The significance and literary ante cedents of the garrulous bird which seizes Chaucer “at a swappe” and bears him aloft “to a place, Which that hight THE HOUS OF FAME” have long been subjects of controversy. Garrett identified it with “the eagle of folk-tales who carries the hero to a high mountain.” Rambeau regarded it as “ein symbol der philosophie, aber einer sehr humoristischen art von philosophie, die ihn tröstet und mit seinem loos versöhnt.” In Sypherd's opinion, it combined “three functions—1. the messenger of a divinity; 2. the guide to a hero on his journey; 3. the helpful animal” (p. 86). Whereas Lounsbury stressed the influence of Ovid's account of Ganymede, both Rambeau and Chiarini emphasized Chaucer's indebtedness to the eagle of Dante's Commedia.

Much of the fascination—and complexity —of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales may be attributed to the elusiveness of Chaucer's point of view. Is the “I” of the General Prologue Chaucer the man, Chaucer the poet, or a persona created for the situation by the poet? In order to arrive at a satisfactory interpretation of either the Prologue or the Tales as a whole, we have first to decide as best we can who it is that is reporting to us the appearance, characters, actions, conversations, and stories of himself and his fellow pilgrims.

Freud's discovery of the unconscious at the end of the nineteenth century bids fair to be the defining factor in the intellectual life of the twentieth. Already, Freud's ideas seem to have touched everyone from the juvenile delinquent on the corner to the scholar in his study. Biography, history, literary criticism, and, not least, the study of Shakespeare, psychoanalysis has affected them all. Hamlet's Oedipus complex (thanks to Sir Laurence Olivier's film) has become as conspicuous a feature in the popular image of Shakespeare as the controversy about authorship. Freud was a psychologist, however, not a critic, and his remarks about Shakespeare, like all his literary comments, were only incidental to his main study, the mind of man. As a result, his Shakespearian insights are scattered through his works. No one, so far as I know, has clearly established just exactly what Freud said about Shakespeare or where he said it. The purpose of this article is to answer those two questions, that is, to set out in systematic form Freud's comments on, references to, and quotations from Shakespeare, and second, to provide via the footnotes a bibliography for them. I have summarized Freud's remarks in the following order: first, his remarks on Shakespeare generally; second, his views on authorship; third, the points he makes about particular plays and poems (arranged alphabetically). Within these large divisions, references are arranged in order of generality, larger topics first. Topics of equal generality within a given work are put in the order in which they appear in the work. Where Freud made more than one reference to a topic (e.g., a particular character or quotation), the references are arranged chronologically according to the time Freud made them (which may or may not coincide with the order of publication).

In his masterly study of le Sentiment de l'Amour dans I'CEuvre de Pierre Corneille, M. Octave Nadal makes one reservation regarding Polyeucte. After rooting the spiritual adventure of the martyr in the climate of conjugal love where both blood and spirit stir, M. Nadal acknowledges nonetheless a certain ambiguity in the psychology of the hero. He goes so far as to say that in Polyeucte's speeches one could easily find “des formules” which deny the heroism and grandeur of human love at the same time that “l'action même du martyr ne tend jamais qu'à les prouver et à les consacrer.” M. R. Chauviré and M. Raymond Lebègue have made similar observations.

It seems safe to say that no writer of the French Enlightenment, with the possible exception of Voltaire, has received so much attention as that strangely paradoxical genius Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We know he was born in Switzerland of French blood, was largely self-taught, and made his vagabond way across eighteenth-century France, leaving in his wake a considerable number of works, the best known of which were all highly incandescent: the two Discourses, Lettre sur les spectacles, La Nouvelle Héloïse, Le Contrat social, Emile, and the Confessions.

One of the most crucial periods in Friedrich Schlegel's life was his first stayin Paris in the years 1802–04. In these almost two years his views underwent a remarkable transformation—the radical analyst of a preponderantly literary persuasion changed into the conservative synthesist of a more decidedly philosophical-religious cast. The glories of the past were more thoroughly explored: the German and Romance Middle Ages, Sanskrit and comparative philology, European thought and its roots in the Orient. As for the present and future, the clarion call for nationalism was sounded and the road to Catholicism sketched.

