact,"
represented by Gissing, Shaw, and George Moore, with their
reaction against the sentimental; and radical or revolutionary social
aspirations, marked by numerous new "movements" (including the
"new woman," who dared ride a bicycle and seek political suffrage)
and by a general sense of emancipation from the traditional social
and moral order. See EDWARDIAN AGE.
Final Suspense, Moment of: A dramatic term used to indicate the
ray of hope sometimes appearing just before the CATASTROPHE of a
TRAGEDY. Thus Macbeth's continued faith that he cannot be hurt
by any man born of woman keeps the reader or spectator in some
suspense as to the apparently inevitable tragic ending. See DRA-
MATIC STRUCTURE.
Five Points of Calvinism: See CALVINISM.
Flashback: A device by which the writer of a FICTION or a DRAMA
presents SCENES or INCIDENTS that occurred prior to the opening
scene of the work. It is a method of presenting EXPOSITION dra-
matically. Various devices may be used, among them recollections
of the characters, narration by the characters, dream sequences,
and reveries. Notable examples in the theatre occur in Elmer
Rice's Dream Girl and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
Maugham used the flashback skillfully and effectively in Cakes
and Ate, and it is employed consistently in the novels of John P.
Marquand. See EXPOSITION,
Fleshly School of Poetry, The: The title of a critical ESSAY published
in the Contemporary Review, October, 1871. The article was
signed "Thomas Maitiand" (a pseudoym); actually it was written
by Robert W. Buchanan. The critic took to task the poets Swin-
burne, Morris, and Rossetti, though most of the article is couched
as a review of Rossettfs poems and Rossetti himself draws most
Folio
of the fire. Buchanan accused the three of being in league to praise
each other's work and refers to them as the "Mutual Admiration
School." The following passage will make clear the general tone
and trend of Buchanan's criticism:
The fleshly gentlemen have bound themselves by solemn league and
covenant to extol fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of poetic
and pictorial art, to aver that poetic expression is greater than poetic
thought, and by inference that the body is greater than the soul, and
sound superior to sense; and that the poet, properly to develop his poetic
faculty, must be an intellectual hermaphrodite. . . .
Rossetti replied to this denunciation by an attack called "The
Stealthy School of Criticism" which was published in The Ath-
enaeum (December 16, 1871).
Folio: A BOOK SIZE, designating a book whose SIGNATURES result
from sheets folded to two leaves or four pages. See BOOK SIZES.
Folk Drama: In its stricter and older sense, as usually employed
by folklorists, the term means dramatic activities of the folk the
unsophisticated treatment of folk themes by the folk themselves,
particularly activities connected with popular festivals and religious
rites (for the development of ancient Greek drama from such
forms, see DRAMA). For a treatment of medieval folk drama of
this sort, the student may consult the first volume of Sir Edmund
Chambers's Mediaeval Stage and the same writer's The English
Folk-Play, in which such forms as the sword dance, the St. George
play, the mummers' play are described. The MEDIEVAL religious
DRAMA, though sophisticated in the sense of being based upon
Scriptural materials and a religion with a fully developed written
theology, is by some folklorists regarded as a form of folk drama,
and the "folk" character of such twentieth-century plays as Marc
Connelly's Green Pastures is commonly recognized. The religious
DRAMA of the Middle Ages (see MEDIEVAL DRAMA), however, is
treated by historians of the DRAMA as a special form, not as folk
drama.
Another sense in which the term folk drama is being employed,
especially in America, includes plays which, while written by
sophisticated and consciously artistic playwrights, reflect the cus-
toms, language, attitudes, and environmental difficulties of the
folk. These plays are commonly performed, not by the folk them-
selves, but by amateur or professional actors. Tliey tend to be
205 Folklore
realistic, close to the soil, and sympathetically human. The plays of
J. M. Synge, Lady Gregory, and other authors of the CELTIC
RENAISSANCE and the American plays by Paul Green and others
published in the several volumes of Carolina Folk-Plays are ex-
amples. The latter reflect especially the life of the Negro and the
Southern "mountain folk."
