One of the most powerful stories in James Joyce's Dubliners is “A Painful Case.” Much of its strength lies in its deep concern with two basic human experiences, love and death. Yet Joyce seems somehow less concerned with these in themselves than with the personality of his main character, James Duffy. The author's intense analysis of the intellectual and emotional life of this protagonist has made possible the assumption that Joyce himself is Mr. Duffy. Events in the author's life are seemingly paralleled by occurrences in Duffy's life. Both men enjoy, and yet suffer from, the exile which they have imposed upon themselves: “Duffy … wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen.”

The pastoral works of the seventeenth-century poet and eulogist, Sigmund von Birken, are variations of a single glorified hymn of praise, directed all to the virtual apotheosis of powerful patrons and prospective noble sponsors. Such exaggerated eulogies were, however, not unusual in this era; rather they were of prime importance. “Although by far the majority of writers did not come from court circles at this time, still an author had to win favor in some court if he was to be successful. The best way to do so was to dedicate a work to a patron, a prince, or at least a great and powerful man.” Aside from dedications, another variety of encomiastic writing was developed for this same purpose. This genre Opitz termed the “Schäfferey.”

Writing of the Dunciad in the year 1745, a rather obscure biographer and critic of Alexander Pope said: “As the Scenery of this Poem changes, and new Characters appear, the ingenious Author has follow'd the dramatick Rule, of shewing the Humour of each Character the stronger, by shewing a contrast Character to it.” Then, speaking more particularly of Dunciad Four, the same writer continues: “The last Scene of the Poem (to keep to my dramatick Parallel) which is to produce the Catastrophe, ends with great Propriety. The Stage is full of all the Goddess's [i.e., the Goddess of Dulness] Votaries, whom she receives with Pleasure. . . .”

Resolve as one may to keep to the main road,” Melville wrote in Billy Budd, “some bypaths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. Beckoned by the genius of Nelson, knowingly, I am going to err in such a bypath.” With these words of caution to the reader who might object to the “literary sin” of digression, the author of Moby Dick launched into a spirited encomium upon the heroism of Lord Nelson, defending the Admiral against any “martial utilitarians” and “Benthamites of war” who might interpret his acts of “bravado” at Trafalgar which had resulted in his death to have been foolhardy and vain. For what reason, the question arises, did Melville feel that the eulogy on Nelson could justifiably be included in Billy Budd? What is the meaning of the attack upon Benthamites and utilitarians? This was no pot-boiler which required padding; surely his inclusion of the highly emotional defense of Nelson is significant for other reasons than that the chapter makes “more understandable Melville's hearty interest in martial exploits, sayings, and songs.”

It is dangerous writing on marble, where one cannot make errata, or mend in a second edition,“ Jonathan Swift once remarked about an epitaph to be placed in St. Patrick's Cathedral. The Latin phrases he framed for his own epitaph, to be set up in that cathedral in Dublin, have been variously considered ”scarce intelligible,“ ”terrible,“ the ”best clue to Swift,“ and ”the greatest epitaph in history.“ They have more than once been offered as proof that he was not deeply a Christian but that he ”hated the chains of oppression more than the shackles of sin.“ Because of W. B. Yeats's version of it in the form of English verse, Swift's epitaph now has a double identity: as an unusually controversial eighteenth-century biographical document, and as a familiar twentieth-century work of literature.

Of Shakespeare's four great tragedies the Christian overtones of Othello have been least apprehended. Critics have seen in. it a noble soul caught in the toils of a diabolically cunning being, who tempts him to doubt the divine goodness of one in whom he has absolute faith, but they have failed to see the symbolic force of the characters and the action. For the Elizabethans, however, the noble soul of Othello, the diabolic cunning of Iago, and (he divine goodness of Desdemona would not have had a loosely metaphoric meaning. Desdemona, who in her forgiveness and perfect love, a love requited by death, is reminiscent of Christ, would have represented Christian values; Iago, who in his envious hatred and destructive negativism is reminiscent of Satan, would have represented anti-Christian values. The choice that Othello had to make was between Christian love and forgiveness and Satanic hate and vengefulness. When he exclaimed (III.iii.447—149), “Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow celli / Yield up, 0 love, thy crown and hearted throne / To tyrannous hate,” he was succumbing to the devil, and, like all men who succumb to the devil, his fall was reminiscent of that of Adam.

The critical history of Molière's Dom Juan is full of uncertainties and controversy on literary and many other grounds. Among its competent critics there seems to be no clear-cut decision for or against the play. Its enemies willingly ascribe to it a high degree of excellence, even to calling it a masterpiece. Its friends, not all of whom agree that it is such, are equally willing to find fault with much of it. Friend or foe, those who call it a masterpiece do not say with any precision what they mean: There is a marked tendency on the part of most writers to pass it over with a minimum of comment of any kind.

This paper is a continuation of two earlier articles on Nietzsche's attitude toward Luther. In his first creative period ending with Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Nietzsche had sung the praises of Luther and the Reformation. Martin Luther was one of his proudly acknowledged heroes, together with such men as Richard Wagner and Arthur Schopenhauer. Nietzsche chose to see in Luther one of his spiritual forebears and in the Reformation a definite harbinger of modern culture. Strongly opposed to Roman Catholicism, young Nietzsche let all the light fall on Protestantism and especially upon its fountainhead, Martin Luther. He was convinced that a progressive spirit manifested itself in sixteenth-century Protestant Germany. He thoroughly approved of it and admonished his contemporaries to ally themselves with the mind that was in Martin Luther and to hold fast to the heritage of the German Reformation.