Durch die geschichte der deutschen Literatur im hochsten ihrer Augenblicke geistert die Gestalt der Bettina Brentano, Frankfurterin italienischer Abkunft, ein Licht das sich als Irrlicht gab, eine ewig unruhige Flamme, nicht weit strahlend, aber unauslöschbar, auftauchend hier und dann wieder dort, lästig in seiner zitternden Unruhe, aber mit der Stetigkeit eines Naturgesetzes wiederkehrend, so füllt sie die erste Hälfte des vorigen Jahrhunderts aus. Man braucht sie nur für einen Augenblick wegzudenken und man fühlt sofort, was alles fehlen würde, wenn sie nicht da gewesen wäre. So viel Leichtes, Sprudelndes, Spontanes und Beschwingtes, das in der Literatur der Welt kaum eine Parallele besitzt, wurde uns nur in ihr geschenkt, so viel Seelensprache Dinge zu benennen, die noch ungenannt waren. Eine Virtuosin der Liebe, so scheint es, aber soviel sie von Liebe spricht, es ist nichts Lüsternes in ihr, nichts von Ungesundem, Falsch-Mondänem, nichts was an Elinor Glyn erinnern konnte. Wollte man nach einer Verwandtschaft in neuerer Zeit suchen, so wäre es die zur Grafin Fanny Reventlow, dieser ewig liebenden Sucherin nach dem Geistigen im Manne. Bettina war mehr, sehr viel mehr gegeben als der armen durchgegangenen Komtesse. Sie hatte kein Vaterhaus dem man zu entlaufen gezwungen war. Sie war relativ glücklich geboren, in ahnlichen Kreisen unter ahnlichen Verhaltnissen in derselben Stadt wie Goethe, sechsunddreissig Jahre nach ihm. Sie war Erbin alles dessen was er geschaffen hatte. Nicht gebunden in die patrizischen Sitten der alten Familien, der Gunderodes, Stallburgs, Adlerflychts und Lersners, auch nicht zugehorig zur Klasse der Ratsfamilien, die unter sich die hochsten Amter teilten und denen unter Grossvater Textors Regierung ein merkbarer Miasmus entströmte, aber wohl geboren genug um überall Zutritt zu haben. Wenn Peter Anton Brentano noch kleinburgerliche Zuge geblieben waren, seine Kinder waren Leute von Welt und Bettina war so sehr Dame, dass sie aus alien Regeln schlagen, ein freier Mensch und ganz sie selbst sein konnte, seit ihrer Heirat mit Achim von Arnim auch “bien aparantée,” so sehr, dass ihre jüngste Tochter ihre Heirat mit Herman Grimm der Familie gegenuber zunachst geheim hielt—ein Burgerlicher!

Wordsworth, said Arnold, “is one of the very chief glories of English Poetry.” From the beginning his has been a “divine vitality.” He himself was persuaded that he derived his light from heaven; and like Piccarda, who, though humbly placed, found her peace in God's will, Wordsworth, though not “pre-eminent in magnitude,” was assured that the light which came to him was, for that reason, of no less divine origin. With this persuasion some of his contemporaries and some of ours are not in accord. Their reasons, of course, are greatly various. Yet it is noteworthy that certain of those characteristics which in his own time made him slow to be accepted, in our time tend to make him poorly read or not read at all. Hence it would seem that one might say something about the characteristics in question.

Speaking of the “plan of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’” in Chapter 14 of his Biographia Literaria, Coleridge pointed out that while Wordsworth was to deal with “the wonders of the world before us,” he himself was to try to connect the human truth of “our inward nature” with the “shadows of imagination.” The fruitfulness of this connection is evidenced by “The Ancient Mariner”; its aesthetic basis was analyzed by Coleridge at a later date: “The romantic poetry,” he decided, appeals “to the imagination rather than to the senses and to the reason as contemplating our inward nature, the working of the passions in their most retired recesses.” By “exciting our internal emotions,” the poet “acquires the right and privilege of using time and space as they exist in the imagination, obedient only to the laws which the imagination acts by.” Philosophically, Coleridge's transcendentalism is obviously responsible for this assertion of the superiority of the mind over nature; he had remarked its psychological basis as early as 1805:

In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language, for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling as if that new phenomenon were the dim awakening of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature. (Anima Poetae, p. 136).