Folk Epic: An EPIC by an unknown author or authors or of
doubtful attribution or assumed to be the product of communal
composition. See EPIC, ART EPIC.
Folklore: A term first used by W. J. Thomas in the middle of the
nineteenth century as a substitute for "popular antiquities." The
existence of varied conceptions of the term makes definition difficult.
The one adopted by the Folklore Society of London about 1890 is:
"The comparison and identification of the survivals of archaic
beliefs, customs, and traditions in modern ages." A book on folk-
lore published by an American scholar in 1930 affirms that folklore
'limits itself to a study of the unrecorded traditions of the people
as they appear in popular fiction, custom and belief, magic and
ritual/' The same writer (Krappe) regards it as the function of
folklore to reconstruct the "spiritual history of man" from a study
of the ways and sayings of the folk as contrasted with sophisticated
thinkers and writers. Although concerned primarily with the psy-
chology of early man or with that of the less cultured classes of
society, some of the forms of folklore (e.g., superstitions and
proverbial sayings) belong also to the life of modern man, literate
as well as illiterate, and may, therefore, be transmitted by written
record as well as by word of mouth. Folklore includes MYTHS, LEG-
ENDS, stories, RIDDLES, PROVERBS, nursery rimes, charms, spells,
omens, superstitions of all sorts, popular BALLADS, cowboy songs,
plant lore, animal lore, and customs dealing with marriage, death,
and amusements. The relations of folklore to sophisticated literature
are important, but not always easy to trace. A folk tale may be re-
told by an author writing for a highly cultivated audience, and later
in a changed form again be taken over by the folk. Folk customs are
associated with the development of dramatic activity, because of
the custom of performing plays at folk festivals.
Literature is full of elements taken over from folklore, and some
knowledge of the formulas and CONVENTIONS of folklore is often
an aid to the understanding of great literature. The acceptance of
Foot 206
the rather childish love-test in King Lear may rest upon the fact
that the MOTIF was an already familiar one in folklore. The effects
of such works as Coleridge's Christabel or Keats* Eve of St. Agnes
depend upon the recognition of popular superstitions, while some
familiarity with fairy lore is necessary if one is to catch in full the
charm of James Stephens' The Crock of Gold. The fine MEDIEVAL
ROMANCE of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written for a culti-
vated audience, centers round the folk-formula of the challenging
of a mortal by a supernatural being to a beheading contest: the
binding force of the covenant between Gawain and the Green
Knight is explained by primitive attitudes rather than by rational
rules of conduct Shakespeare's Hamlet is a retelling of an old popu-
lar tale of the "exile-and-retum" formula.
The study of folklore in America, particularly that of the cow-
boy, the mountaineer, and the Negro, has received increasing atten-
tion in the twentieth century.
Foot: The unit of RHYTHM in a VERSE, whether accentual or QUAN-
TITATIVE. A FOOT usually consists of one stressed or long syllable
and one or more unstressed or short syllables; however, the SPONDEE
consists of two stressed syllables, the PYRRHIC of two unstressed
syllables. The following are the common patterns in English ac-
centual VERSE: IAMBUS (^ ), TROCHEE ( ^,) 9 ANAPEST
(v^^x ), and DACTYL ( N_/N_,).
Forgeries, Literary: See LITERARY FORGERIES.
Form: A term used in CRITICISM to designate the organization of
the elements of a work of art in relation to its total EFFECT. VERSE
form refers to the organization of rhythmic units in a line. STANZA
form refers to the organization of the VERSES. The form of the
IMAGES refers to the interrelationships existing among the IMAGES
in a work. The form of the ideas refers to the organization or struc-
ture of thought in the work.
la a common division, critics distinguish between form and con-
tent, form being the pattern or STRUCTURE or organization which
is employed to give expression to the content. A similar distinction
is often made between "conventional" form and organic form. This
is the difference between what Coleridge called "mechanic* form
and form that "is innate; it shapes, as it develops, itself from within,
and tfae fullness of its development is one and the same with the
Frame-story
perfection of its outward form/' Another way of expressing this dif-
ference is to think of "conventional" form as representing an ideal
pattern or shape which precedes the content and meaning of the
work and of organic form as representing a pattern or shape that
develops as it is because of the content and meaning of the work*
"Conventional" form presupposes certain characteristics of organiza-
tion or pattern which must be present in the work and which are
used as tests for the ultimate merit of the work as art the chief
one usually being UNITY. Organic form asserts that each poem has,
as Herbert Read has said, "its own inherent laws, originating with
its very invention and fusing in one vital unity both structure and
content."
