In 1621 Lope de Vega published his El Perseo, and Calderon followed in 1653 with Las Fortunas de Perseo y Andrómeda on the same subject. Both dramatists so embellished the narrative of Ovid, their common source, with their own inventions for the most part and to a lesser degree with accretions gathered during centuries of transmission as to make those features the subject of pertinent inquiry. A statement of the main incidents of the myth will facilitate our study. Danäe, having been exposed after the birth of her son, Perseus, in the tower, was cast on the island of Seriphus. There she became the wife of its king, Polydectes, who, finding Perseus an obstacle to his designs, induced him to undertake the slaugher of Medusa. Perseus accomplished the feat with the aid of a magic wand (sandals) and a sword, both the gift of Mercury, and a shield from Pallas. He also secured the Gorgon's head. While returning from Africa he rescued Andromeda, who was exposed on a cliff in Ethiopia to the visitation of a sea monster.

A study of Barbey d'Aurevilly‘s “Le Rideau cramoisi” and Stendhal's Le Rouge et le noir provides insights into the functioning of allusion as an artistic device. Barbey, with his use of Stendhal's masterpiece, was probably appealing to a group of ardent stendhaliens forming as early as the 1850's. Where a feeling for the rather equivocal reactions aroused in Le Rouge et le noir‘s nineteenth-century readers may be obtained from a perusal of the epoch's criticism, a deeper understanding of the novel arises from an analysis of “Le Rideau cramoisi.” On the levels of vocabulary, imagery, character, and plot, Barbey's story alludes to the earlier work. Within “Le Rideau,” the allusion works in the fashion of a gradually enlarging metaphor. Like metaphor, Barbey's allusion has two terms: Le Rouge et le noir and Brassard's tale. The two terms work as a unit in the framework of the whole story to intensify those elements shared with Le Rouge—an egotistical protagonist incapable of preventing himself from violating the codes of honor and hospitality. Moreover, the allusion serves as the principal means for eliciting the central theme of diabolism. The masterful use of this artistic device partially explains both the continuing interest aroused by “Le Rideau cramoisi” and its power.

Virginia Woolf interweaves allusion and image to construct character, define theme, and structure Mrs. Dalloway. Shakespearean allusions combined with mineral and flower imagery identify Lady Bruton and Sally Seton as representatives of the dying aristocracy and the flourishing industrial class. They also embody the alternatives open to Clarissa: sterile aristocratic society or life-giving passion. An allusion to the dirge from Cymbeline sounds the theme of death and rebirth echoed in Peter's dream, the beggarwoman's song, and Septimus' and Clarissa's experiences. Quotations from the dirge and a complex of symbols originating in its heat and cold imagery link Septimus' and Clarissa's successive deaths and rebirths. A modern incarnation of the dying god archetype, Septimus ultimately gives Clarissa new life through his death.

The comparatively recent appearance of a new edition of The Tragic Muse might in itself justify a re-examination of the novel with a view to a somewhat fuller understanding of its significance in the development of Henry James's literary career. We might recall two biographical facts that also encourage reinvestigation of the novel of 1890. First, James intended to write no more novels after The Tragic Muse. He wrote succinctly to his brother William: “The Tragic Muse is to be my last long novel. For the rest of my life I hope to do lots of short things with irresponsible spaces between them.” Thus, we might not unreasonably expect to find in this farewell to the large form a final expression of his ideas on the art, or at least something of an apologia for his life as a novelist. Second, James had decided while at work on this book to begin a career as a dramatist and thus realize what he had called “the most cherished of all my projects.” (In December 1888, Edward Compton urged him to dramatize The American.) We might then also look in the novel for an indication of James's real attitude to this new phase of his career as an artist. The expression of these two will, of course, take the form of metaphor, since The Tragic Muse is neither a literary essay nor an autobiography, but a novel.

Some of the plays published in the Shakespeare Folio of 1623 show in their different parts very great inequalities in style and in dramatic effectiveness. In some places these differences become so marked that the question is forced upon the attentive reader,—Can this play be wholly the work of Shakespeare ?

Throughout the first decade of the nineteenth century, Ethan Allen Greenwood, a rather pedantic young diarist, each day recorded the weather and the title of the book he was reading. He sometimes observed that a particular work was “instructive” or “entertaining” and occasionally noted the library from which the volume was borrowed–the Adelphi Fraternity Library, the Social Friends Library, or the unnamed circulating library he joined in 1806. His meticulous account of his activities and expenses–whether he was living at home in Worcester County, Massachusetts, or at Dartmouth College or later in Boston or traveling around the countryside as an itinerant painter–provides posterity with an unusually comprehensive portrait of “Ethan Allen Greenwood, his life and times.” Looking over the record that he left, we can well imagine that we know this serious and sober, parsimonious and abstemious young man Franklinesquely working his way toward fame and fortune. But then we encounter a curious diary entry: “Rode out with the ladies. Returned and spent the evening agreeably. What I do not write here will not be forgotten.”