The greatest poetry, according to Hazlitt, is the “truest” poetry and therefore the most passionate; for, to communicate the essential truths of nature, a poet must feel intensely. Lesser poetry falls short by offering a limited or “abstracted” view of nature. This abstraction may be due to imitating other poets, as in the “poetry of common places”; to the poet's preoccupation with his own experience, as in the “poetry of paradox”; or to the use of “articial” materials, as in the “poetry of wit.” Each kind lacks the truth of great poetry, for each kind, in one way or another, limits the range or depth of feeling. But whereas the “poetry of common places” and the “poetry of paradox” simply have the qualities of great poetry to a lesser degree, the “poetry of wit” has a “kind and degree of excellence” of its own.

Probably no reader of Hawthorne's four major novels can have failed to notice the similarities which exist among certain of the participating heroines. It would seem that if a lady had handled her first assignment well, Hawthorne could nearly always manage to find a place for her in his next production. Hence, not only did Hester of The Scarlet Letter turn up again as Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance and as Miriam in The Marble Faun, but, even more obviously, Phoebe of The House of the Seven Gables later found parts as Priscilla in Blithedale and Hilda in The Marble Faun.

Rarement idéal poétique a été porté plus haut que celui, “enfant d'une nuit d'Idumée,” distillé dans les poèmes de Mallarmé; du moins ceux de la derniere période par lesquels, ayant cédé “l'initiative aux mots,” le Poete d'un meme mouvement decouvre et se fond à, “la notion pure.” II y a quelques années M. Albérès remarquait, a propos des exigences morales d'une génération représentée par les héros de Bernanos, Anouilh, Malraux, Julien Green, Camus ou Sartre, que notre époque, “à la suite d'autres époquès qui ont institué une morale de l'honneur, comme le treizieme siecle, ou une morale de la pudeur comme le dix-septième siècle,” institue à, son tour “une morale de la sincérité.” C'est-à-dire une morale fondée sur “un désir éperdu” d'authenticité absolue vis-a vis de soi-même, dans le bien comme dans le mal. Puisque M. Albérès nous invite à faire d'audacieux rapprochements avec d'autres epoques, il serait interessant d'opposer à cette “obsession de la sincérité” une obsession de la génération qui précéda celle de Sartre: l'obsession de la pureté.

Of late the interest in the work of Ippolito Nievo has been such as to suggest that this author has finally come into his own. Both in Italy and elsewhere, the name of this writer, who seemed permanently interred under the stern and negative judgment of Benedetto Croce, today reappears almost triumphantly. Recently the publication of Nievo's complete works was begun in Italy (Le confessioni di un italiano has already been printed by Ricciardi and II novelliere campagnuolo by Einaudi), while Le confessioni has been translated into English for the first time, under the title The Castle of Fratta (Boston, 1958). A new translation of this work has also appeared in German (the first German version was published as early as 1877, the year in which another of Nievo's novels, Angelo di bontà, was translated). Notwithstanding the widespread interest in Nievo, a critical study clarifying his position with respect to the nineteenth-century Italian novel as a whole is still lacking. Thus far, purely aesthetic judgments alone have been the concern of most scholars dealing with this author's work.

Despite the large body of Melville criticism, Melville's short stories still await a critical reappraisal. The attention the tales have received—and it is slight in relation to their importance—has frequently been marred by the critic's idée fixe on Melville which causes him to bend the material he works with to fit preconceived notions, or to approach Melville's symbolic art from so oblique an angle that he ignores dramatic and thematic elements central to Melville's perception. “I and My Chimney” is a significant case in point. In miniature this story embodies, among other things, several themes explored in Melville's other works, an implied criticism of America's “infatuate juvenility,” and particularly Melville's recurrent insistence upon what one recent critic has called “an inductive and empirical evaluation of experience.” In fact, “I and My Chimney” may be considered a thoroughgoing symbolic expression of Melville's basic epistemology.