Form is also used to designate the common attributes that dis-
tinguish one GENRE from another. In this sense form becomes an
ABSTRACT TERM describing not one work but the commonly held
qualities of many. This abstract form in NEC-CLASSIC periods tends
to become a legislative device, a congeries of "rules" to be followed.
See STRUCTURE, GENRE.
Formal Criticism: CRITICISM which examines a work of art in terms
of the characteristics of the type or GENRE to which it belongs. See
CRITICISM, TYPES OF; FORM.
Formal Essay: A serious, dignified, logically organized ESSAY, writ-
ten to inform or persuade. See ESSAY.
Four Senses of Interpretation: The levels frequently used in inter-
preting Scriptural and allegorical materials; they are the literal,
the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. See ANAGOGE.
"Fourteeners": A verse form consisting of fourteen syllables ar-
ranged in IAMBIC feet. George Chapman, for instance, has a transla-
tion of the Iliad in this meter, but in recent years the form has fallen
into disuse.
Frame-story: A story within a narrative setting or frame, a story
within a story. This is a convention frequently used in classical and
modern writing. Perhaps the best known examples are found in the
Arabian Nights, the Decameron, and the Canterbury Tales. Chau-
cer, for example, introduced in his Prologue a group of people mak-
ing a pilgrimage. Here we are told something of each of his char-
acters, how they meet at the Tabard Inn, and how they proceed on
Franco-Norman 208
their journey. This general setting may be thought of as the frame;
the stories which the various pilgrims tell along the way are stories
within the general framework, or frame-stories.
Franco-Norman: See ANGLO-NORMAN (LANGUAGE).
Free Verse: Often called vers libre and polyrhythmic verse. It is to
be distinguished from conventional VEKSE chiefly by its irregular
metrical pattern, its use of CADENCE rather than uniform metrical
feet. Even though free verse does not follow the regular RHYTHM
of the usual poetry, it has great possibilities for subtle effects; in
fact this freedom to secure a variety of rhythmical effects instead
of one is the chief justification for the existence of the form. Free
verse lives in greater rhythmical units than conventional verse. In
conventional verse the unit is the FOOT, or, perhaps, the line; in
free verse the unit is the STANZA or STROPHE.
The recent enthusiasm for vers libre may make us forget the his-
tory of the form and think of it as a twentieth-century contribution.
To do this, however, is to forget the fact that Hebrew verse (like
much Oriental poetry) is based on large rhythmical units and that
our familiar Psalms and Song of Solomon are as definitely free verse
as anything Carl Sandburg has written. Nor is the form new to
European literature: France has practised it for many years; Hein-
rich Heine used it in his The North Sea; W. E. Henley and Matthew
Arnold practised it in England; Walt Whitman shocked America
with it before 1860. Stephen Crane employed it before Amy
Lowell. It is idle to talk of the superiority of one form over another
since both are manifestations of poetic mood and temper. What is
important is that the experimentation with free verse in the twen-
tieth century has done much to free poetry from certain formal con-
ventions which might, conceivably, have mechanized it beyond all
spontaneity and life.
French Forms: (Sometimes referred to as the "fixed" poetic forms.)
A name given to certain definitely prescribed VERSE patterns which
originated in France largely during the time of the TROUBADOURS.
The more usual French forms are: BALLADE, CHANT ROYAL, PAN-
TOUM, RONDEAU, RONDEL, ROUNDEL^ SESTTNA, TRIOLET, and VIL-
LANELLE. These are all explained in their proper places in this Hand-
book.
209 Fundamental Image
Frontier Literature: In America, writing done by and on the fron-
tier or having as its subject the 