In a note appended to his novel The Fountain (New York, 1932), Charles Morgan explains why he names certain of his characters as he does. “A novelist,” he says, “may suggest ancient nobility in England by an invented name, but the great aristocracy of Holland is so narrowly restricted arid so well known that any fictitious title would give a false, and probably ridiculous, impression. I have therefore been bound to choose, in van Leyden, the name of a noble family extinct before my own sojourn in Holland. It has the right ring” (p. 450). Certainly few novelists treating of “ancient nobility in England” have allowed themselves to be hampered by any such scruples as Morgan's; and a complete peerage (and baronetage) of British fiction, running from magnates as illustrious as the Pallisers, Dukes of Omnium, and the Tanville-Tankertons, Dukes of Dorset, down to such small fry as Sir Pitt Crawley and Sir Alastair Digby-Vane-Trumpington, Barts., would be an imposing monument to the exuberance of the story-writer's fertility in the invention of “aristocratic” names and titles. It has not perhaps been sufficiently remarked that Jane Austen's practice in this matter stands in rather striking contrast to that of most of her fellow novelists; that when she creates families with any pretensions to gentle birth, she almost always endows them with names belonging to actual British families, sometimes with an extinct title of nobility, sometimes with a living one.

The focal dimension of Dostoevsky's creative effort in his later period is his compelling esthetic and metaphysical concern with ultimate violence, particularly in its doctrinaire or ideological aspect. The act of murder is seen as a “crime of reason,” an outgrowth of modern man's autarkic intellect. It is this “crime of reason” in accordance with his metaphysical esthetics that Dostoevsky constitutes as the transgression but also a potential felix culpa leading through suffering and expiation to ultimate rebirth. Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov each present an individuated version of this archetypal scheme. Raskolnikov emerges at the end of Crime and Punishment on the threshold of “a new life.” In The Possessed, Stavrogin's potentially “positive” performance perverts itself into “a quest for damnation.” Dmitri Karamazov undergoes spiritual regeneration even though falling short of complete redemption. In thus restating the timeless relevance of the archetypal pattern of rebirth through sin and expiation, Dostoevsky brings a mythical perspective to his vision of the Russia of his time.

to Regard the Merchant's tale simply as a conventional piece of anti-feminist literature, exemplifying the faithlessness of married women, is to overlook the Merchant's simultaneous concern with the role of the husband in matrimony and with his joint responsibility for the success or failure of his marriage. That responsibility is brought out in the course of the argument which takes place between January and his brethren when the old knight announces his intention of wedding a young girl. The debate emphasizes the folly of the proposed step, as much through the sycophantic approval of Placebo as through the objective and wise warnings of Justinus. But it is more than a question of folly. The Merchant draws attention to the knight's lechery, his indifference to a young woman's feelings, and his jealousy; and these weaknesses are stressed as the counterparts to May's wantonness, her indifference to January's feelings, and her infidelity. If May does wrong in breaking her marriage vows, January is also at fault in marrying for completely selfish reasons; and from the medieval theological standpoint, he is clearly wrong in arguing (E 1836–41) that in wedlock his lechery is not sinful.

In a recent article on “The Sources of the Restoration Heroic Play,” Mr. William S. Clark discusses Elizabethan and French influences on heroic drama and supports the claim made by Sir Walter Scott, a century ago, that the heroic plays must be regarded as “the legitimate offspring” of the French heroic romances. Concerning the English influence, Mr. Clark observes: “In the face of this extensive dependence upon French suggestions the resemblances between the heroic plays and the English drama of earlier periods come to have much less significance.” Indeed, he regards as erroneous the opinion of scholars who have maintained that earlier English drama influenced “to a large degree” the heroic drama of the Restoration.

