In his preface to Homeward Bound Cooper tells the reader that this book

Every life is said to contain enough material to fill one novel; but Gustave Flaubert attempted three times to give some account of his adolescence; at the age of seventeen he finished Les Mémoires d'un Fou (1838), at twenty-one Novembre (1842), at twenty-four the first version of L'Education sentimentale. The first two novels he struck off rapidly; the last occupied him for two years.

Few of Shelley's poems have received a wider variety of explanations and interpretations than Alastor. Most critics would probably admit that the poem is difficult, and some would even go so far as to say that a clear understanding of it is impossible, agreeing with Havens that “the reader of Alastor is confused because its author was confused.”1 Hoffman attempts to explain it as largely autobiographical,2 while Mueschke and Griggs come to the conclusion that the prototype of the poet is Wordsworth.3 The poet's vision has also been interpreted in a number of ingenious ways. Woodberry calls it “Alastor or evil genius,” which “drives him on in search of its own phantasm till he dies.”4 Du Bois describes it as “a materialization of an ideal man, free, true, beautiful, loving poetry,”5 and Forman believes that it is the ideal of female perfection.6 The Preface has also given difficulty. Havens complains that the statements of the Preface are at variance with the action of the poem,7 Du Bois believes that there is no inconsistency,8 and Stevens, Beck, and Snow that the difference is only one of emphasis.9 It is hoped that the present discussion will add clarity rather than confusion to the understanding of this early example of Shelley's deep-set convictions and powers of imagery.

Bedürfte es eines Vorwandes, immer wieder sinnend und grübelnd zum Helena-Akt des II. Faust zurückzukehren, er ließe sich leicht in Goethes Aufforderung an seine Freunde finden, dem “Verdeckten” in dem lang und weit Bekannten forschend nachzuspüren. Ein Fühlender, so schreibt Goethe, “wird dasjenige durchdringen, was gemütlich hie und da verdeckt liegt: Eleusis servat quod ostendat revisentibus, und es soll mich freuen, wenn diesmal auch das Geheimnisvolle zu öfterer Rückkehr den Freunden Veranlassung gibt.” Wie oft er auch sich darauf berufen haben mag, daß an dem zweiten Teil der großen Dichtung “der Verstand mehr Recht habe” als am ersten, so hat er doch gern mit verschmitzten Anspielungen auf das Dunkle und Unergründliche hingedeutet, “was da hineingeheimnißet ist.” So mag es denn auch nicht ganz abwegig scheinen, aus der Masse des Helena-Zwischenspiels eine “Reflexion” herauszuheben, die von der Faust-Deutung bisher nie aufgegriffen wurde: der Erdenwandel Helenas als das Abbild der Ueberwindung des mythischgebundenen Menschen.

The book to be discussed brings to mind a fascinating chapter of the fossil record of the evolution of life. Some two hundred million years ago, the geologists tell us, the Ammonites began to make their appearance among the crustaceans. Starting from modest and primitive beginnings, they were destined for a notable future. In the course of ages a million times beyond the span of human memory they grew in size and complexity, attaining to functional perfection of their chambered septa and streamlined beauty of their spiral convolutions. They grew in numbers until they came to dominate the scene of teeming marine life. Then a change set in. The conservative classical form of the shell gave way to striking variations. It is as if the ingenuity of the race had suddenly abandoned itself to an orgy of formal experiments. The curves became more intricate and capricious, producing a bewildering variety of scallops and flutings, spirals and fantastic ornaments and an equally bewildering range of sizes and proportions. The whole genus seemed to be off balance, to be skidding erratically along the screen of evolutionary Time. Then, suddenly, when this giddy orgy seemed to have reached its climax the whole genus disappeared, as though a relentless hand had blotted it from the screen once and for all.

Shelley composed “Mont Blanc” upon the occasion of his first visit to the Swiss Alps. “The immensity of these aerial summits,” he tells us, “excited when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of extatic [sic] wonder, not unallied to madness.” Of “Mont Blanc,” which resulted from this experience, he says that “it was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe,” and then evidently aware of the poem's difficulty, describes it as “an undisciplined overflowing of the soul.”

