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The Power of Poetic Vision
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Three weeks ago this evening, Edward R. Murrow, on his televised “Small World” program, asked two distinguished poets if they could cite any instance of a poem directly affecting history. The distingished poets had no answer, I am sorry to say. They had a chance, literally, to tell the world; but, in the language of baseball, they muffed it. Yet there is a wonderfully clear instance of a poem directly affecting history—making history, indeed—and this is the subject of my paper.
- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1959
Footnotes
*
A revised version of a paper published in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Societycii, iv (Aug. 1958).
References
1 Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederic W. Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I (Cambridge, 1911), i, 499.
2 Ibid., i, 500.
3 DNB s.v. “Littleton, Sir Thomas.”
4 Attorney General vs. Downing, Notes and Judgments Delivered in Different Courts by the Right Honourable Sir John Eardly Wilmot, Knt. (London, 1802).
5 Pollock and Maitland, i, 23–24.
6 Piers Plowman: A Contribution to the History of English Mysticism (London, 1894), p. 23.
7 A modern English version of the “B” text. The “B” text is published in The vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman in three parallel texts by William Langland: Edited from numerous manuscripts… by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat (Oxford, 1886), I, 228. The relevant “B” text follows:
And amende mesondieux there-myde and mysese folke helpe,
And wikked wayes wijtlich hem amende;
And do bote to brugges that to-broke were,
Marien maydenes or maken hem nonnes;
Pore peple and prisounes fynden.hem here fode,
And sette scoleres to schole or to somme other craftes;
Releue religioun and renten hem bettere…
8 Walter W. Skeat, quoted in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. “Langland, William.”
9 For the relevant “A,” “B,” and “C” texts, see Skeat, i, 228–229.
10 Frankalmoign was the tenure by which religious corporations held lands, on condition of praying for the souls of donors and their heirs or of performing other religious services.
11 Pollock and Maitland, i, 112.
12 It is, of course, true that Chapter vi of the Laws of 39 Elizabeth took an important step along these lines, but not as complete as 43 Elizabeth, Chapter iv.