This paper is an attempt to define the structure, and in particular the structure of Books I-IV, of The Faerie Queene. This is a subject which has received a fair share of scholarly attention over the past twenty years; such novelty as this essay may claim lies in the basis of the argument, which is the poem itself rather than the evidence external to the poem, and the poem as we have it rather than the poem as, according to the theories of the critics, it once was or ought to have been. For the usual method of approach to the problem has been somewhat as follows: first, certain dated documents have been used as a basis for theories about the form of the poem at this or that stage of its development before 1590; secondly, failures of narrative logic in the poem have been used as a basis for an argument that the poem's narratives were once logical where they are now illogical; that is, that versions of the poem different from, and more logical than, the present version once existed. Both kinds of evidence have been used by the critics with a common object: to show that earlier versions of the poem existed, and that they are more or less detectable in the present version, and definable; whence, by comparison of the present version with the reconstructed primitive versions, and by observation of the development of the one from the other, light may be cast on Spenser's method of working, and various unsatisfactory features of the present poem's structure may be explained.

Rudolf Borchardt once referred to Quirinus Kuhlmann as the greatest and most dangerous poet in German literature. Whether we agree with such a sweeping judgment or not, we can at least safely describe him as one of the most completely neglected of all important German poets. This neglect is partly the result of the rarity of most of his works and partly the result of the persistence of the eighteenth-century lack of sympathy for the problems of religious mysticism and illumination. The source for almost all of the studies of Kuhlmann has been the essay by J. C. F. Adelung in his Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheil. The title reveals clearly the partisan nature of his work. In this study, one of a series on Kuhlmann, we shall attempt to cast light on bis early years and on the gradual progress of his religious thought until he becomes converted to the belief in the imminent coming of the millennium.

The fame of Abraham Vander-Mylius (Abraham van der Myl, 1563-1637) as a linguist persisted through many generations. The Lingua Belgica of the Dutch theologian, which appeared at Leiden in 1612, had a clarity, freshness, and persuasiveness which were vital factors in establishing its reputation. Even today, the work has value as revealing, both explicitly and implicitly, views on language that were current in the author's time. This article is particularly concerned with the attitude which Mylius displayed toward the historical, diachronic aspects of language. The primary aim is to present as clearly as possible Mylius' own views on this phase of language; only incidentally are we concerned with his sources.

When Iago addresses to Othello his homily on values—“Good name ... / Is the ... jewel of their souls. / Who steals my purse steals trash” (III.iii.155-157)—he chooses words so compact and memorizable that they have come into a kind of separate fame, and, like any other purple passage, seem a special added attraction, displayed for admiration during a brief pause in the forward movement, But these quotable lines are closely integrated into the drama, for they imply much that has taken place and much of the character of Iago. They are to be read, not as a neat package of proverbial wisdom, but as an index and a recapitulation, which is to say that their dramatic life extends far beyond the scene in which they occur.

The old question: Why did Milton's Adam and Eve disobey the Divine Commandment? continues to provoke conflicting answers and consequently diverse accounts of the meaning of Paradiae Lost. That Milton's epic is, like King Laar, or Faust, or Moby Dick, a work able to sustain many seemingly-contrary interpretations—that in fact it contains them all to some degree—is clear to anyone who will reread the poem at intervals, following the lead first of one and then another critical guide. But this richness of implication has obscured the real logical handicap assumed by anyone who attempts to find the ultimate origins of the narrative action in what is familiar to us as occasion or motivation—in a word, in cause.

Robert browning'S Love Among the Ruins (1855) is comprised chiefly of descriptions of a once-great capital city—its present desolate site as contrasted with the city's magnificence in the ancient days of its splendor. William C. DeVane suggests that the poem is “a vivid recollection of the Italian scene, or perhaps of some picture which Browning had recently seen in the Louvre.” Three critics maintain the Roman Campagna to be the scene which Browning had in mind, but cite no descriptions of this area pertinent to the poem. Bernhard Fehr shows that the city of the poem resembles the description of Babylon given in the History of Herodotus and the Apocalypse of St. John. Robert A. Law suggests that Browning drew upon i Chronicles for two images and thus had in mind Jerusalem. A recent commentator proposes that the poem was suggested by some remarks on the transience of great cities in Letter cxvii of Goldsmith's Citizen of the World.

“Christis Kirk, on the Grene” and “Peblis to the Play” are no doubt the most popular and most frequently published works in Middle Scots literature; yet almost nothing has been written about them. This study aims to throw some light on them by viewing them as examples of the “peasant-brawl,” a popular literary tradition during the Ute Middle Ages. First it will define the peasant-brawl as a literary genre and then trace its development, using for this purpose mostly South German parallels, since these seem to be the most plentiful. One can justify the use of such geographically remote parallels because of certain cultural similarities between the Lowland Scots and the South Germans of that period, both of whom were largely derived from Teutonic tribes that had occupied foreign territory and destroyed, expelled, or assimilated the native element. Both peoples had absorbed Roman Christianity and later French civilization, which they gradually blended with their own cultural heritage. In view of these similarities in origin and development, one might expect their popular literatures to have much in common, just as their vernaculars did.