Gröber, in his history of Romance philology, recognizes Fauchet as the man who founded the study of mediaeval French literature “soweit es die ihm zugänglichen Hss. gestatteten.” England had to wait another two hundred years till Sharon Turner did her a like service with his History of England from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest (1795-1805). Fauchet was also a political historian of the mediaeval period, but in this field he had an illustrious predecessor, in the person of Jean Dutillet (d. 1570), lawyer and secretary to Henry II of France. This able man was commissioned by his king to investigate the trésor des chartres; the result was a six-volume report, La France ancienne, du gouvernement des trois estats en l'ordre de la justice de France avec les changements qui sont arrivés. This is the first modern history of a mediaeval period (the Capetian dynasty), and Dutillet followed it with treatises on the Albigensian Crusade and the Gallican Church, which were published after his death. Fauchet, following in Dutillet's footsteps, but on his own initiative, took as his province the first two dynasties of France. Before taking up the subject of his library it may be well to summarize what is known of Fauchet's life and work.

There is abundant evidence for the assertion that Shelley at one time thought of devoting all his talents to the study of metaphysics. On August 1, 1811, in a letter to Stockdale, Shelley writes:

My studies have been, since my writing it [St. Irvyne], of a more serious nature. I am at present engaged in completing a series of moral and metaphysical essays.

A recent critic declares of John Donne: “He had none of that enthusiasm for Greek culture which distinguished More, Colet, and Ascham. He appears to have studied certain Greek authors in Latin translations. . . . . His learning was chiefly of the Mediaeval type.” No evidence, it is true, comes forward to establish Donne's acquaintance at first hand with Greek authors. At the same time, an examination of the allusions to Greek mythology in the poetry of Donne makes it clear that he had part in the all-but-universal interest of the Elizabethans in classical material, and that he uses this material with characteristic independence and originality.

The meaning of the four dialogues entitled Cymbalum mundi (published in 1537) is still enigmatic and it is to be feared that the aura of mystery which hovers over this witty, graceful work of incipient French humanism has repelled many readers whereas the Joyeux devis et nouvelles récréactions of the same author have, from La Fontaine to the present day, found a sympathetically appreciative public. It is our conviction that when some of the clouds which weigh heavily on the Cymbalum have been dispersed, this work, so full of genuine esprit gaulois and of a levity borrowed from Greece, will emerge in its true light.

Among the numerous pieces of verse in the Exeter Book, one to which comparatively little critical attention has been devoted is the Harrowing of Hell. The only special studies of this poem were made many years ago, by J. H. Kirkland and Julius Cramer, though it has, of course, been discussed more or less casually in the several recent editions of the Exeter Codex.

Interpretations of Coleridge's Kubla Khan have varied widely. The commonest view has always been that the poem is a beautiful meaningless vision, “delicious nonsense” to be read or heard as pure music. Many ingenious and some over-ingenious explanations have however been published, the most extraordinary being that of Mr. Robert Graves, which Professor Lowes demolished with obvious gusto. According to this theory Mrs. Coleridge is represented in the “Abyssinian maid” whose music the poet could not remember; the “caves of ice” are Dorothy Wordsworth, whose love for Coleridge is thus shown to be purely intellectual; and the closing lines of the poem describe Coleridge's own superego getting after him about his opium. After this pseudo-Freudian flight, a mere literal interpretation will no doubt come as an anti-climax. It seems necessary now, however, to revise certain traditions, most of them outgrowths of Coleridge's own note prefixed to the poem upon its publication in the Christabel volume of 1816. The note is too familiar to require full quotation. The poet says that he had been prescribed an “anodyne, … from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair” while reading Purchas. “The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.” “On awaking,” Coleridge continues, with what seemed a complete recollection of the whole, he “instantly and eagerly” wrote down the lines that are preserved. After an interruption by a man from Porlock on business, he was unable to recall the rest.

In 1984, Orwell rejects moral justifications for the exercise of power and confronts it as an end in itself. When viewed in this way, the pursuit of power takes on the contours of a game. The concept of play throws light on O'Brien's role in 1984, and a perspective borrowed from game theory clarifies Winston Smith s participation in the contest between tormentor and victim, showing that both share a frame of reference and fundamental values. Examining these values leads to a critique of Orwell's androcentrism and misogyny. Only in a culture that disparages the female while accepting the male as the model for the species could it have gone unremarked that 1984 concerns the interaction of two men. Orwell saw that the pursuit of power posed dangers to humanity but could not see this activity as merely an extreme form of conventional masculine behavior. Caught in this contradiction, Orwell despaired.

The term “moral sense” is generally credited to Shaftesbury; in any case he is the one who gave it currency. At the time he introduced it the reigning authorities in ethical theory were, on the one hand, Hobbes, who declared: “Justice is the keeping of valid convenants; injustice the non-performance of them;” and, on the other, Locke and the orthodox party, generally, who held that “the true ground of morality can only be the Will and Law of God.”