The preconditions for a truly parallel treatment of the French and German Catholic Revival of the twentieth century do not exist. The main reason is that spiritually minded great authors like Paul Claudel or François Mauriac became fervent Catholics while German religiously minded poets like Rilke and Hofmannsthal used their cultural Catholicism for secular purposes. Of course, we still can single out certain literary productions which are comparable on the basis of their subject matter and general tendency, although they may be found rather in second-class authors. As such common topics and tendencies I am inclined to consider the following: the quasi-mystical experience of the religious conversion as a challenge to a merely para-psychological explanation of spiritual events; or the defense of the Church as the only factor of salvation against any humanistic, humanitarian, or political messages; or the praise of womanhood as inspired by the virginal motherhood of Mary, opposed to modern female emancipation and stressing of sex; or the serious explanation of evil by sin and Satan, open to spiritual cures, versus any theory of the absurdity of the world or the interpretation of evil as maladjustment open only to psychiatric therapy; or along the critical line, the fullness of specific Catholic insights, culminating in charity as a basis of an empathetic understanding of literature versus any formalism or philosophically destructive criticism.

The great importance which Emile Zola gave to physical appearance in character portrayal is well known. It seems to have escaped notice, however, that as a source of material Zola evidently tapped a curious body of pseudo-scientific theories even before he undertook the composition of the Rougon-Macquart series. These theories concern physiognomy, the recognition of character through a study of the permanent form of the human features. Exploitation of a striking corollary to this same study, evident in almost all of the Rougon-Macquart novels, is especially noted in La Fortune des Rougon and in La Bête humaine. Zola applied to creative literature the most fantastic theory of certain physiognomists: the claim that human resemblances to various animals are highly significant indices to the recognition of character.

In recent years, critical attention has focussed increasingly on The Princess Casamassima, Henry James's novel of the international revolutionary movement seething beneath the surface of society. The sad wisdom of the mid-twentieth century no longer finds incredible the plot earlier critics dismissed as footling melodrama; and with a recognition of its probability, students of James have undertaken a re-examination of the whole novel. Oddly enough, however, little attention has been paid to its reliance on Roderick Hudson, where the Princess Casamassima first appears. The one significant exception has been a short essay by Louise Bogan, though Christina's complexity and interest have attracted other writers. Yet Roderick Hudson deserves study for its own merits; and, as Miss Bogan has pointed out, the character of the Princess is difficult to interpret unless one also remembers her as Christina Light. It is not true, as Miss Bogan asserts (p. 472), that Christina is “the only figure [James] ever ‘revived’ and carried from one book to another,” for not only do Madame Grandoni and the Prince Casamassima share her transposition; the sculptor Gloriani, who makes his debut in Roderick Hudson, reappears in The Ambassadors. But it is true, as Cargill more accurately points out (p. 108), that “Christina is the only major [italics mine] character that James ever revived from an earlier work,” for he questioned the wisdom of indulging wholesale the writer's “revivalist impulse” to “go on with a character.” Hence Christina Light must have struck him as a very special case. He tells us that he felt, “toward the end of ‘Roderick,‘ that the Princess Casamassima had been launched, that, wound-up with the right silver key, she would go on a certain time by the motion communicated” (AN, p. 18). In the Preface to The Princess Casamassima he continues this train of thought: Christina Light, “extremely disponible” and knowing herself “striking, in the earlier connexion,… couldn't resign herself not to strike again” (AN, pp. 73, 74).

In 1926, coming upon Spengler's Decline of the West, Yeats was amazed and delighted. “Here is a very strange thing,” he wrote to Sturge Moore, “which will show you what I meant when I wrote of individual man not being shut up in a bottle.” While he had been drawing his diagrams for the historical sketch in A Vision, Spengler's first edition had been going through the press. Had there been some occult communication? “I can almost say… that there is no difference in our interpretation of history (an interpretation that had never occurred to anybody before) that is not accounted for by his great and my slight erudition.” Though Yeats exaggerated, the similarities are substantial; but the means of communication are more various than he wished to allow. Many of Spengler's views were far from novel; and Yeats's early acquaintance with philosophies of history was much broader than his disclaimers of erudition imply. In fact, by 1895 his own historical symbolism was taking clear form; and like Spengler's system, it was amply nourished by the common thought of nineteenth-century Europe.

Les trois points de vue qui seront successivement adoptés peuvent être considérés comme dérivés des trois mots du titre de la pièce. L'examen de la mythologie est dicté par le mot “Godot.” En attendant Godot, les personnages parlent; nous examinerons le statut de leur langage. Les résultats négatifs obtenus au cours de ces deux premières démarches dévoilent ce qui reste positif dans le sens de la pièce: l'attente. Les numéros entre parenthèses dans la suite de Particle renvoient aux pages de En attendant Godot (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1952).