The character of Caliban continues to be a source of speculation to readers of The Tempest, but gradually we are learning those elements of sixteenth-century thought which suggested him to Shakespeare. Some years ago Mr. Morton Luce pointed out that Caliban can be viewed in three separate ways: 1) as a hag-born monstrosity, 2) as a slave, and 3) as a savage, or dispossessed Indian. The second of these ways may be explained by the third, since the English could read many accounts of the manner in which the Spaniards had reduced the Indians to slavery. But, while Caliban worships a Patagonian god, he is the child of an African witch from Argier (Algiers). This would seem to indicate that Shakespeare is not trying to represent primarily a red Indian from the New World but has broadened the conception to represent primitive man as a type. The name Caliban, a metathesis of canibal, supports this view, for contemporary voyagers, as well as early travelers from Homer and Herodotus to Mandeville, had found cannibals in many different quarters of the world.

To attempt any definition of the novel has become an increasingly risky business. Yet many an otherwise cautious student finds license to treat that genre as though it were synonymous with the character sketch. This attitude reaches its extreme in the preparation of “repertories” or “ditionaries” of a novelist's characters. There are, for example, the May Rodgers and M. F. A. Husband dictionaries of the Waverley characters, and the Cerfberr and Christophe repertory of the Human Comedy; there are no less than three Dickens dictionaries—those of Philip and Gadd, A. L. Hay ward, and Pierce; and there are J. G. Patterson's and F. C. Ramond's repertories for the Rougon-Macquart series. These works are eloquent of industry, patience, and enthusiasm. They show that each of the four novelists has to his credit some 2,000 characters. They offer, too, an admirable list of names, titles, professions, and activities, all from the brain and pen of one creator. Although these dictionaries afford pleasant moments to their authors and readers, beyond that they do not offer much answer to a student's queries. They do not tell of the function of each character in a story which was also the creation of the novelist.

John Millington Synge's first play is in many respects one of his most important works. It embodies that “dialectical synthesis of the naturalistic tradition and the symbolistic reaction” which, as Mr. Harry Levin has recently pointed out, Synge stated as being the great problem to be solved by the artist of his time. Criticism of The Shadow of the Glen has been mostly concerned with proving that its Irishness is spurious. Very few critics have seen that the most interesting thing about the play is Synge's happy facility in combining the realistic with the symbolistic.

At the end of Canto VIII of the Inferno we read that the devils shut the gates of Dis against Vergil, leaving him—the context suggests—pale with anger. Dante, who had himself turned pale with fear on seeing his leader's change of color, says at the beginning of the next canto: ‘That color which cowardize pinse in (or ‘on′) me, as I saw my leader turn back, the more quickly repressed within him his own new color';1 that is, caused him to dissemble, for Dante's sake, his own evidences of perturbation. “Pinse,” in this context, is interpreted “painted” (Italian “dipinto”) by part of the commentators and translators, and by the rest “pushed forth,” “brought out,” “impressed,” “imprinted,” etc. (among the Italian commentators “spinse,” or “sospinse”). Among the later interpreters there is rather a distinct leaning away from the former explanation: while Scartazzini hesitates, for instance, Vandelli says “spinse,” and Grandgent shifts from “painted” to “pushed forth” between his first and second editions. Perhaps Vittorio Rossi's authoritative voice may be accountable for this; he says: ‘Fuor mi spinse is contrasted to “dentro ristrinse” of verse 3; which seems to me to exclude the more common interpretation: “painted on my countenance.” ‘

Reading Mes Cahiers, one is struck by the large share accorded to Pascal in the meditations of Maurice Barrès, a share which does not always appear reflected in Barrès's finished work. Barres tells us that, at twenty, his favorite writers included Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Goethe, Cervantes, and Pascal. But is was not until some time later that Pascal came to be the lode-star of the middle decades of his life. There were readers who linked his Culte du Moi with Pascal's analysis of the self, but such readers did not come until after this Culte du Moi could be retrospectively interpreted in relation to his nationalism and to his increasing impulsion toward Catholicism. It was inevitable that the skeptic and individualist should have been impressed by Pascal as a hero of independent thought. Added to this was the interest naturally felt by the artist and patriot for one of the unchallenged glories of French literature. And when the Lorrainer began to delve among the roots of the Auvergne side of his family, he would not have been the exponent of “la Terre et les Morts,” if his imagination had not been stirred by the fact that Pascal too, was from Auvergne.

Is Endymion Keats's hymn to Platonism or to some related form of idealism? Is Cynthia a symbol of Plato's absolute Beauty or one of its derivatives? Is the shepherd-hero really a poet in disguise, a poet yearning for mystic union with transcendent, intellectual Beauty? With minor qualifications, an affirmative answer can be said to characterize the trend of criticism during the last sixty years.

The Tinker's Wedding is the most unattractive of the plays of J. M. Synge. This unruly little farce, the only two-act play Synge attempted, has been generally labelled an ugly duckling. But the manuscript drafts of the play tell an interesting story which, if it does not cause us to revise our estimate of the play, assigns it a proper place in the Synge canon and partly explains its deficiencies. The manuscripts show, for instance, that The Tinker's Wedding was the dramatist's first attempt to break away from the one-act form and that possibly Synge's only mistake was in publishing the results of his experiment. They afford an interesting insight into Synge's method; and they include, in an earlier version of the preface to the play an apology to the Irish clergy. They also throw light on Synge's development toward the mastery of the full, three-act play.

In meinem Beitrag zur Evans-Festschrift (“Um Grundsätzliches in der Märchenforschung”) handelte es sich vornehmlich um das Problem der Beziehungen von Märchen und Literatur zueinander, um die Frage nämlich, ob das Eingreifen eines ‘Märchenpflegers,’ dh. eines Schriftstellers, das Volksmärchen dauernd zu beeinflussen und zu ändern vermag oder ob die echte Volkstradition sich im Grunde doch nicht von literarischen Vorgängen in der intellektuellen Oberschicht stören läßt. Ich versuchte an Beispielen zu zeigen, daß durch eine im Wesen der vielfachen, parallelen mündlichen Überlieferung liegende Selbstkorrektur das Volksmärchen selbst nach ausgedehnten Wanderungen durch mehrere Sprachgebiete und durch lange Jahrhunderte seine ursprüngliche Struktur zu erhalten weiß und daß literarische Umformungen nur von beschränkter Wirkung sind. Immer vorausgesetzt bleibt bei diesem Ergebnis natürlich die grundsätzliche Annahme aller wissenschaftlichen Märchenforschung von heute, daß die meisten Märchen ‘Kunstmärchen im Volksmunde’ sind, daß am Anfange der Überlieferung eines bestimmten Märchens eine Urform anzunehmen ist, die eine kunstvolle, in sich geschlossene logische Motivfolge aufwies und deren Struktur ‘so und nicht anders’ aus der schöpferischen Phantasie eines anonymen Erzählers entsprang.

In three of his stories, “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “Mesmeric Revelation,” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” Edgar Allan Poe reflected the interest of his day in what was by all odds the most fascinating of the new “sciences.” Mesmerism, first as a somewhat frightening novelty in the hands of its “discoverer,” Anton Mesmer, during the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and then as the handmaiden of medicine in the first half of the nineteenth century, had achieved enormous popularity throughout Europe and the United States.1 To compare such popularity with the spread of the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler in the twentieth century is to make but a feeble analogy, considering the difference in time and the development of science between the two ages. In addition, the interest manifested in mesmerism contained far more sensationalism and mysticism, and therefore had a more direct and widespread appeal. The extent of interest becomes clear when it is realized that in 1815 a commission was appointed in Russia to investigate animal magnetism, with a “magnetical” clinic being subsequently established near Moscow; that by 1817 doctors in Prussia and in Denmark were the only ones authorized to practice mesmerism, and were compelled to submit their findings to royal commissions; and that by 1835 a clinic had been established in Holland, and in Sweden theses on the subject were accepted for the doctorate.2